Chapter 25 Caleb
TWENTY-FIVE
CALEB
Iwake up with my face smashed into Miguel’s chest and my leg halfway over his hip, like I’m trying to pin him to the mattress.
The weighted blanket’s a solid, familiar pressure across my back.
His hoodie is bunched under my cheek and smells like him.
His heartbeat thumps, slow and steady, under my ear.
For three whole seconds, I let myself just… float.
No Dad. No “experimental attachment.”
No future, no past.
Just Miggy’s chest rising and falling and his hand on the back of my neck.
Then my brain remembers what day it is—Tuesday—and slaps me with a calendar notification: class at ten, therapy at two, practice at four.
And Dad knows about us.
I groan into his skin. “I vote we stay like this forever,” I mumble. “We can DoorDash everything and pretend the outside world died.”
Miguel’s chest rumbles with a sleepy laugh. “Morning to you too, drama queen,” he says, voice gravel-rough. “What time is it?”
I tilt my head, squinting at the clock on his nightstand. “Eight-thirty.”
He sighs. “We gotta move.”
“I reject your reality and substitute my own,” I say, tightening my hold on him.
He drags his hand down my back, fingers tracing my spine. “As much as I’d love to keep you plastered to me like a heat-seeking barnacle, some of us have to go make sure people’s outlets stop trying to murder them.”
“Rude.” I finally peel myself off him and flop onto my back. The blanket settles over both of us like a lead cloud. “Just tell them the grid collapsed. Or that you’re gay now and can’t possibly fix a breaker.”
He snorts. “That’s not how that works and you know it.” He rolls onto his side, propping his head on his hand so he can look at me. His hair’s a mess, dark waves falling into his eyes. “How’s your head?”
“Still attached,” I say. “Currently home to about six thousand hamsters sprinting in six thousand directions.”
His mouth quirks. “Emotionally?”
“Ah, yes. The fun part.” I stare at the ceiling for a second, picking words like splinters. “I feel like I ripped my chest open and showed my dad the mess, and instead of stabbing me, he just… stared at it and said, ‘I’ll get back to you.’”
“Ouch,” Miguel says, wince-soft.
“Also,” I add, turning my head to look at him, “you were right. I didn’t die. You’re still here and he didn’t disown me over the phone.”
“See?” His fingers brush my hair off my forehead. “Terrifyingly brave.”
“Stop,” I mutter, but my face heats anyway. “You’re gonna make me feral.”
“Please.” He leans down and kisses me in a way that makes my chest ache. “Pretty sure that’s already your default setting.”
I kiss him back until all the hamsters shut up for a minute.
When we finally separate, he sighs. “You have therapy today, yeah?”
“Mm-hm.” I scrub a hand over my face. “Two o’clock. Dr. Kaur is gonna have a field day.”
“Good,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to untangle this shit alone.”
I study his face. The words from his text last night flash behind my eyes again.
“And you?” I ask quietly. “You still… going to call them back? For your own thing?”
“Already did,” he says, like it’s nothing. “Got an appointment next week. Lady on the phone called it ‘support for supporters.’”
I blink. “You didn’t tell me that part.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “You had your own emotional boss battle going on. Didn’t want to upload a side quest. I left you the texts. We’ll talk more after you debrief with your boss.”
“My boss?” I echo, furrowing my brow. He knows I don’t work.
“Dr. Kaur,” he says. “She terrifies me and I haven’t even met her.”
A startled laugh escapes me. “She’d like you. Probably too much. She’ll start ordering us around in matching worksheets.”
“I’ll fight her for you,” he says, dead serious. “Unless she’s right. Then I’ll pretend it was my idea.”
“God, I hate how much that turns me on,” I mutter.
He smirks. “Focus, hermoso. Go shower. I’ll make you coffee. Real food.”
“Define real food,” I say suspiciously.
He pushes the blanket off us and swings his legs out of bed. “Eggs, toast, maybe actual fruit if you don’t mouth off.”
“Wow,” I say, dragging myself up with the grace of a dying seal. “Really stepping up your wife material.”
He snaps his teeth at me. “Say that again and I’m spitting in your omelet.”
I grin, but as I watch him stand up and stretch, something twists in my gut.
Miguel’s going to therapy.
For me.
No, for us.
Half of me wants to sink to my knees and thank him until the sun burns out. The other half wants to apologize until my throat bleeds. We don’t have time for either. So I just nod and head to the bathroom, clutching my duffel like a shield.
By the time I make it to campus, my body’s mostly functioning like a human. Miguel practically force-fed me scrambled eggs, toast, and orange slices while I glared at him over the coffee mug. He texted me “alive?” the second I stepped into the quad.
Caleb
Alive and brain loading.
Miguel
Text me after therapy. Or if you want to ditch and run away to Mexico before then.
Caleb
You can’t bribe me with tacos before noon.
I’m weak willed and tacos are my kryptonite.
Miguel
Watch me.
I smile down at the screen like a dumbass as I walk across the quad. Students swarm in clumps—hoodies, backpacks, people on scooters weaving through like they have a death wish. The sky’s that washed-out winter blue, clouds thin enough to let the sun bully through just a little.
Somewhere in the middle of all that normal, my life rerouted yesterday.
I make it through my morning class on autopilot. Something about cognitive development, stages, Piaget… whatever. The words float in front of me like subtitles on a show I forgot to start from the beginning. I take notes more out of muscle memory than comprehension.
What sticks is the section on “secure attachment figures” and how a stable one changes kids’ brains.
My pen digs into the page until the letters gouge.
By the time my phone buzzes with the calendar alert for therapy, my knee’s been bouncing for ten straight minutes. I pack up, mumble something to Anderson about catching him later, and walk across campus to the counseling center.
The building looks the same as always, a boring beige rectangle, glass doors, a potted plant struggling in the corner of the lobby. Familiar in all the wrong ways.
“Caleb Burton?” Dana asks, even though I’ve been here enough that she knows me by now.
“Yeah.” I wipe my hands on my jeans. “Two o’clock with Dr. Kaur.”
“You’re all set,” she says, tapping something on her keyboard. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
I drop into one of the waiting room chairs. The art on the walls is aggressively neutral with landscapes, abstract shapes, and nothing with eyes. A girl across from me stares at the floor, earbuds in, foot jiggling. A guy near the window scrolls on his phone like he’s trying to tunnel through it.
We’re all here for different reasons.
We all look the same.
“Caleb?” Dr. Kaur’s voice comes from the doorway.
I look up.
She stands there in her usual uniform, black slacks, soft sweater, and hair in a low, loose braid. Her expression is calm and open. The little crease between her brows deepens when she takes in my face.
“Hey,” I manage, getting to my feet.
“How are you doing?” she asks.
“I’ve been worse?” I say, which is true. “Also better.”
She smiles slightly. “Let’s talk about that.”
I follow her down the hall to her office. It’s the same as always—warm, not clinical. Lamp instead of overhead light, bookshelf stuffed with more psychology than any one person should read, that damn framed print that says “Feelings are not facts” in pretty cursive.
I drop onto my spot on the couch. The cushion’s familiar under my thighs.
She sits in her chair, notebook balanced on her knee, pen poised but not threatening.
We sit in silence for a few seconds.
“So,” she says gently. “You texted yesterday that you’d told your father about your relationship.”
I let my head thunk back against the wall. “Yeah.”
“How are you feeling about that now?” she asks.
“Like I went skydiving without checking if the parachute was packed right,” I say. “I’m alive, technically. The ground is approaching. I have no idea if I’m gonna break my legs when I land.”
Her mouth twitches. “That’s quite the metaphor,” she says. “Walk me through the jump. What happened?”
I tell her about the text from Dad. The way his voice sounded too calm when he asked about Reno. The moment he brought up Harrington and “a dinner with Miguel.” The way my throat closed when he asked if it was a date.
I tell her about the word “experimental,” how it made my stomach flip, and how I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
How I blurted out that Miguel is the reason I’m still here. How Dad went quiet. How he said he didn’t know it got that bad. How he apologized—for making me feel like a project, for talking to me like a stack of numbers instead of a person.
And I tell her about the other part—the one still chewing on my rib cage. The way he said he’s “processing.” That he doesn’t “agree.” That he’s “worried” but not disowning me. That he wants to talk to both of us.
When I’m done, my voice feels scraped raw.
Dr. Kaur is quiet for a moment, pen still.
“That’s a lot,” she says finally. “Thank you for telling me all of it.”
I pick at a loose thread on my jeans. “I keep waiting for the follow-up call where he tells me he thought about it and decided actually, never mind, this is too much, you’re too much.”
“That’s what your anxiety is telling you,” she says. “Is it what your father actually said?
I glare at the ceiling. “No.”
“What did he actually say?” she prompts.
I sigh. “That he doesn’t want to lose me. That he wants to learn. That he’s struggling, but he’s… trying, I guess.”
She nods. “So the fear is about what he might do. Not what he has done.”
“Yeah.” My chest tightens. “But when your brain’s wired like mine, ‘might’ feels like ‘already.’”