"And I can't manage your guilt on top of my own shit."
"I won't ask you to."
He gave me a look.
"I might fall apart," I admitted. "But I'll do it on my own. I'm here for you."
Something shifted in his face. Not a smile. Not yet. But the ghost of one—the memory of what his face used to do in this booth when things were easy.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." He picked up his coffee. Drank it this time. Made a face. "God, this is terrible."
"It's always terrible."
"That's what makes it ours."
The waitress appeared.
"You boys eating or just taking up space?"
Ethan looked at me across the table. And there it was—faint, careful, still guarded at the edges—butthere. The beginning of something that had been through damage and survived.
"Pancakes," Ethan said. "Extra butter. Bacon—burnt."
"Honey, it's always burnt."
She walked off. Ethan closed his laptop. And for a moment we just sat there, the late afternoon light warming the cracked vinyl to amber.
Not healed. Not yet. But honest.
And that was where it started.
Chapter 15: Liam
The dorm room was dark except for the glow of Noah's laptop.
I dropped my keys on my desk. Shrugged off my jacket. Sat on the edge of my bed and started unlacing my shoes.
Got one off.
Stopped.
The lace hung loose in my hand and I just—sat there. Couldn't make myself move. Couldn't make myself do the next thing, whatever the next thing was. Go to sleep. Brush my teeth. Exist like a normal person.
Something had been hollowed out of my chest and I didn't know what it was or when it happened, just that it was gone and the space where it used to be hurt in a way I couldn't name.
Emily hadn't done anything wrong. That was the thing I kept coming back to. She hadn't done anything wrong at all.
And I still felt like I'd been holding my breath for the last two hours and I'd only just been allowed to exhale.
That was the part I couldn't sit with. Couldn't look at directly.
"Liam."
"What."
