Chapter 3 Tanner #2
“And the worst part is I can’t even hate the game for what it did to him because he loved it.
He loved every second of it. He used to tell me stories about his teammates, about the wins, about the way the crowd sounded when they scored.
That was the happiest he ever was, and it was killing him the whole time, and he didn’t know.
” I sucked in a breath that felt like broken glass. “None of us knew.”
“You’re right. No one knew back then, but they do now, and we’re both going to find a way to keep other sons from feeling the way you do.
” Seth shifted closer, and then his arm was around my shoulders, pulling me into his side.
His grip was fierce, almost too tight, like he was afraid I’d disappear if he let go.
“And what you’re feeling is normal. You’re allowed to grieve.
You’re allowed to fall apart sometimes. You’re allowed to be angry and sad and completely fucking wrecked by this. ”
I should pull away. Should maintain some kind of distance, some kind of dignity. Should protect whatever fragile thing was growing between us from the mess I carried inside me. Instead, I turned into him, pressed my face against his shoulder, and let myself break.
He held me. Didn’t try to fix it or make it better or tell me it would be okay.
Just wrapped both arms around me and let me shake apart while he held the pieces together.
I felt his chin come to rest on top of my head, felt the steady rise and fall of his chest against mine, felt his hand spread wide across my back like he was trying to cover as much of me as possible.
I cried the way I hadn’t let myself since the funeral.
Ugly, wrenching sobs that tore out of me without permission.
I cried for Dad and for Mom and for the way our family had splintered apart after we lost him.
I cried for the appointment reminder that I ignored, the car crash I couldn’t have prevented, and the years of memories that had been stolen before I even knew they were in danger.
I didn’t know how long we stayed like that. Long enough that my throat went raw. Long enough that my breathing evened out, the panic receded, and I could think again without the weight of all that research crushing my chest.
“Sorry,” I said into his shoulder, my voice wrecked.
“Don’t apologize.” His arms tightened. “Don’t ever apologize for this.”
“I’m a mess.”
“You’re grieving.” His hand moved up to the back of my neck, fingers sliding into my hair with a tenderness that made my chest ache.
“There’s a difference. You lost your father, Tanner.
Not just once—you lost him piece by piece for years before you lost him for good.
That’s not something you get over. That’s something you survive. ”
I pulled back enough to look at him. We were close enough that I could count the faint freckles across his nose, see the exact shade of green in his eyes, see the way they were shining like maybe he’d been crying too. His hand stayed in my hair, thumb tracing small circles behind my ear.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the hot chocolate. For this.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do. You didn’t sign up to be my emotional support when you agreed to be my roommate. You signed up for someone to split rent and utilities with, not—” I gestured vaguely at myself, at the mess I was. “Not this.”
Something flickered across his face, too quick to read. His jaw tightened, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. “Maybe I did. Maybe I knew exactly what I was signing up for.”
The air between us felt heavy, charged with something I didn’t have the energy to examine but couldn’t ignore either.
Seth’s thumb was still moving against my skin, gentle and steady, and I realized I had leaned into the touch without meaning to.
My hand had found its way to his chest at some point, resting over his heart, and I could feel it beating faster than it should have been.
“I should probably eat something,” I said, even though I wasn’t hungry. Even though leaving this moment felt like stepping off a cliff.
“Probably.” But he didn’t move. Neither did I. We stayed frozen like that, caught in the space between pulling away and closing the distance. His eyes dropped to my mouth, then back up. My pulse kicked hard against my ribs.
Then his phone buzzed in his pocket, and the spell broke.
Seth pulled back, reaching for his phone with a grimace. “Sorry. Coach is probably wondering where I am. I was supposed to be at the facility twenty minutes ago.”
“You should go.”
“I don’t want to leave you like this.”
“I’m fine. Go.”
He studied my face like he was trying to determine whether I was lying. After a few seconds, he nodded. “Okay. But I’m bringing dinner home. Real food, not whatever you were planning to eat out of a box.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” He stood, and I felt the loss of his warmth immediately. “Promise me you’ll be here when I get back. No disappearing into the lab.”
“I promise.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but his phone buzzed again. With a sigh, he grabbed his keys and headed for the door.
“Tanner?”
I looked up.
“I’m glad you let me help,” he said. Then he was gone, leaving me alone with half a mug of cold hot chocolate and the lingering ghost of his touch against my skin.
I made it another hour before the apartment got too quiet again.
Seth had texted twice: once to say the film review was running long, once to ask if I wanted Thai or Mexican. I’d answered Mexican and then put my phone face down because looking at it meant seeing the time and calculating how many more hours until he came home.
I shouldn’t be counting. Shouldn’t be this aware of Seth’s absence, shouldn’t feel like the apartment was wrong without him in it.
But I was, and I did.
I tried working. Pulled up my laptop and stared at the fluid dynamics problem set I was supposed to finish before Thursday. The equations swam in front of my eyes. I closed the laptop again.
My phone buzzed. I grabbed it faster than I should have.
Seth
On my way. Got extra guac because you never order enough.
I exhaled, something in my shoulders releasing. I typed back: Thanks.
20 minutes. Don’t disappear on me.
I won’t.
I meant it. Whatever had happened earlier, whatever had sent me spiraling into that article and then into dissociative paralysis, I couldn’t do it again tonight. Not with Seth coming home, not with the memory of his arms around me still printed on my skin.
I cleaned up the mugs—mine empty, his barely touched because he’d been too busy taking care of me to drink his own hot chocolate. Put the blanket back in its place. Tried to make myself presentable even though Seth had already seen me at my worst today.
When his key turned in the lock, I was sitting on the couch trying to look normal. Like I hadn’t been watching the door for the last ten minutes.
“Hey,” he said, kicking the door shut behind him. He had two bags of takeout in one hand and his duffel slung over his shoulder. He looked tired, a little sweaty from practice, and I wanted to pull him down onto the couch and keep him there.
“Hey, yourself.”
He dropped the duffel by the door and brought the food to the coffee table. “I got you the chicken enchiladas. And a truly unreasonable amount of guac, as promised. Maybe this way, you won’t eat half of mine.”
“I don’t eat half of yours.”
“You absolutely do.” But he was smiling, and the tightness in my chest eased a little.
We ate on the couch, plates balanced on our knees because the table was still covered in textbooks.
Seth told me about the film review—Coach had spent thirty minutes breaking down one play where the defensive line had collapsed, and apparently, everyone was going to be running extra drills tomorrow as punishment.
I listened and ate and tried not to stare at the way his hair was still damp at the edges from his post-practice shower, curling slightly against his neck in a way that made my fingers itch to touch.
Something had shifted between us today—some wall I’d built had cracked, and now I couldn’t stop noticing things I’d trained myself to ignore.
The way his laugh rumbled low in his chest. The way he gestured with his fork when he got animated.
The way he kept glancing at me like he was checking to make sure I was still here, still okay.
Oddly enough, Seth talking about football didn’t hurt the way it usually did.
Maybe because when he talked about the game, it wasn’t about glory or legacy—it was about his teammates, about the work, about something that felt survivable.
And when I managed to separate him from my emotions about the sport, I knew he was trying to stay safe.
“How are you feeling?” he asked between bites. “Better?”
“Yeah. Sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to freak out on you.”
“Stop apologizing.” He nudged my knee with his. “I mean it, Tanner. You don’t have to apologize for having feelings.”
“Most people find my feelings inconvenient.”
“Most people are idiots.” He set his empty plate aside and turned to face me more fully. “You know you can talk to me, right? When stuff gets bad. You don’t have to handle it alone.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to think I could lean on someone without dragging them down with me. But the weight of everything I carried felt too heavy to share.
“I know,” I said instead.
Seth’s eyes searched my face, and I had the uncomfortable feeling he could see straight through the lie. But he didn’t push. Just reached out and squeezed my shoulder once, then stood to clear our plates.
I watched him move around the kitchen, putting away leftovers, loading the dishwasher. The domestic familiarity of it settled something in my chest that had been restless all day.
This was good. This was safe. Seth wasn’t asking me to be anything other than what I was.
He came back to the couch with two beers, handed me one, and settled into his usual corner. “Want to watch something?”
“Sure.”
We ended up with some action movie neither of us cared about. I wasn’t watching anyway. I was too aware of Seth beside me, the way he’d stretched one arm along the back of the couch, the way his knee brushed mine every time he shifted.
Halfway through the movie, I felt exhaustion crash over me. The emotional hangover from earlier, probably, combined with the fact that I’d barely slept last night. My eyes kept drifting shut, my head getting heavier.
“Come here,” Seth said.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“You’re falling asleep sitting up. Lie down.”
I should say no. Should maintain some kind of boundary. Instead, I found myself stretching out along the couch, my head landing on Seth’s thigh.
His hand came to my hair immediately, fingers carding through it in slow, steady strokes.
I should move. This was too much, too intimate, too everything we weren’t supposed to be.
Instead, I closed my eyes and let myself drift.
I woke up to darkness and warmth.
The TV was off. The apartment was quiet except for the sound of breathing that wasn’t mine. There was weight across my waist, heat along my back, and when I tried to move, the weight tightened.
My brain caught up slowly. We’d fallen asleep on the couch. Somehow I’d ended up on my side, and Seth had ended up wrapped around me from behind, one arm slung over my waist, his face pressed into the space between my shoulder blades.
I should move. Should extract myself carefully and go to my own bed. Instead, I stayed perfectly still and tried to convince my body not to react to the way Seth’s chest rose and fell against my back, to the way his breath ghosted across my neck.
His arm tightened in his sleep, pulling me closer, and I felt every inch of him pressed against me. Including the hardness against my lower back, which meant he was having some kind of dream.
My own body responded immediately, pulse spiking, skin going hot. This was bad. This was exactly the situation I’d been trying to avoid.
Seth made a soft sound in his sleep, his hips shifting against me, and I bit down on my lip to keep from making a noise.
I needed to move. Needed to get up before this got worse, before he woke up and realized where his hand was resting, before I did something stupid like press back into him.
But I didn’t move. Didn’t want to. For just a few more minutes, I wanted to let myself have this. The feeling of being held, of being wanted, even if it was just his sleeping body responding to proximity.
Seth’s breathing changed. I felt him go still behind me, felt the moment he woke up and realized how we were tangled together.
“Tanner?” His voice was rough with sleep.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. Sorry. I didn’t mean—” He started to pull away.
“Don’t.” The word came out before I could stop it. “You don’t have to move.”
He went still again. His arm was still around my waist, his body still pressed against mine. After a long moment, his hand flexed against my stomach.
“You sure?”
I wasn’t sure of anything except that I didn’t want him to let go yet.
“Yeah.”
We stayed like that in the darkness, neither of us moving, neither of us acknowledging what was happening between us. Seth’s breath was warm against my neck. His heart beat steady against my back. His hand stayed splayed across my stomach, heavy and possessive in a way that made my chest ache.
His arm tightened around me, and I closed my eyes and let myself have this. Just for tonight. Just for a few more hours.
Tomorrow, we could pretend this was just two roommates who fell asleep on the couch. Tomorrow, we could go back to careful boundaries and casual touches that meant nothing.
But tonight, in the dark, I let myself want him.
And from the way Seth held me, I thought maybe he wanted me too.