Chapter 23 Caleb #2
So he can keep being support for me.
“Are you…” I pick at a loose string on my joggers. “Are you sure I’m not just… too much?”
Miguel sighs, exasperated in that way that’s somehow still fond.
“Caleb.”
He waits until I drag my eyes up to his.
“You are a lot,” he says, smiling. “A lot of feelings. A lot of history. A lot of talent. A lot of love. A lot of hurt. You are not ‘too much.’ ‘Too much’ implies there’s some acceptable limit you’ve crossed.
There isn’t one, at least not for me. But if I don’t take care of myself while taking care of you, I’m gonna start resenting things. And neither of us wants that.”
“You’re not… mad?” I ask softly. “At me? For how much I need?”
“Baby,” he says. “You needing me is the last thing I’m mad about. I like being needed by you. I love that you called me in Reno. I like that you text when you’re spiraling. That’s not the problem.”
“What is the problem, then?” I ask.
He hesitates, choosing his words.
“The problem,” he says slowly, “is that I’ve been acting like if I ever miss a call, you’ll disappear.
Like, I can’t have a bad day or a long shift or a dead phone, because if I do, the world ends.
And that pressure? It’s not coming from you.
It’s coming from inside my own head. From knowing you almost killed yourself once and being terrified of it ever happening again. ”
My stomach flips. He said it out loud. The thing we’ve never ever vocalized.
“You—I never—”
“I know, Caleb.” His voice goes soft. “You’ve never asked me to hold you together single-handedly.
I volunteered for that job and then stapled myself to it.
” He reaches over and laces our fingers, thumb brushing my knuckles.
“So I’m trying to unlearn that a little.
Still be there. Still answer. But also trust that if I fall asleep without checking my phone, you’re not going to vanish into the void. ”
Heat stings behind my eyes.
“What if I do?” I whisper. “What if one day I just… can’t anymore?”
He squeezes my hand hard enough to anchor.
“Then we handle that together,” he says. “With more than just me and my two fucking hands.”
A tear escapes and slides hot down my cheek.
“I don’t want to break you,” I choke.
“You’re not going to,” he says. “Because I’m finally admitting I’m not indestructible.”
I let out a shuddery breath.
Silence settles between us, heavy but less sharp. After a minute, I manage, “So… what does this look like? Practically. You going to therapy and… what, I just… watch?”
Miguel snorts. “You can absolutely ‘supportive boyfriend walk me to the door and kiss my face off’ if you want. But really? Not much changes for you day-to-day, except maybe I’m a tiny bit less psycho when your battery dies.”
I wince. “I really am sorry about yesterday.”
He lifts our joined hands and kisses my knuckles.
“Accepted. We’ll figure out some… communication rules.
Like, I won’t drive to campus unless it’s been, I don’t know, twelve hours and nobody’s heard from you and Mom’s also worried.
And you text me ‘alive’ when you get back from away games, even if it’s just that one word, and then crash. ”
“Alive,” I echo.
“That’s the bar, baby,” he says. “Not ‘thriving.’ Not ‘fixed.’ Just… alive.”
My chest aches.
“That sounds… doable,” I say quietly.
“Good.” He squeezes my hand again. “And I’m gonna ask Dr. Kaur if she’d be open to joint sessions.
Only if you’re okay with it. I thought maybe, at some point, we could sit in there together and talk about how to handle…
nights like the one before Reno. But that’s a later thing. Not now. Not a surprise.”
“If she does, she’ll be annoyingly good at it,” I mutter. “She already makes me cry once a week.”
Miguel smiles. “Yeah, that tracks.”
We fall quiet again, listening to the waves slam against the cliffs. The sunset bleeds out, leaving behind a bruised blue. “I’m scared,” I admit finally.
“Of what?” he asks.
“That you’ll walk into that counseling center and she’ll tell you everything that’s wrong with me and you’ll finally see how bad it actually is,” I say. “And then you’ll… I don’t know. Wake up.”
Miguel’s face softens in that devastating way.
“Caleb,” he says. “I already know how bad it actually is.”
That should hurt.
Somehow it doesn’t.
“I’ve seen you have panic attacks so bad you can’t move,” he continues quietly. “I’ve picked you up when you haven’t eaten in twelve hours. You’ve disassociated in my arms. I’ve held you while you cried about things that happened ten years ago, like they’re happening right now.”
He leans in, forehead almost touching mine.
“I may not know the worst of it,” he says. “But I’m still here. I’m not suddenly going to flinch because a therapist gives what I already see every single day a name.”
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
Miguel presses a kiss to my forehead, lingering there for a long second, like he can press reassurance straight through my skull.
“We’ll go slow,” he says. “We’ll talk through everything. No surprises. No ‘gotcha’ shit. Okay?”
“Okay,” I rasp.
We stay like that for a while, forehead to forehead, our joined hands resting on the console between us, listening to the ocean threaten the rocks and lose every time.
Miguel drops me back at my dorm as the sky goes from navy to black.
“You coming over later?” he asks as I unbuckle.
“Yeah, after I shower and pretend to touch my homework,” I say. “Text me when you get home?”
“You know it.” He gives my hand one last squeeze. “Remember our word.”
“Alive,” I say.
His eyes soften. “Good boy.”
My ears go hot. “I hate you,” I mutter.
He grins. “Liar. Go inside before I embarrass you in front of your whole floor.”
I roll my eyes and slip out of the truck, feeling his gaze on my back all the way to the door.
Inside, the dorm smells like burnt popcorn and somebody’s Axe body spray. I sign in with the RA, take the stairs two at a time, and let myself into my room. My bed is still unmade from this morning. A couple handouts from class sit scattered across the desk. Everything feels off.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and stare at my phone, willing a text from him to appear, even though it’s been five minutes and he’s probably still driving.
Instead, the screen lights up with a different name.
Dad.
Shit.
Dad
Call me when you’re free.
My stomach drops.
Of course. The first thing that goes through my mind is Harrington.
The restaurant.
Dinner with Miggy.
My pulse picks up, a drumline in my throat. I highly consider not answering. Pretending I never saw it. But the longer I stare at his name, the more another fear slithers in.
If I don’t pick up, he’ll just keep calling. Or keep texting. Or worse, show up.
Rip the Band-Aid, Caleb.
My hand shakes a little as I hit call and he answers on the first ring.
“Caleb,” he says, voice smooth and too calm. “Thank you for calling back.”
I swallow. “Yeah. Uh. Hi.”
“How was Reno?” he asks. “I caught the game. You killed it on the court. Well done.”
For a second, I’m so thrown off by the compliment that I forget everything else.
“Thanks,” I say cautiously.
“You looked… confident,” he continues. “Composed. That’s what I like to see.”
My chest does a weird, painful twist at the compliment. The ten-year-old inside me preens. The twenty-year-old wants to hide.
Then his tone shifts minutely.
“I also heard,” he says, “that you were seen out at dinner on Wednesday. With Miguel.”
Fucking Harrington and his big-ass mouth.
My throat goes dry. “Oh. Yeah. We, uh. We went out for some dinner before I left for Nevada.”
“A date?” he asks, too evenly.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“We were… just eating,” I hedge. “He wasn’t gonna be able to come see the game. So you know, we just did something normal.”
He makes a small sound I can’t quite place. Not a laugh. Not a scoff.
“John said it looked… intimate,” he says finally. “Two young men, dressed nicely, seated very close, sharing food. He assumed I already knew.”
I let out a humorless breath. “Yeah, well. John assumes a lot.”
“Caleb,” Dad says, with warning in his tone.
I flinch. “Sorry.”
Silence stretches.
“I’m trying to understand,” he says at last. “Truly. But I need to know if this is… something transient. A phase. An… experimental attachment, given your history with him. Or if this is something I should prepare myself to factor into your future.”
“Experimental,” I repeat quietly. “Like I’m in a lab.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Do you hear yourself?” I ask, voice shaking. “Do you realize you’re talking about my feelings like they’re some… bad habit I picked up at college?”
“I am not calling your feelings a bad habit,” he says tightly. “I’m asking if you’ve thought through the implications. You are already under strain. Classes. Athletics. Your mental health. Introducing a romantic entanglement with someone you already rely on so heavily—”
“He’s not a fucking math variable,” I snap. “He’s Miguel.”
“Exactly,” he says. “He is your stepbrother. The person you run to every time you’re hurting. That level of dependency is concerning enough without adding romance into the equation.”
I press my fingers to my temples, trying to keep my brain from splitting open.
“He’s the reason I’m still here,” I whisper.
Dad goes very quiet.
“What?” he says.
I swallow hard. The words feel too big for my mouth. “He’s… He’s the reason I didn’t…” My voice cracks. “When it got bad before. He’s the reason I called someone instead of… instead of doing something permanent.”
The silence on his end is different now. Heavy.
“I didn’t realize,” he says finally, voice faint. “That it got that bad.”
“Yeah,” I say, “because every time we get near that part, you change the subject to my three-point percentage.”
“That’s not fair,” he snaps, and there’s the lawyer again. “I have done everything I can to help you. I found you. I got you out of that house and made sure that you didn’t go into foster care. I’ve paid for doctors, therapy—”