Every muscle in my body screamed no.
“What are you doing here?” My voice sounded strange, too small, like it had gotten lost in my throat before it made it out.
“Don’t take that tone with us.” My mother’s brows arched. “We drove all this way to help you. I warned you what would happen if you didn’t cooperate, and look what you did. I got what, a day, before you were back to your nasty habits?”
“Don’t speak to her like that,” Matty growled.
It wasn’t a request. It was a warning.
My mother’s eyes snapped to him, startled, like she had just noticed him standing beside me. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d thought it was a random student walking near me because I couldn’t possibly have found someone to love me.
Matty stepped a little closer, just enough that I could feel the restrained fury radiating from him, his thumb still rubbingsoothing circles against my hand even as the rest of him looked ready to tear someone apart.
“Matthew Adler,” my dad said after a second, as though he knew him, as though the whole world knew him because his face was plastered across game-day posters. “We were just?—”
Matty’s gaze sliced through him like he didn’t exist. “If you say anything to upset her, we’ll be leaving,” he announced, ignoring my dad’s outstretched hand.
“She’s fine,” my mom said briskly, her chin lifting like she was staking claim over me. “We’re her parents. We’re handling it.”
“Doesn’t look like you’re handling it,” Matty said flatly.
My mom’s lips pressed together in a thin, white line. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know her.”
“Hmm. Is that so?” His voice went low, dangerous.
My mother scoffed. “She’s been diagnosed,” my mom said, like she had some kind of trump card. “I’m sure she didn't tell you. She’s been diagnosed with obsessive love disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and an attachment disorder. Do you understand what that means? She doesn’t feel things the way other people do. She’ssick.”
The words cut me open, even after hearing her say them for what must have been the millionth time. I wanted to crawl into the pavement and disappear into the cracks.
For one endless heartbeat, Matty just stared at them. The silence stretched.
“With absolutely no due respect, fuck off,” Matty finally said calmly, wrapping his arms all the way around me and pulling my back to his chest.
“Excuse me?” my mother said, aghast.
“You don’t get to decide what she feels,” he snarled. “You don’t get to tell me what this is. I don’t give a damn what you callit in some office. What we have is real. You think it’s obsession? Fine. Then I’m obsessed with her right back.”
I stared up at him in awe.
Matty wasn’t looking at me, though; he was staring them down like he’d never lost a battle in his life and wasn’t about to start now. “You want to talk about symptoms? Here’s one for you. I memorize the way she looks at me. I keep hearing her voice in my head when she’s not around. I notice her before I notice anything else. I can’t not. She’s under my skin. She’s in my lungs. I couldn’t get her out if I tried.”
My dad’s face paled. “Son, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“The hell I don’t.” Matty’s voice cracked like thunder. “I’m saying I choose her. Every broken piece, every diagnosis, everything you want to write off as sickness. She’s mine. And I’m hers.”
My throat closed, heat surging behind my eyes, because no one—no one—had ever said that for me. Not to my parents. Not against the weight of what they believed about me.
My mom shook her head, almost pitying him now. “You’ll regret this. You don’t know how bad it gets.”
Matty turned his head slowly toward her, a humorless smile curving his mouth. “Oh, I know exactly how bad it gets,” he said quietly.
My mother blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen her school file,” Matty said, disgust creeping into his voice. “And you know what I didn’t see? I didn’t see a single restriction. Nothing saying the campus was monitoring her or that they thought she was a danger. Nothing saying she couldn’t live her life or do anything but be a regular college student.”
I stared at my parents in shock. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, and spilled down my cheeks. My throat went tight. All these months of worrying, of jumping through her hoops.
And none of it had been real?
