Chapter 27 Caleb
TWENTY-SEVEN
CALEB
The moment my eyes open, I know I’m barely holding on, Miguel’s chest warm and familiar under my cheek, his heartbeat a slow, steady thump that doesn’t match the jitter in my own.
With a weighted blanket over both of us, his arm heavy across my back, his fingers tucked just inside the waistband of my sweatpants like he fell asleep on the verge of starting something.
For a few seconds, that’s all there is.
His breathing. The faint hum of the fridge down the hall. The smell of his pillow, laundry detergent and his shampoo and something that’s just… all him.
My brain, mercifully, is quiet.
Then it remembers who it belongs to.
Miguel went to therapy yesterday.
Because of you.
And just like that, the hamster wheel starts spinning.
He sat in a room and talked about how hard it is to love you.
The blanket goes from comforting to suffocating in half a second. My fingers clench in the soft cotton of his shirt. I try to inhale quietly so I don’t wake him.
One, two, three, four.
The digits of Dr. Kaur’s voice count along in my head.
Hold two, three, four.
Exhale, two, three, four, five, six.
It helps. A little.
Miguel shifts under me, a low sound rumbling in his chest. “You’re thinking loud,” he mutters.
“Sorry.” My voice comes out muffled against his skin.
His hand moves on my back, his big palm dragging slowly between my shoulder blades. “You okay?” he asks.
The reflexive answer—fine—skitters up my throat and hits a wall. I picture Dr. Kaur’s face. Is that what he actually said?
“No,” I hear myself say instead. “Yes. Kind of. Brain’s being… brainy.”
He huffs a sleepy laugh. “That’s a technical term, you know.” His hand slows at the back of my neck, thumb tracing the little notch at my spine. “Wanna tell me, or do you want to just absorb my body heat until it shuts up?”
“He poked at your wiring yesterday,” I mumble. “My brain keeps trying to convince me you’re gonna look at it and go, ‘Wow, this is a fire hazard, better move out.’”
There’s a beat of silence where I immediately regret being honest.
Then Miguel’s chest shakes under my cheek, his deep, rumbly laugh filling the bedroom.
“You think highly of my taste if you think I only noticed the wiring yesterday,” he says, his tone teasing but threaded with seriousness.
“Baby, I’ve been staring at that electrical panel since we were teenagers. ”
“Hot,” I mutter.
“Extremely,” he says. “What brought that up? Did I say something yesterday that sounded like ‘fire hazard, I’m out’?”
“No,” I admit. “That’s the problem. You were all calm and… responsible and using words like ‘boundaries.’ That’s not my brand. My brand is ‘if you look too close, you’ll leave.’”
His hand stills for a second and I think I’ve said too much.
Then he shifts, rolling onto his back and dragging me with him so I’m half sprawled across his chest, my leg still hooked over his hip. He tilts my chin up with his knuckles until I have to meet his eyes.
“I went,” he says quietly, “because I want to be here longer. Not because I found the off switch.”
My throat tightens. “What if therapy makes you realize I’m… too much?” I ask, voice small. “What if he sits there and goes, ‘Wow, this is codependent and unhealthy. Have you tried dumping your stepbrother?’”
Miguel’s mouth twists. “He literally said dumping you is not on the menu,” he says. “And if he changes his mind, I’ll throw one of those big-ass books he has on his shelf at him.”
I snort, then wince. “Please don’t assault your therapist with literature.”
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll throw metaphors at him instead. The point is that’s not why I’m there. I’m there so that when your dad pulls his inevitable lawyer bullshit, I don’t set myself on fire trying to shield you from every spark.”
My chest does a weird achy thing at the phrase “your dad.” “He texted again last night,” I say before I can stop myself.
Miguel’s eyebrows go up. “Yeah?”
“Just… repeating that he wants to talk,” I say. “That he means the ‘no rush.’ That he wants to listen to you. It shouldn’t freak me out more every time he says it, but it kind of does.”
“Why?” Miguel asks. Pure curiosity, no judgement.
Because it feels like a countdown. Like every calm text is one step closer to whatever the hell his final verdict on us is.
I shrug, my face hot. “It makes it real,” I say. “Like the meeting’s actually gonna happen. It’s not just this hypothetical boss fight I can avoid by not pressing start.”
Miguel’s hand slides up into my hair, fingers scratching lightly against my scalp. “You remember what Dr. Kaur said?” he asks. “About planning for it. Ground rules. Not walking in blind?”
I make a face. “You two are in cahoots and I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, she called me on my secret therapist hotline and we arranged an intervention,” he deadpans. “Caleb, baby. This is exactly the kind of thing we can do homework on. Together. So your brain has something to hold on to besides ‘impending doom.’”
The phrase “homework” makes my stomach twist and relax at the same time. Therapy homework, not midterm homework. Somehow worse and better.
“I don’t know where to start,” I admit.
“We don’t have to start now,” he says. “We can eat first. Shower. I can bribe you with eggs.”
I groan into his chest. “Dr. Kaur would say you’re using food as a coping mechanism.”
“Dr. Kaur is not invited to breakfast,” he says. “C’mon. Coffee first, emotional labor second. That’s the rule.”
He rolls out from under me, taking the blanket with him. The cold air hits my back and I flop face-down on the mattress, groaning. “Rude.”
“Get out of bed, loser,” he says over his shoulder, shoving his legs into sweats.
“I hate you,” I mumble.
“No, you don’t.” He laughs, leans over long enough to press a kiss to the back of my head, then pads out toward the kitchen. The smell of coffee starts up a minute later, filling the condo with something warm and bitter and grounding.
I lie there for a few more breaths, letting the fact that he’s here, he’s still joking, and he’s still feeding me sink in. The hamsters in my brain slow just enough for me to swing my legs out of bed.
By the time I stumble into the kitchen, he’s already got two mugs on the counter and a pan heating on the stove. His hoodie is hanging off one shoulder, his hair is a mess, and there’s something obscenely domestic about the way he cracks eggs like he’s been doing this for a decade.
“Sit,” he says, nodding at a stool.
I obey, wrapping my hands around the coffee mug like it’s a space heater. The first sip burns my tongue and somehow that feels appropriate.
Miguel moves around the kitchen with this easy efficiency.
“So,” he says, not looking at me as he nudges the eggs around with a spatula. “Tell me what your brain’s doing when you think about your dad and this call. No censor. Just the raw version.”
“I hate it here,” I mutter.
Lifting a brow. “That’s not an emotion, that’s a meme.”
“Fine.” I blow on my coffee and stare at the dark surface. “My brain is… trying to run all the outcomes at once. Best case, worst case, medium case.”
He plates the eggs and turns off the burner. “Give me the headlines.”
“Best case,” I say reluctantly, “he actually means what he said. He listens. He’s uncomfortable but trying. He doesn’t love it, but he doesn’t disown me. Or you. Maybe he even… accepts it, eventually.”
Miguel slides a plate in front of me and leans his hip against the counter, arms crossed. “Okay,” he says. “Now gimme the worst case?”
“Worst case, he thinks about it for a week and then calls back and says, ‘Actually, no, this is wrong. You’re sick, he corrupted you, fix it or we’re done.’” I spit out. “And then I have to choose, and whatever I choose ruins something and it’s my fault.”
He nods like that’s reasonable instead of horrific. “Is there a median case?”
“Uh… I guess the median case would be he doesn’t cut me off,” I say, picking up my fork, “but he treats you like a problem to manage. We get to keep him, but only if he can pretend we’re just stepbrothers with…
extra steps. And I spend the rest of my life code-switching between ‘what he can handle’ and what’s actually true. ”
The eggs smell good but my stomach protests as I chew.
Miguel watches me chew, then asks, “Okay. Now, what did he actually say?”
I glare at him. “I hate when you and Dr. Kaur tag team me mentally.”
He just waits.
“He said he’s struggling, Miggy,” I mutter. “That he doesn’t agree. That he’s worried about the… tangled dynamics. But he also said he doesn’t want to lose me. That he wants to learn. That he wants to listen to you. That he’s proud of me for telling him.”
“Right,” Miguel says. “So where on the spectrum between ‘trying his best’ and ‘planning his disownment speech’ does that actually land?”
I stab a piece of egg like it personally offended me. “Logically?” I admit. “Closer to ‘trying.’ Emotionally? Fifty-fifty.”
“Okay,” he says. “Logic can have a vote without completely outvoting feelings. But that’s where planning comes in. We can’t control what he does. What we can control is what we’re willing to walk into.”
I sip my coffee. My hands are shaking just a little. “What does ‘planning’ look like?” I ask. “Besides me drafting a will.”
He reaches behind him, grabs his phone, and taps the Notes app. “We make a list,” he says. “You love lists.”
“I love grocery lists and playlists,” I protest. “Not ‘how to survive being emotionally vivisected by my father’ lists.”
“Same principle,” he says, setting the phone between us on the counter. The blank note stares up at me, cursor blinking. “We’ll break it down. Questions we’re willing to answer. Questions we’re not. Red flags for ‘we’re done for the day.’ Stuff we want from him. Stuff we absolutely won’t tolerate.”
My heart starts hammering faster. It feels like building a bomb shelter and inviting the bomb in anyway.