“Here,” she’d said. “In case you get here before me sometime.” As if this wasn’t a declaration. Like she wasn’t saying: I want you to have access to my space, my life, and all the parts of me I don’t show anyone else.
I’d made a copy of mine for her the next day, leaving it on her pillow with a note that said,Same.
Now I used it, my hands steady despite the panic clawing through my chest.
I found her in the living room, pacing a groove into the carpet. Still in her work clothes, now wrinkled. Mascara tracked down her face in dark streaks. Her breath came in hitching gasps, the kind that meant she’d been crying for a while.
This was the first time I’d seen her cry.
The knowledge was a hit I hadn’t braced for. We’d been together for weeks. She’d been vulnerable with me in every other way. But she’d never let me see this.
It gutted me that her father had been the one to break her this badly.
“Tolrek.” Her voice cracked on my name.
I pulled her into my arms, and she collapsed against me, sobbing so hard I felt it in my bones.
“I’m here,” I said, tightening my arms around her. “I’m here.”
She tried to explain through sobs, her words coming out broken and gasping. “I heard—heard them talking—Dad and Adam Bryant.”
“Breathe.”
“Dad laughed.” The words tore out of her. “He actually laughed when Bryant said we were involved. He said I knew better. That I’d never do anything like that, that I’d never compromise my position with the team.”
Her legs went out.
I lowered us both to the couch, and she curled into me, pressing her face into my chest.
“He was so certain,” she gasped. “So sure I’d never do this that it was a joke to him.”
I stroked her hair, letting her cry. Trying to fix it right now would be wrong. She needed to process this first.
“He’s going to think I lied to him,” she said when she could speak again. “Betrayed him. That I chose you over him.”
“You did choose me.”
“I did.” She pulled back enough to look at me, her face blotchy and wet. “That’s what makes it worse.”
We sat on her sofa for at least ten minutes while she cried herself out. When the sobs finally slowed into hiccups, she eased out of my arms and slumped on the cushions beside me, drawing her knees up.
“We need to decide what we’re doing,” I said. “Right now.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice came out hoarse. “We could wait for him to confront us, but that feels cowardly.” She wiped at her face. “Or we go to him now, but I can’t. I’m?—”
“Terrified.”
A broken laugh escaped her. “That’s an understatement.”
“We could deny it,” I said, though everything inside me protested doing something like that.
Her eyes snapped to mine. “Could we?”
“No.” I laced my fingers through hers. “I’m done hiding. We’ll tell him tonight, like we planned.”
“What if he makes you leave?” Her fingers dug into my shirt. “What if he threatens your spot? Everything you’ve built here—it could all fall apart because of me.”
I cupped her face, making her look at me. “Then I lose my spot. But I’m not losing you. I can survive anything but losing you.”
