Yeah. Talk to him. Actually talk, not just apologize and move on. He’s probably spiraling about six different things, and none of them are actually about you going home.
Hunter was right. I knew he was right. But knowing and doing were different things, and the thought of having another heavy conversation when we were both already running on empty made me want to crawl into bed and not emerge until December.
Thanks. I’ll figure it out.
You always do. But maybe let someone help for once.
I set the phone down and stared at Tanner’s closed door.
One conversation. That’s all it would take. Walk over there, knock, tell him everything I was feeling instead of trying to manage it alone. Tell him I was scared of going home and scared of not going. Tell him I didn’t know how to be the person my family wanted and the person he needed at the same time.
My legs stayed frozen.
The door stayed closed.
I’d givenup on studying, on icing, on doing anything except lying in bed and cataloging all the ways I was failing at everything when the Taner finally came home. The footsteps in the hallway paused outside my room. I held my breath.
The door creaked open. Tanner stood in the dim light from the hallway, wearing his sleep clothes, his hair mussed from lying down.
“Can I—” He stopped. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
The admission cost him something. I could see it in the set of his jaw, the way he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Yeah,” I said. “Come here.”
He crossed to the bed and climbed in, but he didn’t curl into me the way he usually did. Instead, he lay on his side facing away, a careful six inches of space between us. Close enough to feel his warmth. Far enough to make a point.
I wanted to reach for him. Wanted to pull him against my chest and hold on until the distance between us closed. But my ribs ached, and he’d drawn a line, and I didn’t know how to cross it without making things worse.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the back of his head.
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. With any of this.”
“I know that too.”
The silence stretched. I listened to Tanner breathe, felt the mattress shift when he adjusted his position, and ached with how close he was and how far away he felt.
“I’m scared,” I admitted. “Of going home. Of not going. Of what happens either way.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then his hand reached back, found mine in the dark, and squeezed once before letting go.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
It sounded more like a question than a promise.
I lay awake long after his breathing evened out, staring at the ceiling, counting the inches between us.
Tomorrow, I’d decide about Thanksgiving. Tomorrow, I’d find a way to make him believe he wasn’t losing me.
But lying there in the dark, feeling the weight of everything unsaid, I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.
15
TANNER
The drive home felt longer than two hours.
