Chapter 31 #2
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Starting today, I’ll keep my distance, stay logical. I’ll avoid falling into whatever trap my brain is setting up for me.
Except . . .
I already know the truth crawling beneath my ribs:
It’s far too late for that.
“I think I’m getting attached.”
Both men freeze.
Barret’s hand slips on the mixing panel. Dexter chokes probably because he tried to breathe and swallow at the same time. He’s bad at coordinating the simple things.
“What?” Barret says flatly.
“To who?” Dexter coughs. “The plant in your hallway? The door? Did you finally name your fucking fridge?”
“To my neighbor,” I mutter. “To Mara.”
Silence.
“Holy shit,” Dexter whispers, eyes huge. “He’s bonding.”
“Shut up,” I snap. “That’s not even a term.”
“It’s a term,” Barret states. “Not what I would use to say about you and your pretty neighbor, but yes.”
Barret turns in his chair slowly—like he’s afraid any sudden movement might spook the wild emotional creature talking to him.
“So you’re attached,” he repeats. “To a human. It usually takes you ten years or more to do it and then a few more to admit it.”
“I’m going to punch you,” I warn.
“I’m just clarifying,” Barret says calmly. “Because last time you got ‘attached,’ you adopted a stray cat for six hours and then had a panic attack when it sat on your chest.”
“I didn’t know how heavy they were,” I snap back. “And that was too many fucking years ago.”
Dexter snorts. “Trauma by cat.”
“It almost killed me.”
“It was only eight pounds.”
“Seventeen, and stop sabotaging the conversation,” I growl.
Dexter sits up. “Okay. Fine. You’re attached. To your neighbor . . . but that includes the child?”
I rub the back of my neck and nod.
“Mila is the part that freaks me out the most,” I admit. “She’s . . . everywhere. All the time. Asking philosophical frog questions. Needing to know about what people eat when they’re on tour. How I write songs . . . if she can see the studio. And she looks at me like I’m fixable.”
Dexter nods sagely. “Kids do that.”
Barret leans back, expression unreadable. “So you’re . . . what? Babysitting?”
“No,” I say too fast.
“Yes,” Dexter corrects.
“I’m helping,” I insist. “A little. Here and there. And we’re . . . sorting through her aunt’s vinyl collection.”
I stop there.
I don’t mention the letters. I don’t mention how personal they feel—how opening those envelopes feels like stepping into someone else’s life, someone else’s heartbreak. They’re not something I want to explain. Not to these two. Maybe not to anyone.
Dexter wiggles his eyebrows like he’s auditioning for a cartoon. “Is that code for something?”
“No,” I growl, wishing I could muzzle him with duct tape and a prayer.
Barret lifts a brow, way too entertained. “Are you sure? Because that sounded like a euphemism.” Then the bastard grins. “I like to catalog Cleo’s orgasms and Eddie’s questionable sexual positions. The guy is bringing more kinks to the bedroom. That’s a full-time job.”
I blink at him. “We are literally cataloguing records.”
“Okay, okay,” Dexter says, raising his hands like he’s soothing a wild animal. “Calm your chakras.”
“My chakras are fucking fine,” I snap.
“All of them, because I think some are not in place.” He smirks. “Like the ones that get cranky when you like someone.”
I glare so hard the air in front of me should combust. “We’re not doing this.”
Dexter snorts. “You absolutely are doing this.”
Barret leans back in his chair. “We’ve known you for a long time, Alec. You’ve only ever used that tone when you’re lying to yourself.”
I feel the words hit somewhere behind my ribs, right where irritation meets something I refuse to name. The problem isn’t that they’re teasing me. The problem is that they’re not wrong.
I run a hand through my hair, fighting the urge to walk out, fly to Tibet, or fake my death. Something easy.
“We’re cataloguing records,” I repeat, slower this time. “That’s all.”
But even as I say it, I hear my own voice shift.
Even I don’t believe it.
“Oh my God. You with a kid.” Barret claps. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“It’s not funny,” I mutter. “I’m serious. I’m getting . . . attached. And I hate it.”
Dexter studies me for a long beat—long enough that I start drumming the floor with one stick just to have something to do.
“Well,” Dexter finally says, “you talked to your therapist about it.”
I nod reluctantly.
“And he said . . .?”
“That I’m afraid of being seen.”
Barret snorts. “Earth-shattering news.”
I flip him off without looking. My hand is already on the edge of the table, like I need something to grip.
“No, really,” I mutter. “I told Dr. Bennet that getting close to anyone feels like—like I’m standing on the edge of something that’s going to break under me.
And he said maybe this time it won’t. Or that I’ll learn something.
Or grow. Or whatever people like him say when they want you to risk fucking everything up in the name of progress. ”
Dexter leans forward, eyes sharper than usual. “Do you want it to break?”
“No.” The answer slips out faster than I expect.
He doesn’t blink. “Do you want her?”
My throat goes tight like he’s wrapped his hand around it. The question is too clean, too direct.
“I don’t know.” A beat passes, and I feel them both watching me. “No. That’s a lie. Yes. Fuck. I don’t know.”
Barret whistles low. “He’s spiraling.”
“I’m not spiraling,” I snap, even though I am. I can hear it in my own voice.
“You’re spiraling over a woman while organizing boxes,” Barret says.
I laugh, humorless. “She’s not just a woman.”
And that’s the fucking problem.
She’s not some passing thing I can write a song about and burn through by morning.
She’s not temporary—not anymore—it’s like she’s growing roots.
She makes tea like it solves something. She cries in doorways and pretends she’s fine.
She reads letters like they’re sacred, and she looks at me like maybe I’m not broken beyond repair.
And her kid?
Her kid looks at me like I’m not invisible.
I told myself this was neighborly. That I was just being decent.
But then I started remembering the sound of her laugh in the mornings and how her hair falls loose when she forgets she’s not alone.
And last night—last night when she broke down over that letter and tried to pretend she wasn’t falling apart—I wanted to touch her more than I’ve wanted anything in years.
Not just sex.
Not just to fuck her senseless until the ache settles.
I wanted her curled into me. Wanted to kiss her hard enough to silence whatever’s chewing through her ribs. I wanted her to lean into me like I was hers.
And that’s where I lose it.
Because I can’t be hers.
I don’t know how to belong to anything that doesn’t eventually disappear.
But she makes it hard not to hope. Hard not to reach for more than I was ever meant to have.
So yeah. Maybe I’m spiraling.
But at least this time, it feels real.
“See, spiraling over her and her eight-year-old sidekick.” Barret grins, enjoying this.
“Eight and three-quarters,” I correct him.
Dexter, unhelpful, nods. “A powerful combo.”
“This isn’t a joke,” I say, quieter now. “I don’t get attached. I don’t let people in. Every time I’ve tried—”
I stop.
They know.
Dexter’s voice softens. “But you talked to your therapist. That’s already different.”
“Yeah,” Barret says. “You’ve done way dumber shit in your life. And you’re still alive.”
“Wow,” I mutter. “Thanks for the overwhelming support.”
Dexter shrugs. “Dude. You survived drug binges, a toxic manager, your own anger issues, and that time you climbed the scaffolding at a show because you were ‘feeling the music.’ This? A woman and a kid? This won’t kill you.”
My jaw tenses. “It might.”
Barret pats the console. “You’re not gonna drop dead because a girl made you feel something.”
“She didn’t make me feel anything,” I mutter, but my voice betrays me—it’s already too thin.
Dexter grins. “Dance with her.”
I blink. “What?”
“It worked for Aly and me,” Dexter says proudly. “Trust me. Nothing breaks tension like having to sway awkwardly while avoiding eye contact.”
Barret nods. “He’s not wrong.”
“I’m not dancing with her,” I mutter, more to the air than to either of them.
“You will,” Dexter says with the confidence of a man who’s seen too much and learned nothing. “It’s inevitable.”
“It is not inevitable.”
“Oh it absolutely is,” Barret agrees, smirking like he already has bets placed on the outcome.
Dexter stands and stretches, pushing back his chair. “Look, man. You’re doing the work. You’re going to therapy. You’re showing up. You’re not shoving your emotions into a vault like you used to. And if you’re already attached?” He shrugs, unbothered. “Maybe that’s not the worst thing.”
I rub a hand over my face, the truth scraping at something inside me I don’t like touching. “I don’t know how to do this.”
The admission surprises me. It rattles me how much I mean it.
Barret’s voice drops a notch, quieter now. “Nobody does. Not at first.”
Dexter, ever the soft punchline, adds, “Confront your fears and enjoy. That’s all you have to do.”
I look up.
And I realize that I don’t want to run. In fact, I haven’t even when she’s crying, or the kid thinks I should be the one in charge of breakfast. I don’t even want to run when I think of Mila’s tiny hand adjusting my damn mug because “my calming energy would spill.” Not when I think of Mara crying into me like she didn’t believe she was allowed to.
I’m not retreating. In fact, I’m doing the exact opposite.
I exhale long enough that my chest aches around the thought.
Barret’s eyes soften. “There it is.”
“Where what is?” I snap, defensive on instinct.
Dexter grins like he’s been waiting for this moment since the turn of the new millennium. “The beginning. You’re more zen than any of us. And the funniest part? You’re asking for advice from the two idiots who make you question your life choices daily.”
“He’s scared of love,” Barret says plainly, like he’s diagnosing an engine problem. “Love doesn’t ask for permission or explanation. That’s why he’s spinning. Because it’s already happening to him.”
The words hit a place deep inside me I’ve kept sealed for years—long before the band, long before the touring, long before the first time I ever punched a wall because . . . well, I can’t even remember.
Love.
Love.
That huge, unraveling, impossible thing people—like me—write songs about because talking about it isn’t enough. A desire that doesn’t wait for permission—it slips into your bloodstream and rearranges the rhythm you’ve lived by your whole life.
It feels like a drumline starting somewhere deep, a pulse that shifts direction without asking what you want or whether you’re ready.
One minute you’re standing still, convinced you’re safe.
The next, everything inside you is moving—louder, faster, toward someone you swore you’d never risk yourself for.
Want.
Fuck, it’s worse than want.
It’s need.
That pulse that drags you forward even when you tell yourself you don’t want more. I’ve spent my entire life avoiding it. I’ve told myself I’m better alone. That I’m too damaged.
Too unwilling to risk the crash.
But Mara . . . oh, Mara slipped in quietly. Through vinyls. Through tears. Through the way she tries so hard to be bright even when she’s breaking inside. Through the kid who trusts me without hesitation. Through the nights I stay because I can’t walk away.
My throat works around this new discovery.
Dexter’s voice cuts through, gentler now. “You’re falling, man.”
I look at him. I hate how right he is.
Because this isn’t just attraction. It’s not about wanting her naked in my bed, though I do. It’s her voice in my ear when she’s tired. Her back to me while she makes tea. Her shoulder brushes mine when she forgets to pull away.
It’s wanting to kiss her—not because I can, but because it would mean something. Because the moment our mouths touched, it wouldn’t be about sex or timing or need. It would be about all the ways I’ve already started to belong to her without even realizing it.
I don’t know what to do with that.
And it fucking scares me too much to ever want to go back home to her—to them.