It’s too fast and aggressive. There’s no steady cadence to it, just a hard, relentless pounding. It soundslike he’s trying to outrun a ghost.
I sit up and listen.
The pace changes abruptly. A frantic sprint, then a dead stop. The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on. Then come the new thuds.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The punching bag.
I’ve heard him use it before, but tonight, it sounds like he’s trying to break the chains. Each hit is a physical blow to the quiet of the night. It sounds like pain with nowhere else to go.
I don’t think about boundaries. I don’t think about the fact that we’ve only recently moved past noise complaints to sleeping together. I just know I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts tonight, and I know for a damn certainty that he shouldn’t be alone with his.
“Beckett,” I call out, my voice tight as I reach the fourth floor and hammer on his door. “It’s me. Open up.”
The pounding stops.
When the door finally swings open, the heat from the apartment rolls over me like a fever. He’s shirtless, sweat slicking the hard planes of his chest, his hair plastered to his forehead in dark, damp clumps. But it’s his eyes that stop my heart. They’re glassy and unfocused, looking right through me like I’m a ghost he hasn’t managed to shake yet. He’s wound so tight I’m afraid that if I touch him, he’ll shatter into a thousand clinical pieces.
“Fuck, Madi. I didn’t mean to wake you—”
“I was already awake,” I say, stepping past him before he can give me an excuse to leave. “I just didn’t want to be alone tonight. I’m guessing you didn’teither.”
I walk straight to his couch and lie down, curling onto my side. I don’t ask questions. I just exist in his space, offering the only thing I have: a witness.
He hesitates, his shadow looming large against the wall. “Madison—”
“I’m fine, Doc,” I say to the back of the sofa, my voice steady despite the somersaults my heart is doing. “Do your thing. I’m just taking a nap.”
At first, the hits are controlled. He’s aware of me, keeping the mask on. But then the rhythm fractures. The sound turns desperate, the strikes landing with a sickening, hollow weight. I can hear his breath hitching, the air catching in his lungs until the dam finally breaks.
One sound.
A low, guttural sob that sounds like it was ripped directly out of his chest.
He freezes, his forehead dropping against the bag. It’s just one sob, but in the silence of the apartment, it’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
My throat tightens until it hurts. I get up and cross the room, stopping just behind him. He steps back, his legs shaking with a visible tremor. When he sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, it’s a total surrender. That’s when I see his hands. They’re wrapped in clean, tight white gauze. Even in the middle of a breakdown, he’s a doctor first. He protects the tools.
I pull up a chair and reach out. “Can I?”
He dips his chin, nudging his hands toward me.
I start to unwrap them. It feels more intimate than anything we’ve done with our clothes off. Layer by layer, the gauze falls away, revealing knuckles that are red and swollen, but the skin hasn't broken.
“You didn’t lose control,” I murmur, tracing the line of his thumb.
“I did,” he rasps, finally meeting my eyes. His pupils are blown wide, filled with a grief so old it’s become part of his DNA.
I reach for the first-aid kit he’s already left on the table, and clean the skin with a cool cloth. “What happened?”
“I lost a patient.”
I keep my eyes on his knuckles, wrapping them in fresh bandages with a focused, steady hand. “I’m sorry, Beckett.”
“He looked like him,” he whispers, the words barely audible. “My father. He was the same age. He had the same laugh. It was like watching it happen all over again.”
I stop wrapping, but I don’t say a word. I just let the silence hold the space for him.
