“And you’re okay with that? Even knowing how scared I am?”
I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine. We were in a back booth, mostly hidden from view, but it still felt like a declaration.
“I’m okay with all of it,” I said. “The scared parts. The complicated parts. The parts where you need space and the parts where you need me close.”
Tanner’s fingers curled around mine, holding tight. “We’re both a mess, you know.”
“Yeah. But our broken pieces fit together pretty well.”
He huffed a laugh. “That’s either profound or the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Probably both.”
We stayed in that booth until Dorothy started giving us looks, our hands tangled together across the table like we had nowhere else to be. Outside, the afternoon light had gone golden, filtering through the diner’s smudged windows.
Eventually, we paid and headed back into the October air. The walk home felt different from the walk there—lighter, somehow. Like we’d crossed an invisible line and come out intact on the other side.
At our building, Tanner stopped with his hand on the door.
“Thank you. For the arcade. For knowing I’d like it.” He met my eyes. “For paying attention.”
“That’s what this is supposed to be, right? Paying attention to each other.”
“I’m still figuring out the rules.”
“There aren’t rules. Just us, trying not to fuck it up.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Yeah.” I reached past him and pulled the door open. “But at least we’re terrified together.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling as he walked through. I followed him up the stairs to our apartment, watching the late-afternoon sun catch the red in his hair, and thought about how strange it was that the scariest thing I’d ever done was also the thing that felt most right.
We had a lot to figure out. A season to finish, families to navigate, futures to build. But for right now, we had this: a Sunday afternoon, a shared apartment, and the fragile beginning of something worth protecting.
It was enough. It was more than enough.
9
TANNER
The drive to Wilmington took ten hours, which meant ten hours of Seth behind the wheel of his truck, singing along to every bad country song that came on the radio while I pretended to be annoyed.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said somewhere around hour four, when he’d found a station playing nothing but nineties hits and started belting out “Friends in Low Places” like he was auditioning for a dive bar cover band.
“Doing what?” He grinned at me, all innocence. “I’m just enjoying the music.”
“You’re torturing me.”
“Same thing.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. The sound surprised me, loose and easy in a way I hadn’t felt in months. Seth’s grin widened, and he turned the volume up.
This was new territory. We’d spent plenty of time together in the apartment, but that was different. We could retreat to separaterooms, maintain the illusion of space. Here, in Seth’s truck with Georgia turning into South Carolina outside the windows, there was nowhere to hide. Just Seth’s off-key singing, his hand resting on my thigh, and no way to pretend I wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be.
“You nervous?” Seth asked during a commercial break, his voice softer now.
“About what?”
