Zack moves around the safe house like he’s already halfway gone. Efficient. Focused. Back in his boots before I’ve fully shaken sleep from my bones. He doesn’t avoid meexactly, but he doesn’t linger, either. I feel it in my chest the way you feel weather change before the sky does.
I remember everything.
The way we barely made it inside last night before gravity took over. The way it wasn’t frantic, wasn’t desperate, just…inevitable. How afterward, in the quiet, wrapped in sheets that smelled like him, the words slipped out of me without permission.
I love you.
I hadn’t meant to say it. Not yet. Not like that. But it was true, and it felt safe in the dark, pressed against his shoulder, heartbeat steady beneath my cheek.
He hadn’t pulled away.
But he hadn’t said it back.
Now we’re in the car again, heading back toward the Philly safe house after a supply run, and the silence is thick enough that I could carve my name into it. The radio is on low, some forgettable song humming along, but it does nothing to fill the gap.
Zack’s hands are tight on the steering wheel. His jaw is set, his eyes never leaving the road.
“You’re being weird,” I say finally.
“I’m fine.”
The words come too fast. Too clipped.
I turn in my seat to face him. “You’ve said that three times in the last ten minutes.”
“I’m staying focused,” he replies. “That’s all.”
“Focused doesn’t usually mean emotionally constipated,” I say lightly, but my stomach twists. “You didn’t even make fun of my coffee order.”
“That’s because it was objectively terrible,” he says, his tone flat.
I blink. “Wow. Okay. So youaremad.”
“I’m not mad,” he says, immediately. “Hazel?—”
“You’re short with me. You won’t look at me. And you slept exactly on your side of the bed like there was an invisible line you were afraid to cross.” I pause, then soften my voice. “If this is about last night?—”
“It’s not,” he cuts in.
The denial comes too sharp to be believable. His words are too sharp and they sting more than I want them to.
I study his profile, the familiar angles suddenly closed off, like he’s pulled armor back on piece by piece. This is the Zack I first met, the one who hides inside responsibility and calls it discipline.
“You keep saying everything’s fine,” I say quietly, “but you’re already gone again.”
His grip tightens. He doesn’t let me in, he gives me the cold answer. “We’re about to try to save two people who’ve been missing for two months from an unknown location. I don’t get to be distracted.”
“By me?”
He exhales hard, frustration flickering across his face before he reins it in. “Byanything.”
I shake my head. “You weren’t distracted last night.”
Silence slams down between us, an invisible wall that hurts as it lands right on top of me. The city passes outside the windows; gray, and busy, and completely uninterested in the fact that my heart is doing something complicated and fragile in my chest. Even though we’re in the same city we arrived in yesterday, it feels so different, darker, and I’m not sure if it’s my heart or the city passing us buy that feels ever changing and broken.
“Did I mess things up?” I ask finally, hating how small the question sounds even though I refuse to let my voice shake. It feels like I’m losing this war in my own head, and it’s a losing battle that I’m not ready to accept.
He doesn’t answer right away. When he does, it’s careful. Measured. “No.”
