My breath catches.
His grip isn’t hard. It’s just a quiet interruption. Like he’s stopping me from unraveling in front of him.
“Look at me,” he says softly.
I jerk my hand once, not enough to get free, but enough to make the point.
My eyes snap up anyway, hot and bright.
“What?” I hiss, keeping my voice low even though the office is empty. Somehow that makes it worse, not better. “You want to hold hands now? You didn’t pay for it this time.”
The words land between us like a slap.
Nico doesn’t flinch. His expression doesn’t change in any big way.
But his hand loosens immediately, like he’s respecting the line I just drew.
He lets go.
His palm falls back to his side. “Erica,” he says, calmly, “remember what I said. When you need to come to me—"
“I don’t need you,” I snap, shoving my laptop fully into my bag.
I swallow hard, furious that my throat does that stupid tightening thing.
His gaze holds mine. It’s steady. It’s unreadable. And it makes me want to throw my coffee mug at a wall.
“Fine,” he says simply. “If you change your mind, you know where I am.”
I grab my bag strap and stand so fast my chair bumps the partition.
I don’t look at him again.
I don’t give myself the chance.
I walk away, heels clicking too loud on the polished floor, and I don’t let myself breathe until the elevator doors are closing behind me.
The waiting room smells like disinfectant and burnt coffee.
The chairs are vinyl and too close together, and the TV on the wall is on a daytime channel no one is watching. A scrolling ticker runs along the bottom with news I can’t absorb. A woman across from me flips through a magazine, page after page, the sound sharp in the quiet.
My dad was taken back hours ago.
Hours.
I keep looking at the clock and then looking away, as if I stare at it too long, it’ll stop out of spite. My leg bounces. I force it still. Two minutes later, it’s bouncing again.
I’m alone.
Maddy is back in Montana—back to wide-open skies and family dinners and people who can show up when something goes wrong. I don’t resent her. Not really. She stayed as long as she could. She sat with me in that café and looked at me like she didn’t recognize me anymore, and still didn’t walk away.
But she’s gone, and now it’s just me and this waiting room and the fact that my father is somewhere behind those doors on a table. I can’t picture it without feeling like I’m going to black out.
I press my palm flat to my thigh. Ground. Okay. Ground.
Every time someone in scrubs walks past the entrance, my stomach twists.
I keep thinking I’m going to throw up.
