I get up, open a bottle of water from my mini-fridge, and then walk back to the bed to help him sit up and drink some.
“You passed out, baby,” I say, watching him slowly drink the water. “Ryan found you on the bathroom floor and called for help. You scared the shit out of us.” I want to keep it light, tease him the way I always do, but I can’t keep the worry from bleeding into every word. “But you’re safe. You’re at the Sin Bin.”
Confusion shadows his face, and I see the panic starting to creep in. “The mess… in the bathroom…”
“It’s cleaned up,” I say. “Don’t worry about that now. Nothing matters except that you’re okay.”
His bottom lip trembles as he lies back against the pillows. His gaze flickers away, shame coloring his face before he can hide it. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his voice so hoarse and broken that it kills me to hear. “I didn’t mean to… I just—couldn’t stop—”
My heart cracks open, splintering with every word. “No,” I interrupt, leaning down so our foreheads touch, so he can feel the heat of me, the steadiness I’m fighting to project. “No, Noah, don’t say that; don’t apologize for needing help. You don’t ever have to explain that to me. I’m just glad you’re still here.”
His eyes well up, and this time, the tears fall silently, shaking his whole frame. I climb into the bed beside him, careful of the IV, and pull him into my chest. I hold him there, one hand cradling the back of his neck, the other over his ribs as he sobs against me—soft, broken sounds that shred me from the inside.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he whispers. “I was fine. I was… I was doing okay. But—” he sucks in a breath, and it fucking kills me. “My dad, he… he called me disgusting for loving you, Mien. He called me a fa—”
He chokes on the word, and I push the anger down that threatens to break through. My hand tightens at the back of his neck without meaning to, fingers threading into his hair as if I could anchor him to me hard enough to keep that word from ever landing again.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to his temple. My voice stays steady, even though everything inside me is screaming. “You don’t have to say it, I know what he meant, and he’s wrong.”
Noah shakes in my arms, the kind of shaking that comes from somewhere deep and old, not just tonight. His breath stutters, catching as he tries to silence his sobs. It makes me realize helearned long ago that crying too loudly only makes things worse. That knowledge alone makes my throat burn.
“He said I embarrassed him,” Noah whispers. “That I ruined everything he worked for. That I was sick, and that you—” He stops again, swallowing hard. “That you were the reason I turned out like this.”
I pull back and look at him, one hand sliding to cup his cheek, thumb brushing under his left eye. “Look at me, baby,” I say gently.
It takes a second, but he does. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, pupils blown wide. “You did not turn out wrong, and there is nothing broken about you. Loving me—being with me and allowing me to love you back—does not make you ‘sick’ either. Do you hear me?”
He presses his lips together, nodding faintly, but I can tell he doesn’t believe it yet.
I breathe in through my nose the way I do before a free throw when the crowd’s too loud, and my head’s too full. I rub my hand up and down his back in steady, grounding strokes, counting them without thinking.
One…
Two…
Three…
“You don’t have to believe me yet,” I say quietly. “You just have to hear me. I’ll keep saying it until it sticks.”
He lets out a small, broken sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” he murmurs, fresh tears spilling over. “I’m too much.”
That one hurts. I swallow hard, jaw tightening, because I recognize that thought. I’ve lived it. “You’re not too much—you were never too much. You were just given more than you should’ve carried alone. That’s why I’m here, baby. Let me help you carry that load.”
His bottom lip trembles, and he exhales, his whole body sagging into mine; the fight’s finally draining out of him. I wrap both arms around him and hold him closer to me. “I need you to realize that what happened doesn’t erase the progress you made. It doesn’t mean you failed. It means something triggered you, and your body reacted the only way it knows how when it feels cornered.”
His fingers twist into my shirt, gripping the fabric tightly as he can. “It feels like I’m back at the beginning,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “Beginnings don’t come with knowledge. You know more now, and you know what it feels like when things start to spiral. You know you can ask for help—even if you didn’t this time, you still canifit happens next time. That matters.”
He exhales shakily, forehead tipping forward until it rests against my chest. His heart is racing; I can feel it through the thin fabric of his shirt, the frantic rhythm of someone who’s been running from something invisible for too long. “Are you mad at me?”
The question guts me. I pull back just enough to look at him fully, to make sure he sees my face. “No,” I say immediately. “I’m scared. I’m angry—at your dad, at the world, at myself. But I’m not mad at you. I would never be mad at you for this.”
He searches my eyes, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say without hesitation. “I love you. That doesn’t disappear because things get hard.”
That finally cracks something. His face folds in on itself, and he buries it against my chest, crying harder now. I hold him through it, rocking slightly, murmuring nonsense and comfort and his name over and over until the sobs ease into shuddery breaths.
