She took another step toward me, close enough that I could see the shimmer in her eyes, the fine tremble in her mouth. “You fell,” she said again, desperate for me to listen. “That’s all. You’re allowed to have a bad day. That doesn’t erase everything we’re building.”
Her hand hovered near my chest, fingers curling like she wanted to touch me and didn’t know if she was allowed anymore.
“I get to choose this,” she said, voice rough. “I get to choose you.”
The hope in that sentence hurt worse than the fall.
“You think love or choice or whatever the hell you’re calling this today is going to matter when you’re dragging my ass off the floor in ten years?” My voice shook, but I couldn’t stop. “When every room we walk into, you’re scanning stairs and exits and wondering if today’s the day my body fails me again?”
I swallowed hard, tasted blood and regret and couldn’t tell them apart.
Her first tears slipped free, tracking hot down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them.
“That’s not fair,” she whispered.
“Your brother trusted me with you,” I said, Hayes’s face flashing behind my eyes, that mix of worry and faith that had nobusiness being aimed at me. “Today was proof he shouldn’t. I’m one bad day away from wrecking everything I touch.”
She shook her head hard enough that her hair swung. “That’s not what happened.”
“The fuck it didn’t.”
Silence pressed at the edges. If I stopped talking, I knew what would happen. I’d cave. I’d let her talk me down off this ledge, curl around her like nothing had cracked, and then we’d both be standing there next time the leg gave out with fewer exits and even more to lose.
“You wanted to help me figure out my body again,” I said, going for the throat. “Mission accomplished. I can get off. I can fake being normal a little better now. You don’t need to keep doing this.”
Her face crumpled. It was like watching a building collapse in slow motion.
“Is that really what you think this is?” she asked, voice breaking but sharp. “That I’m still here for practice? For rehab?”
My mouth opened. The truth crouched right there.
No. I think you’re here because for some reason you picked me, and if I let you stay, I will ruin you.
“Yes,” I said instead.
The word dropped between us like an executioner's axe.
She stared at me, long enough that I felt every stutter of my heartbeat. Then she nodded, once, like a verdict.
“Got it,” she whispered. “Message received.”
She stepped back. Each inch might as well have been a mile.
“If you decide you want to stop punishing yourself long enough to tell me the truth,” she said, voice low and lethal, “you know where my room is.”
She swallowed, eyes shining and furious and heartbreakingly done.
“Until then,” she added, quieter, “I’m done begging you to let me in.”
She turned and walked up the staircase, her shoulders squared like she was holding herself together by pure stubbornness. I heard her close the door a moment later. She hadn’t slammed it, just shut it with a quiet, final click that echoed louder than any shouting match we could have had.
The house went still.
I stayed where I was, breathing like I’d just run sprints instead of tearing my own life in half with a handful of sentences.
My leg throbbed in time with my pulse, phantom pain spiderwebbing through my thigh, but it barely made a dent in the ache sitting square in my chest.
Eventually, gravity dragged me down. I sank onto the couch, elbows on my knees, hands hanging uselessly between them. The TV stared back at me, black and blank.
She had given me every out. Every chance to tell her the truth.
I’d chosen the version that hurt us both, because it was the only one that made sense with the story my brain refused to stop telling: that I was a walking hazard, a wreck in progress, a problem to be managed, not a man to be loved but pitied.
Every time I reached for something good, I turned it into collateral damage.
I leaned back, head hitting the cushion, eyes burning as the ceiling fuzzed in and out of focus.
I had dared to believe I was whole again, and the universe had reminded me exactly where I stood.
Punishment for wanting too much settled into my bones like wet concrete, heavy and cold, setting hard around the shape of a man who had just proved his worst fears right.
