His fingers were warm. Calloused. Steady.
I held on like he was the only solid thing in a world that had been spinning out of control for three years.
"You came back."
His voice broke through the sound of my tears, settling between us soft and wondering, as if he still couldn't quite believe we were both still breathing.
I wiped my face with my free hand, not letting goof him with the other. "I heard him. Heard his plan. He was on the phone, bragging about it, about how he was going to—" My voice, already hoarse and low from the smoke I’d inhaled, cracked. I couldn't finish. Couldn't say the words out loud, couldn't make them real.
Cal's grip on my hand tightened. It was enough to push me through, to find the strength to keep talking despite the burn in my throat
"I couldn't let you walk into that. I couldn't just stand there and watch you die the same way Mateo—" I stopped. Swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. For running. For not letting you explain. For all of it."
"Lucy."
I had so much to tell him, and the words just kept pouring out of me.
"I should have listened. I should have trusted you. But when I heard about the promise, all I could think was that everything between us was just obligation, just guilt, just you trying to make up for something that was never your fault in the first place. And I couldn't be that. I couldn't be someone you stayed with because you felt like you owed it to a dead man."
"Lucy." His voice was firmer now, cutting through my spiral. "Stop."
I looked at him. I really looked at him as I never did before. His eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted, and something in them made my chest ache.
"You ran into a burning building for me." Hedidn't seem angry, but rather... impressed. Like he was seeing a side of me he never knew existed.
"I had to."
"No." He shook his head slowly. "You didn't have to do anything. But you didn't. You came in after me anyway."
"I couldn't lose you." The words came out before I could stop them, raw and honest and terrifying. "Not like I lost Mateo. I couldn't stand there and watch the building come down and know you were inside and do nothing. I couldn't survive that again."
The monitors beeped their steady rhythm. Somewhere down the hall, a phone rang. The fluorescent lights hummed their endless hum.
"I thought I was cursed." My voice came out small, the confession of something I'd never said out loud. "Everyone I love dies. I never told anyone, but my father left when I was seven. I convinced myself it didn’t count because leaving doesn't mean dying. But then Mateo. And then my mother. And I started to believe that loving people was the thing that killed them. That if I just stopped wanting, stopped hoping, stopped letting anyone get close, I could keep them safe by keeping them away."
Cal didn't say anything. Just listened, the way he always did.
"When I started to feel something for you, I was terrified. Because I thought caring about you was going to get you killed. I thought the universe was punishing me for surviving, for still being here when they weren't, and if I let myself love you, it wouldtake you too. Running felt safer than staying. Felt like I was protecting you by leaving."
"I let you go," Cal said quietly. "When you left, I didn't chase you. Didn't call. Didn't fight." His jaw tightened. "Because part of me believed you were right. That wanting you was betrayal. That building a life with you meant building it on Mateo's grave. That every moment of happiness I felt was something I was stealing from him."
"Cal—"
"He was my best friend." His voice cracked on the word. "He trusted me to bring him home, and I didn't. And then I fell in love with his fiancée, and I thought that was the final proof that I didn't deserve anything good. That letting you go was exactly what I deserved."
We sat there in the too-bright hospital room, two broken people who had been so convinced they didn't deserve happiness that they'd almost lost each other to prove it.
"We're both idiots," I decided to say. Finally breaking the tension that had been suffocating us more than the smoke ever could.
Something that might have been a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah. We really are."
"I don't want to be your promise."
The words came out before I could second-guess them, before I could retreat into the safety of silence and distance and walls I'd built so high I'd almost forgotten what was on the other side.
Cal's hand stilled on mine.
"I don't want to be someone you stay with out of obligation," I continued. "Out of guilt. Out of loyalty to a man who isn't here to release you from a vow you made when you were both covered in blood and ash and you would have promised him anything. I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering if you're with me because you choose to be or because you don't know how to let yourself stop."
