Chapter 6 #2
“Do you?” His voice was sharp enough to cut. “Because you keep going out there, and you keep coming back broken, and I keep—” He stopped again.
“Keep what?”
He shook his head. Stepped back. “Wait here.”
I stood in the kitchen while he disappeared down the hall. Heard him rummaging in the bathroom. When he came back, he had an ice pack, a roll of athletic tape, and ibuprofen.
“Sit,” he said, pointing at the couch.
“Tanner—”
“Sit.”
I sat.
He worked in silence, arranging the ice against my shoulder, using the athletic tape to hold it in place over my shirt. His hands were steady, even though his jaw was tight. When he finished, he sat beside me—close, but not touching—and handed me the ibuprofen.
“Take three.”
I dry-swallowed them. Hated the waxy taste but didn’t want to ask for water and risk breaking whatever this was.
“This time,” Tanner said after a long silence. “You came home.”
“I always come home.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t promise that.”
“No. But I can promise I’m going to try.”
He was quiet. I watched his hands curl into fists on his knees, then release. Curl, release.
“I watched the game.”
The words came out almost too quiet to hear. I went still.
“You what?”
“I watched the game. On my laptop. With the sound off because I couldn’t handle the commentary, but I watched.” He wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the ice pack, on his hand holding it in place. “I saw the hit. Saw you go down. And for about thirty seconds I thought—”
He stopped. Shook his head.
“What did you think?” I asked.
“That I’d made a mistake. That pushing you away was the stupidest thing I’d ever done, and if you were hurt badly, I’d never forgive myself for not—” His voice cracked. “For wasting the last week avoiding you when I could have just been here.”
Something in my chest loosened. “Tanner—”
“But then you got up. And you stayed in the game. And I watched you take two more hits before you finally scored, and I realized—” He turned to look at me.
His eyes were wet. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and watch you get hurt and pretend it doesn’t affect me.
But I also can’t keep avoiding you. It’s making everything worse. ”
I reached for him with my good arm, gripping his shoulder. He didn’t pull away.
“I’m not asking you to be okay with it,” I said. “I’m just asking you to stop shutting me out.”
“What if I can’t handle it? What if every time you come home hurt, I—” He gestured vaguely, frustrated.
“Then you patch me up and yell at me for being reckless. Like you’re doing now.”
His breath hitched. After a long moment, he met my eyes. “I don’t know how to do this. How to watch someone I care about put themselves in danger every week.”
“You don’t have to watch. I never asked you to.” I let my hand slide from his shoulder to the back of his neck, felt him shiver. “I just need you to stop disappearing on me. The silent treatment this week was worse than any hit I took tonight.”
His expression shifted. “You made stupid decisions out there. That last hit— You shouldn’t have gone back in.”
“It was the end of the game. I wasn’t about to leave our chances of winning up to someone else when Marcus and I were on fire.”
“You could have gotten hurt worse.”
“But I didn’t.”
“This time,” he said, but there was less fight in it. More resignation. More acceptance.
I pulled him closer, ignoring the protest from my shoulder, until his forehead rested against mine. “I’m not your dad. This isn’t the same situation.”
“I know. Logic tells me that. But the fear doesn’t care about logic.”
“I know. Maybe the fear gets a little smaller every time I come home safe.”
“Or maybe it gets bigger every time you get hurt.”
“Then we’ll deal with it.” My thumb traced circles on the back of his neck, and I felt the tension slowly drain out of him. “If you’ll let me.”
He pulled back enough to look at me. His eyes were still wet, but the set of his jaw had shifted. He looked less like he was fighting himself.
“I’m going to panic every time you get hit.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to have bad days where I can’t handle any of it.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m probably going to push you away sometimes when I get too scared.”
“Then I’ll wait. And when you’re ready, I’ll still be here.” I caught his hand where it rested on my knee. His breath hitched—barely audible, but I heard it. Felt it. “I’m not going anywhere, Tanner.”
He stared at our joined hands. His thumb brushed across my knuckles once—so light it could have been accidental. It wasn’t.
“The ice is probably thawed by now,” he said.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moved.
The apartment pressed in around us—too quiet, too dark, too heavy with everything we weren’t saying. I could feel his pulse in his fingertips where they pressed against my skin, quick and unsteady.
His thumb traced another slow circle across my knuckles. I don’t think he knew he was doing it. Or maybe he did and couldn’t stop himself.
“Tanner.” His name came out rougher than I had intended.
His breath caught. His eyes dropped to my mouth—just for a second, but long enough for us both to notice. I watched the flush creep up his neck as he tried to look away and couldn’t quite manage it.
The space between us shrank. I wasn’t sure who moved first—maybe both of us, maybe neither.
Then he stood abruptly, taking the soggy ice pack with him.
“You need heat now,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “And sleep. You’re exhausted.”
I let out a slow breath. “Yeah. Okay.”
He disappeared into the kitchen. I heard him moving around—running water, opening cabinets—and tried to get my breathing under control. Tried to remember that he’d asked for space. That wanting more was selfish when he was barely holding himself together.
When he came back, he had a heating pad and two bottles of water. His cheeks were flushed.
“Twenty minutes with this, then bed.” He settled beside me again. Closer than before. Close enough that I could smell his shampoo, something clean and familiar that made my chest ache. “Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“I’m an engineer. Close enough.” His knee pressed against mine, and neither of us moved away. “Don’t make me regret not letting you suffer alone.”
“Too late. You’re stuck with me now.”
This time, he did smile, small and tentative and devastating in a way I wasn’t prepared for. His eyes held mine for a beat too long.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess I am.”
He arranged the heating pad over my shoulder with careful precision. When he finished, he didn’t retreat to the other end of the couch. He stayed close, his side warm against mine, his hand finding mine again, like it belonged there.
We sat like that in the quiet apartment, not talking, just breathing together.
The heating pad did its job—the tight muscles in my shoulder loosened, the worst of the pain settling into something manageable.
But I was aware of every place our bodies touched.
His shoulder and thigh pressed against mine.
His fingers threaded through my fingers.
“You should sleep,” Tanner said eventually. His voice was rough.
“Probably.”
“Your shoulder needs rest.”
“I know.”
Neither of us moved.
“I could—” He stopped. Started again. “Last time you got hurt, sleeping on the couch helped. With the angle. For your ribs.”
My heart was pounding. “The couch is pretty small.”
“I know.”
“We’d have to—”
“I know.”
I turned to look at him. He was already looking at me, and whatever he saw in my face made his breath catch.
“Just to sleep,” he said. “I just want—” He shook his head, frustrated with himself.
“I spent a week convincing myself I didn’t need this, and then I watched you get hit, and I couldn’t breathe.
I don’t want to go back to my room and pretend I’m fine with you being twenty feet away when I could just—”
“Okay.”
He blinked. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I shifted on the couch, making room, and held out my good arm. “Come here.”
He hesitated for just a second. Then he was fitting himself against my side, head on my chest, arm carefully across my stomach to avoid my injured shoulder. I wrapped my arm around him and held on.
“This okay?” he asked, the same words from that morning on the couch weeks ago.
“Perfect.”
He let out a shaky breath. His hand spread flat against my ribs, right over my heartbeat. I wondered if he could feel how fast it was racing.
“I’m still scared,” he said into my chest.
“I know.”
“I don’t know what this is. What we’re doing.”
“We don’t have to figure it out tonight.”
“But—”
“Tanner.” I pressed my lips to the top of his head. Not quite a kiss. Close enough. “We have time.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then his arm tightened around me, and he pressed closer, and I felt something in him finally let go.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
I fell asleep with Tanner in my arms, his warmth solid against me, his breath evening out into something slow and deep. My shoulder ached and my ribs protested, but none of it mattered because he was here. He’d stopped running.
Whatever came next—whatever this was becoming—we’d figure it out.
Together.