“Not just the recovery. All of it.” He looked at me, and his eyes were clearer than they’d been in days—sharp, focused, seeing too much. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been running on fumes since the hospital, and don’t tell me you’re fine because I know what fine looks like on you, and this isn’t it.”
I folded a pair of his sweatpants, matched the seams with care. “I’m managing.”
“Managing isn’t the same as okay.”
“I know the difference.”
“Do you?” He pulled the sweatpants out of my hands, set them aside. His eyes closed for a moment—pressure wave, probably—then refocused on me. “Because from where I’m sitting, you’re doing exactly what you did with your dad. Putting everythinginto taking care of someone else so you don’t have to think about how scared you are.”
The words hit like a slap. I stood there, hands empty, and felt my ribs constrict around nothing.
“That’s not—” I stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. “I’m not doing that.”
“You haven’t left the apartment in four days. You’ve barely eaten. You check my pupils every six hours like you’re expecting to find something wrong. Tanner.” He said my name like it meant something, like it carried weight. “I’m going to be fine. But I need you to be fine too.”
“I will be. When you’re better.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said quietly. “I know you’re scared. I know this is bringing up stuff with your dad. But I’m right here, and I’m getting better. You can see that, right?”
I could. The evidence was in front of me—his steadier hands, his clearer eyes, the way he could track a conversation now without losing the thread. But knowing something logically and believing it were two different things.
“What happens when you’re better?” The question came out before I could stop it. “When you go back to?—”
I cut myself off. Couldn’t say it. Couldn’t name the fear that had been sitting in my chest since the moment I saw him on that stretcher.
Seth’s expression softened. “Hey. We don’t have to figure that out right now. Right now, I just need you to breathe. Can you do that?”
I didn’t have an answer. The truth was too ugly to say aloud—that I didn’t know how to do anything else, that caretaking was the only mode I understood, that the thought of Seth getting hurt again made me want to lock both of us in this apartment forever and never let him near a football field again.
“I don’t know,” I said finally. Honestly. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Let me help.” He reached for me, pulled me down onto the couch beside him. “Let me take care of you for once. Even if it’s just sitting here while you fall apart.”
“I can’t fall apart. You need me.”
“I need you to be okay more than I need you to be strong.” His hand found my face, tilted it toward him. “Do you hear me? I don’t need a caretaker. I need you. The real you, not the version that’s holding everything together with duct tape and willpower.”
The real me. I wasn’t sure I knew who that was anymore. The real me had gotten lost somewhere in the years of watching my father disappear, had been eroded piece by piece by the constant vigilance, the endless waiting for the next crisis. What was left felt hollow, scraped clean.
But Seth was looking at me like I was whole. Like he could see something I couldn’t.
“I’m scared,” I admitted. The words scraped my throat. “I’m terrified, all the time, that this is going to end the way it ended with him. That I’m going to watch you get worse and worse and there won’t be anything I can do except?—”
I couldn’t finish. Seth pulled me against his chest, and I let him, let myself be held for the first time in days. He was warm and solid and alive, his heart beating steadily under my ear.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
“You can’t promise that.”
“No. But I can promise to try.” His hand moved through my hair, gentle. “And I can promise that whatever happens, you won’t have to do it alone.”
I closed my eyes and let myself believe him. Just for a moment. Just long enough to breathe.
That night, I waited until Seth was asleep. His breathing had settled into the slow rhythm that meant he was really under, not just dozing. I slipped out of bed, padded to the bathroom, and closed the door behind me before turning on the light.
The face in the mirror looked like shit. Dark circles, pale skin, the hollowed-out cheeks I remembered from the caregiving years. I’d lost weight without noticing, the way I always did when stress ate me from the inside out.
I gripped the edge of the sink and watched my knuckles go white.
