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I knew I’d failed when my door cracked open.

I lifted my head, squinting at the silhouette of Mikey’s sleep-mussed head in the gap.

“Cal?” he whispered, his voice rough with sleep. “You okay?”

I sniffed. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Liar,” he said, stepping into my room and leaving the door open so light filtered in.

Against my will, another tear streaked down my face. I rolled onto my side, pulling my knees up and turning my back to him.

“Hey.” The mattress dipped behind me as he climbed onto my bed and slotted himself against my back. He draped an arm over my middle, his hand resting against my ribs, and tucked me against his chest. “I got you.”

I let Mikey hold me, concentrating on the sound of his breathing until mine synced to it. Eventually, the panic subsided, and my heart rate slowed.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he whispered, his lips brushing against the back of my neck.

I shivered at the contact, and he did it again, his hand sliding from my ribs to rest over my heart.

“I …” My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. “I had a nightmare. A bad one this time.”

“This time?” he murmured.

“It’s … a thing. That happens.” I shrugged, trying to play it off like it was no big deal.

“How often, Cal?” His fingers started moving, brushing slow circles over my pec.

“A couple times a month for the last few years,” I admitted, my breath hitching.

“Jesus Christ.” Mikey’s hand drifted from my heart to my shoulder, and he tugged gently, rolling me onto my back. He shifted, rolling on top of me and pushing up onto his forearms. “Are you okay? No bullshitting me, Cal—I mean it.”

No bullshitting him. God. It felt like that was all I’d been doing for months now.

I dragged my eyes toward the window. Looking at him right now was too much. “I’m okay,” I said, pulling in a breath. “Or I will be.”

“You will be?” he asked, easing down on top of me like the world’s best weighted blanket and burrowing his face into the hollow of my neck.

I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tightly against me. “I promise.”

I didn’t know why I said that. I didn’t see a world in which I was actually going to be okay.

I was in love with my best friend, which was bad enough on its own. When you factored in the stress from my dad and his expectations, I was slowly coming apart at the seams. The nightmares were happening more and more frequently, and nothing I did was making it better—not therapy, or meditation, or sheer physical exhaustion.

He levered himself up so he could see my face. “Do you wanna tell me what they’re about?”

I shook my head. “It’s not any one thing. Or rather, it’s lots of things.”

“Your dad?” he guessed, raising a lone eyebrow.

I shook my head, and he raised the other one.

“I mean, it’s not just him. I told you before, I don’t handle stress well.”

He brushed a piece of sweaty hair off my forehead. “And being on one of the worst teams in the league when people are expecting you to singlehandedly turn this sinking ship around is hella fucking stressful, right?”

I huffed out a surprised laugh, plucking at an errant curl and watching it spring back into position. “Something like that.”

“What do you need from me, Cal?”