By the time I finished, Hayes’s eyes were closed, his thumb and forefinger pressing into the bridge of his nose like he was staving off a headache.
“Jesus, man,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I fucked up.”
He opened his eyes and looked right at me, no buffer, no joke. “You’re in love with her.”
I swallowed it. It tasted like battery acid.
“See the thing is—” I started, then stopped, because that was bullshit, and we both knew it.
Hayes’s brows went up the smallest fraction,really?written all over his face.
“You forget I’ve known you almost as long as I’ve known her,” he said. “I watched you watch her, even when we were kids. I’ve watched you watch her the last few months. Itisthat simple.”
Something in my chest gave. The hairline crack I’d been pretending wasn’t there finally spiderwebbed across the surface.
I stared at the ground. My voice came out low.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m in love with her.”
The words didn’t fix anything. They didn’t magically unstitch what I’d torn. They just sat there, heavy and real and long overdue.
Hayes blew out a breath, shoulders dropping a notch. “Okay,” he said again, but this time it sounded different. “Good. Step one, we’re being honest.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I didn’t ask you to look out for her because you’re perfect,” he went on. “News flash, none of us are. I asked you because you’re kind. Because even when you’re being a cocky asshole, you’ve always shown up for the people you care about.”
Guilt twisted low in my gut.
“But you don’t protect someone by pretending you don’t give a shit,” he said, voice sharpening. “You protect her by actually doing the work so you don’t bleed all over her every time you get scared.”
I flinched. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“I know it’s not what you’re trying to do,” he said. “But it is what you’re doing.”
Silence stretched until I felt it between my shoulder blades.
“She didn’t leave because you fell, man,” Hayes said finally, softer. “She left because you chose your fear and then used it as a weapon on her.”
The line landed like a fist under my ribs because it was too close to the thing I hadn’t wanted to say out loud.
My fingers dug into my thighs. “What if this is just who I am now?” I asked before I could stop myself. “The guy who goes down on stairs and takes everyone with him. The guy who freaks out and says the one thing that hurts most. What if I keep doing this? To her. To you. To everyone.”
Hayes watched me, eyes dark and steady. “Then you figure out how not to be that guy,” he said simply.
I huffed out a breath. “What if I break her?” The words felt like they were being dragged over gravel on the way out. “Again.”
“You already hurt her,” he said. “That’s done. Now you decide if that’s the story you stick with, or if it’s the chapter before you finally pull your head out of your ass.”
I let my head tip back against the couch cushion, eyes burning, throat thick. The idea of doing anything felt impossible and necessary in the same breath.
Hayes’s voice came again, quieter. “You don’t have to earn her. She already picked you. But if you want to keep her, you can’t keep pretending this is just about your leg. You gotta deal with the rest of it too.”
The rest of it.
My entire life I had dealt with difficult things the same way—stuff it in a box and never think about it again. My time in the military, losing my sister, the way my parents practically died alongside her. The way any future that involved someone else felt like a lie I didn’t deserve to tell.
I swallowed hard, pulse drumming in my ears.
