"And you." I look at Dante. "You asked me once. Last month. In the locker room. You said I was performing fine and performing fine is different from fine. One question. One time. In six years."
"Cole—"
"I'm telling you what happened. I made everything look handled, so nobody had to check. That's on me. I drew the blueprints. I poured the foundation. I've been maintaining the structure every day since my mother's car pulled out of the driveway."
I stop.
The kitchen is quiet. Through the window, the light is flat and gray. Coffee pools on the counter where Dante's mug spilled. The eggs are gone.
"I don't know who I am without this." My voice comes out smaller, the one from the other side of the wall. "I don't know who I am when I'm not holding someone together. I don't know what I look like when I'm not filling a silence or reading a room or engineering a moment. I have never, in my entire life, been in a room where I wasn't performing. And I don't know what happens when the performance stops."
Maya's tears fall. One. Then another. She doesn't wipe them.
Dante's hand is a fist at his side, his knuckles white, his jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumps. His feet stay planted on the other side of the spilled coffee.
"I need to go," I say.
"Cole." Maya steps forward.
"Don't."
Her foot stops halfway between us.
"Don't reach for me right now. Because if you reach for me, I'll let you, and I'll fall back into the role, and I'll hold you and say something warm and we'll both pretend this didn't happen and I'll keep being the thing you lean on without checking."
She stops.
"I need distance from this room right now."
I pick up my keys from the counter, my jacket from the hook, and my phone from where I set it facedown. I walk to the door and put my hand on the knob.
"Cole." Dante's voice stops me before I open the door.
Chapter 22
Maya
The door closes, and the kitchen fills with the sound of nobody.
I stay braced against the counter with my hands pressed flat behind me, cold stone under my palms and sweat slicking the places where my skin meets it. The floor keeps tilting under me. It has been tilting since Cole said he chose the seat next to me in the dining hall. Since the exact pressure of his hand on my shoulder stopped being accidental.
Dante hasn't moved from the counter across from me. Coffee pools on the granite beside his mug, spreading slowly toward the place where Cole stood. Dante's hands hang at his sides, and neither of us steps into the empty center of the room.
I breathe.Four in. Four hold. Four out.
The count won't settle. My ribs lock around the next breath, pressure building behind my sternum where the protocol is supposed to go.
"The sweatshirts," I say, and my voice comes out thin enough to scrape.
I touch the gray fabric hanging off my body. The sweatshirt appeared on the back of the couch three days ago, and I pulled it on this morning without thinking, the way I've pulled on his clothes for years. Reaching. Taking. Wearing another person's warmth without ever asking where the hell it came from.
"He places them. He said he places them."
Dante pushes off the counter and crosses to the sink. Water hits glass, sharp in the quiet, and then he's in front of me again, setting it beside my hip with the rim exactly parallel to the counter's edge.
"Drink," he says.
I pick up the glass. The water is cold, and I drink half of it while my hands shake around the glass the way they shook after the 413 calls. This time, my eyes go to the walls. The counters. The cabinets. The couch with a sweatshirt placed across the back of it. Every safe surface in this house has his fingerprints on it.
