“I’m fine,” I scoffed.
He arched a brow. “You say that a lot.”
“Because it’s true.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“Don’t start, Dalton.”
He didn’t. But he also didn’t leave. He started showing up more. At my door, in the library, outside my classes. Always with food or coffee. Always pretending he wasn’t watching me unravel. Watching me like if he could just catch the fraying threads of my soul he could tie me back together.
Weeks blurred. I ran on caffeine and pills and pure willpower. If I stopped, the memories came crawling back. The funeral, the flag, the way I’d felt frozen while everyone else moved on. And beneath that, older ghosts. The ones I’d buried so deep I thought they were gone.
Therapists back then had called itrepressed trauma.
I called it surviving when I downed a Xanax to shut the voices up.
I was sixteen. The world had been rough hands and a locked door. They’d told me talking would help, but all it did was make me watch their faces twist with sympathy. I hated that look. I still did. So no, I didn’t need therapy. I needed quiet. Control.
The pills gave me both.
By midterms, I wasn’t sleeping. My body buzzed like a live wire. One weekend when I was home, I found an old bottle of hydrocodone in my mother’s drawer. A pain killer from a long ago surgery. She didn’t notice its absence.
One to wake up.
One to slow down.
One to survive another day of pretending.
Dalton found me in the kitchen of my apartment one night, staring at a pill bottle like it might blink first. I’d given him a key a long time ago, something I was seriously regretting now.
“Don’t,” he said quietly, eyes flicking between me and the little yellow bottle like someone rubbernecking a car crash. Couldn’t look away even if he wanted to.
“It’s prescribed.”
“Not for this.”
“You’re not my babysitter.”
His jaw flexed, voice sharpening. “No. But I promised your boyfriend I’d look out for you, and I’m not breaking that promise just because you’re trying to disappear.”
The wordboyfriendhit like a slap.
“He’s gone, Dalton. Gone. He’s not coming back. He left me.”
“I know,” he said. “It sucks, but he knew the risks. He signed up for this.”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t.”
“And you think I did?!”
I flinched. I’d never heard him yell before. His voice cracked, ragged with something more than anger.
“You’re not the only one hurting here, Holly,” he went on, breath coming fast. “Mom cries all the damn time. Dad and Mac take turns drinking themselves stupid. Everybody’s trying to pretend they’re fine, like if we just fake it long enough, it’ll stop hurting.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, eyes glassy with exhaustion. “It’d be really fucking nice if, for once, someone justdidn’thide it.”
Silence. The only sound was the hum of the fridge and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. He waited for me to say something. I didn’t. Finally, he turned, muttered something under his breath, and walked out.
