Chapter 14
Carter
There’s no way I can sit still.
I’ve been pacing behind her chair for the last fifteen minutes, watching the back of Haven’s head like I’m trying to will her to breathe slower. Her posture’s locked and she’s not blinking enough.
I know what that means.
She’s spiraling quietly under the surface. She always does when the pressure starts eating at her.
The match on screen is brutal. No easy flanks, no careless players. Everyone’s dialed in and the chat is massive. Hundreds of comments flying by every second, some are hype, some are chaos. Some are… not great.
I mute her Twitch window from my phone and move closer, stepping up beside her desk. My hand finds her shoulder. Just a light squeeze, nothing to break her focus but enough to remind her that I’m here.
She doesn’t look at me or speak, I just see the way her jaw shifts. The way her leg bounces once beneath the desk.
“Breathe,” I whisper near her ear. “You’re doing better than everyone in this room.” I add, trying for a smile.
Her lips twitch barely, but it’s a win.
Five minutes later, she fumbles a reload. Just for a second, but in a bracket like this? Seconds matter.
She ducks behind a crate and pauses longer than she should. Her hand trembles as she repositions her mouse.
I move closer and drop to one knee beside her chair. “Hey,” I whisper. “Look at me.”
Her eyes bounce toward mine, wide and far too tense.
“There you are.”
“I’m—” Her voice cracks. “I’m fine.”
“You’re kicking ass. That’s not what I asked.”
She swallows.
I lean in, just enough for my breath to hit her skin. “You’ve got this. You’ve trained for this. You’re not alone, remember?”
Then I let my fingers trail up her thigh just a little. Enough to draw her focus back into her body. Into the here and now. Her breath hitches.
“Good girl.” and that’s when her aim sharpens again, like flipping a switch.
She exhales slowly and swings back into the match, taking two players out with clean, brutal precision.
I grin. “Knew you were still in there.”
She wins the match but she doesn’t celebrate. She just lets go of the mouse, slowly, like her hand might shatter if she moves too fast. I’m there before she can spin.
My arms wrap around her from behind, tugging her into my chest. She melts instantly, her forehead pressing into my neck. I kiss the top of her head and whisper something I don’t even register.
She breathes in. Lets out a shaky laugh. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“That’s fine,” I say gently, “You don’t need them to cuddle.”
She lets me pull her up from the chair. Her body’s limp in my arms, warm and vibrating with leftover adrenaline. We stumble together to the bed and fall backward into the pillows. She curls into me.
I press my nose into her hair and let her heart settle against mine. “You’re okay,” I whisper. “I’ve got you.”
She doesn’t say anything, her fingers tangle in my shirt like she never wants to let go.
We slip outside ten minutes after just laying there in silence, after her shoulders sag and the last of the adrenaline drains from her fingertips. She doesn’t argue when I say we should walk, it’s not really a suggestion. She just pulls my hoodie tighter around herself and follows me out the door.
The evening air is cooler than I expected, the kind that wakes up your lungs and slows everything down. Her fingers brush mine at first but don’t link. Not until we’ve made it to the second block, then she laces them, like she needs the contact more than she wants to admit. Neither of us talks.
We pass a row of houses with too-bright porch lights and cracked sidewalks. Some kid’s scooter is left abandoned on a lawn, a sprinkler kicks on somewhere behind a fence. The rhythm of our footsteps fills the silence between us.
And then she says it soft, like she’s afraid the words will crumble in her mouth. “I didn’t think I could win today.”
I stop. I let her momentum pull her half a step ahead before she glances back at me. I don’t let go of her hand.
“You didn’t have to,” I say quietly. “You just had to show up and you did more than that.”
Her brows draw in like she’s not sure whether she believes that or not. I know she wants to, but it’s still too sharp in her chest.
“I was so scared,” she says. “Not even just of losing, just of freezing. Of letting everyone down, letting you and Tate down.”
I step closer, brushing her hair behind her ear, fingers gentle against her cheek. “You didn’t let us down. You don’t have to carry this alone.”
Her breath hitches. Her eyes glisten in the dim light from a streetlamp. “I don’t know how to not.”
“Then let me help you learn.”
She nods slowly, and I press a kiss to her forehead.
Just as we turn to head back, I spot it something small and bright pushing up from the crack in the sidewalk. A dandelion, messy and stubborn and somehow beautiful in all its refusal to stay buried. I crouch to pick it, careful with the stem then hand it to her.
Her eyes go wide, a laugh caught behind her lips. “Seriously?”
“Best I could do on short notice,” I say, brushing her knuckles as I give it to her. “Besides, you’re the one always calling me a sap.”
She takes it and tucks it behind her ear. We turn back toward the apartment, hand in hand, a little steadier than before.
By the time we make it upstairs, the sun’s gone soft behind the buildings. She kicks off her shoes by the door without saying a word, heads straight for her room, and I follow. No more weight in her shoulders and no more panic in her breath.
She curls up on the bed, that little yellow dandelion still tucked behind her ear like a secret.
I climb in beside her, pulling the blanket up, and she fits into my arms like she never left them.
We don’t even get five minutes before knock sounds at the front door short, then a little louder, then followed by a familiar, impatient voice.
“Don’t make me break in,” Tate calls through the wood.
She groans softly against my chest. “It’s open!”
“Hope you two aren’t dead,” he says, walking in with a bag of hot fries and a bottle of soda tucked under one arm. He kicks the door shut with his foot, glancing over at us tangled in the bed like it’s the most unsurprising thing he’s seen all day. “Or worse getting too soft.”
Haven groans against my chest. “Tate …”
He tosses the chips onto the bed. “What? I brought snacks. Post-match rituals and all that.”
“You’re such a menace,” I mutter, but I’m smiling, and he knows it.
Tate shrugs and drops onto the edge of the bed, propping one knee up. “Saw the way you finished that match, pretty girl. Didn’t know you could move like that when you’re rattled.”
Haven shifts, pulling herself just enough out of my hold to look at him. “I wasn’t rattled.”
Tate arches a brow, sips his drink, and smirks behind the rim. “You flinched when you missed the reload. Carter had to whisper you back to life.”
She goes pink. I tighten my arm around her. “She didn’t flinch. She re-calibrated.”
“Sure. Let’s go with that.”
“You’re impossible as a twin sometimes.”
“Unapologetically.”
Haven reaches for the chips and chucks the unopened bag at his chest. “You’re lucky I’m too tired to fight you.”
Tate catches the bag effortlessly. “That’s what you said last night too.”
Haven’s laughing now. The flush in her cheeks is fading, and the tightness in her posture is starting to relax again.
Tate catches my eye, just briefly. Not mocking this time, not even gloating.
Just… present, with us. As chaotic as it is, as twisted as all of this sometimes feels, I feel like we’re finding our rhythm. One shared moment at a time.
Eventually, the room falls quiet.
The soda’s half gone, the bag of hot fries is open between us, and Haven’s head is back on my chest, her hand lazily tracing circles over my stomach like she’s too tired to sleep but too content to move. Tate’s still on the edge of the bed, slouched down with his feet propped on the nightstand.
“You staying here?” I ask him quietly.
He doesn’t answer right away, just glances toward Haven, watches the way she’s starting to drift. I almost think he’s going to say yes but he swings his legs off the bed and stands. “Nah,” he mutters. “Too warm in here.”
I snort softly. “Right. Definitely just the heat.”
Tate shoots me a glare, but it doesn’t have any bite. “Don’t start.”
I raise a brow. “You’ll cave eventually.”
He shrugs, grabs his hoodie from the back of her chair. “We’ll see.”
I watch him cross the room, pause at the door. He looks back for half a second just long enough to take us both in, curled under the covers, Haven half asleep between my arms. Then he slips out, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
I adjust the blanket over her. She sighs without opening her eyes, shifting so her leg tangles with mine. Her fingers find my wrist and just… stay there.
It’s the little things. The way her body trusts me even when her words haven’t caught up yet.
I press a soft kiss to her forehead. “You can rest now. You earned it.” I exhale, brushing my fingers gently through Haven’s hair.
She shifts a little closer in her sleep, a soft sound catching in her throat, and I kiss the top of her head. “Night sweetheart.” I whisper.