Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
MIGUEL
Caleb sleeps like he’s trying to fuse with me.
We’re both half-stuck to the sheets, bodies still humming from what we did last night, but he’s plastered to my side like I’m the last piece of land in a flood.
One leg thrown over mine, his face buried in my chest, fingers fisted in my T-shirt like he’s bracing against the impact.
I wake up to the weight of him and the dull ache in my shoulders from a shitty pillow plus too much ladder time. For a minute I just lie there, listening to the fan, the faint whoosh of cars outside, and the soft puff of his breath against my skin.
His eyelashes are clumped together, and dark circles bruise the skin under his eyes. Even asleep, his eyebrows are pinched like his dreams won’t give him any peace.
The guilt hits, low and familiar.
You let him talk you out of it.
“Shut up,” I whisper to no one, sliding my thumb up and down the ridge of his spine.
He stirs, mumbling something incoherent, then settles again. When I shift to check the time, his hand tightens in my shirt.
“Don’t,” he mutters, not awake. “Stay.”
My throat does that stupid tight thing. “I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur into his hair. “Just seeing what fresh hell the alarm has for us.”
Caleb snuffles, unimpressed.
The clock says 7:38. My alarm’s due in two minutes. Work in an hour. Therapy at eleven.
Wiring, feelings, repeat.
“Caleb,” I say softly, nudging his shoulder. “Baby. Time to be a real boy.”
“Mmmnn.” Dragging his face away from my chest, squinting like the air offended him. “No. Cancel day. Return to sender.”
“Can’t,” I say. “Boss and capitalism say no.”
He makes a guttural noise that I’m pretty sure isn’t in any human language and flops onto his back, arm over his eyes.
The sheet slides down, exposing a strip of stomach and the marks my fingers left on his hips.
My brain, unhelpfully, supplies a slideshow of last night—him under me, eyes blown, voice wrecked.
Is this a distraction request?
“Morning, brain gremlin,” I say, rolling onto my side to look at him. “Volume?”
Sighing, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Loud,” he says. “Seven? Eight? I…” His voice trails off.
I wait.
“I’m fine,” he finishes, too quickly. “Just… the usual. Exams, nightmares, my greatest hits.”
I study him. The safety plan runs like a checklist: nightmares, check. Loud volume, check. Big family convo yesterday, check-plus.
“What did your dad say?” I ask. “You never really told me.”
Caleb goes still in that whole-body way that sets off every alarm in my ribs.
“Nothing major,” he says after a beat. “Just… lawyer bullshit. We’ll talk later. I don’t have the word count to unpack it before coffee.”
“Caleb,” I say quietly.
He pulls his arm away from his face and looks at me. There’s something like an apology in his eyes. And stubbornness. Always that.
My little brat.
“I promise I’ll tell you,” he says. “I just… need it to not be the main character for one goddamn second.”
Closing my eyes, I exhale slowly. Dr. Ortega’s voice is already warming up in the back of my head. You don’t have to rip everything open on sight. You can invite, not interrogate.
“Okay,” I say. “Later. But ‘later’ is not code for ‘never.’”
“I know.” He reaches over, fingers curling around my wrist. “I will. Cross my traumatized little heart.”
“It’s actually pretty big,” I say. “Huge, in fact. Obnoxiously so.”
He snorts, a little of the tension leaking out. “Flattery. Effective technique,” he mutters, finally rolling out of bed.
In the kitchen, he moves on autopilot. Coffee, toast, and opening and closing cabinets like he’s checking if gravity still works. His shoulders are tucked up near his ears. When he thinks I’m not looking, his jaw clenches so hard I can see the muscles jump.
“Nightmares?” I ask, leaning against the counter as the coffee maker gurgles.
The way he hesitates is just long enough for me to clock that yes, the answer is yes.
“Yeah,” he says. “Same channel as before. Re-runs. My brain is very into syndication.”
“Did you email Dr. K?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me. “Not yet,” he says. “I have class, and group, and—”
“And one email,” I cut in. “You can write three lines. She’d rather know now than get the season finale recap in your next session.”
Caleb rolls his eyes, but it’s got no real heat. “Right. Because everybody wants Trauma Weekly in their inbox.”
“I do,” I say. “I subscribe. Premium tier. No ads.”
That earns me a tiny laugh. More exhale than sound. “You’re such an idiot,” he mutters, sliding my travel mug toward me. “Drink. Before you start making more metaphors.”
We sit at the table with our coffee and sad toast. He picks at the crust, tearing it into little pieces he doesn’t eat, then catches me looking and scowls.
“I’m going to eat,” he says. “Stop momming me.”
“I’m not momming you,” I say. “I’m hot-boyfriending you.”
He points his butter knife at me. “That’s not a verb.”
“It is now.”
Taking a slow bite of toast, his eyes on the table.
“I have that stats exam review this afternoon,” he says.
“And psych. And then I might go to the gym. You have work and Dr. O.” Ticking them off like he’s reassuring himself he knows the itinerary.
“We’ll be ships passing in the afternoon, but I’ll be home before seven. ”
“If you’re not, I’m calling the Coast Guard,” I say. “Or Martin.”
Chuckling. “He’ll send you a meme and tell you I’m being dramatic.”
“Accurate.” I nudge his foot under the table. “Text me if you need me, okay? Like actual need, not ‘I saw a hot dog that looks like your dick.’”
He chokes on his coffee. “Fuck you,” he wheezes, eyes watering.
“Later,” I say, winking.
The joke lands, but there’s something in the way he smiles that makes my chest itch.
It’s like watching someone halfway out the door of his own skull trying to keep up the bit.
I want to cancel work. I want to drag him back to bed and sit on his chest and make him explain every thought in his head until I can label them and alphabetize them and decide which ones need killing and which ones can stay.
Instead, I rinse my mug, slide my boots on, and kiss his forehead, then his mouth. His fingers catch in my jacket, like he’s thinking about saying something.
He doesn’t.
“I love you,” he says quietly.
“I love you more,” I answer. “We’ll talk tonight. For real.”
He nods and lets me go.
I tell myself that’s enough.
Dr. Ortega’s office is on the second floor of a building that used to be a dentist, which is objectively hilarious.
Luis has got the whole “slightly rumpled academic” vibe today, a blue button-up, sleeves rolled, glasses he probably doesn’t actually need perched low on his nose.
There’s a soccer scarf draped over the back of a chair and a potted plant in the corner.
“How’s the hand?” he asks, after we do the hello, sit, and obligatory “how’s your week” dance.
“Didn’t get fried,” I say, flexing my fingers. “So… still attached. Boss gave his ‘I don’t want your mom suing me’ spiel again. Starting to think I’m going to be getting it weekly for the foreseeable future.”
“Reasonable concern,” he says dryly. “Getting electrocuted would be… bad for business.”
“Bad for my mom’s heart rate,” I say. “Caleb would never sleep again.”
His eyebrows tick up. “How’s he doing?” he asks.
I sink deeper into the armchair. “Complicated answer,” I say. “Exam week. Nightmares are back. Psych had him doing some greatest hits of ‘this is your trauma life.’ He’s… working his plan. Mostly. But the volume’s been at like a seven for days.”
“And you?” he asks. “What’s your volume like?”
My first instinct is to say, “Fine.” The second is to overcorrect and say, “Nine, everything’s on fire.”
Instead, I sit with it for a second. Check my own body the way I’ve been trained to check his.
“Tense,” I say slowly. “Like… holding a full bucket with my arms already tired. I’m not… at the edge. But I’m bracing.”
Nodding like that tracks exactly with whatever notes he’s got on me. “Tell me about last night,” he says.
I stare at him. “You a mind reader now?”
“You mentioned in your check-in email that he was at a seven and you were doing more… ‘body-based coping,’” he says, putting the quotes in the air. “That’s usually your code.”
I groan into my hands. “You and Dr. K have a group chat, don’t you?”
He chuckles. “We have professional courtesy and shared patients,” he says. “How did using sex as coping go?”
Heat crawls up my neck. “It was… good,” I say. “Like, physically. He wanted it. I wanted it. It wasn’t… coercive or anything. But I could tell he was trying to crawl out of his head with it. And I let him. I knew that’s what it was, and I let him.”
Dr. Ortega steeples his fingers, watching me. “What would you have preferred to do?” he asks.
“Both,” I say. “Talk and fuck. In that order.” I run a hand over my face. “He said he didn’t have the words yet. That he needed it to not be the main character. And I… believed him. Or I pretended to. I don’t know.”
“You did believe him,” Dr. Ortega says. “You also didn’t. Both can be true.”
I slump further. “That’s annoying,” I say.
“Feelings are irritating,” he agrees. “Let’s zoom out for a minute. You’ve described yourself, historically, as the only ‘line’ between him and a cliff.”
“Yeah. Not my favorite self-description, but sure.”
“What does it mean,” he asks, “to shift from being the line to part of a net?”
I pick at a loose thread on the arm of the chair. “It means… I’m not the only thing between him and disaster,” I say slowly. “There’s Dr. K. There’s Martin. There’s his coach, a little. There’s my mom. There’s our safety plan.”
“And what is the downside of still acting like you’re the only line?” he asks.
“I burn out,” I say. “He burns out. Everything becomes about managing his brain instead of… having a relationship. I become his full-time crisis manager and part-time boyfriend.”