Chapter 8 #2
A stillness swept over him. Not in fear, but understanding.
“I’m not trying to fix you, never that,” I said. “I just don’t want to ruin you.”
“I don’t care if you ruin me,” he whispered. “I’d rather be wrecked by you than invisible to everyone else.”
Careful, deliberate, I pulled him off me, my heart splitting in two.
Like unthreading a needle through skin. It still tore.
Still bled. Even as I laid him down beside me, my hand stayed over the frantic beat of his heart.
Not for possession, but a silent promise: I hadn’t left.
I wouldn’t. That even when I couldn’t give him what he wanted, he wasn’t alone.
The weight of him pressed into me, a grounding presence neither of us could name aloud.
Fingers found mine under the sheets, holding tight, a lifeline. We stayed like that, half in darkness, each breath echoing what neither dared speak.
A whisper broke the silence: “What’s wrong with me?”
I froze. Small, vulnerable, and desperate. Words I had asked myself for years. Words that carved straight into me. It hurt more than I could fathom to hear them echoing back at me.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” came finally. “You just haven’t been loved right yet.”
He looked at me then, not with hope but with desperation. “Is that what this is? You loving me the right way?”
“No,” I said softly. “It’s me, not hurting you.”
He closed his eyes, jaw tight. “Feels like the same thing.”
“It’s not. One leaves you bleeding. The other stays to help you stop.”
Eyes glassy, chest rising and falling slowly, he stared at the ceiling. “I don’t need you to fix me. I just don’t want to be this broken alone.”
“You’re not,” I whispered. “Not anymore.” The promise scared me more than it comforted me.
And for the first time, I let him see my cracks too. I wasn’t sure yet whether that was honesty or the beginning of something I wouldn’t survive intact.
We didn’t speak again. We just lay there—two broken people pretending it was enough just to be seen. And maybe, for that one night, it was.
Elliot stayed silent as he slid out of bed. The sheets clung to his legs for a moment, ghosting over the curves of him like a fragile shield. I watched him, every shift in his posture carving into me—small movements, almost imperceptible, that spoke more than words ever could.
He paused at the doorway, shoulders tight, hair sweat damp, breathing shallow. Part of me wanted to call him back, to wrap him in my arms and keep him here, safe from every fractured corner of the world. But I didn’t.
Instead, I stayed on the bed, eyes tracing him, memorizing the tilt of his neck, the way his calves flexed as he padded across the room. Every step made my chest ache—that physical, possessive ache of someone who wants to protect and claim without hurting.
The bathroom door clicked shut behind him, and the shower turned on. My hand twitched, wanting to follow, to check he was okay. My body ached with the knowledge that he’d let me stay this close, and yet still, he needed space.
A thin ribbon of steam began to creep out from beneath the bathroom door, ghosting across the floor like a quiet exhale. It felt like the room itself was breathing around his absence — warm, damp proof that he was still here, just out of reach.
I exhaled slowly, telling myself it was enough to watch. To know he’d let me hold him once tonight. That he trusted me, even for a breath. And yet the hunger to bridge the distance—to anchor him in my chest again—clawed at me like a living thing.
The silence he left behind wasn’t peaceful. It throbbed. Vibrated through the walls. Crawled inside me and settled deep, like it was trying to hollow me out.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my hand buried in my hair, chest rising and falling in tight, uneven pulls. The air felt thinner than before, like it had been used up by the weight of everything I couldn’t say. Everything I was afraid of.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do when I was this close to shattering: I dressed in silence. Each movement was mechanical. Heavy. Like I was armoring up for a war I didn’t know how to win—and wasn’t sure I wanted to survive.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Once. Twice. I didn’t look at it at first. Then it buzzed again, an insistent needling noise I couldn’t ignore.
Jason
Client just pushed the Hatton site meeting to this morning. We need you on this.
I stared at the screen longer than I should have. Then I typed back:
Handle it. I can’t today. Get Thomas on it if you can’t do it.
The three dots appeared. Paused. Appeared then disappeared again. Unwilling to see his reply, I slid the phone face down and felt the quiet cost of that choice settle somewhere behind my ribs.
I didn’t knock on the door. Didn’t call his name as I slipped from his room. If he needed space, I’d give it to him—but it twisted something ugly inside me to leave without touching him. Without grounding him in something other than that pain he wore like second skin. A pain I’d added to.
Downstairs, I started the coffee maker. Watched the grounds spin and swirl like a storm building. I didn’t wait for it to finish brewing.
I left.
The roads were empty, morning light bleeding into the asphalt like the world hadn’t just tilted off its axis.
At the Inn, the room looked unfamiliar. Like a crime scene that had already been cleaned.
The bed was neatly made. The air smelled like potpourri and sea salt, but there was no trace of the man I was before left in it.
I moved like a stranger through the space, folding my shirts, unplugging chargers, zipping bags like I was erasing a version of myself I didn’t know how to be anymore.
After I checked out, I dumped everything in the backseat and walked barefoot to the shoreline, letting the cold bite into me. I breathed. I listened. I tried to make sense of what the hell had just happened.
The ocean didn’t offer answers. Just endless space.
My fingers hovered over my phone, pulse skipping. I didn’t want to feel alone in this. Not in that way that chews through bone and softens your edges until you forget what it felt like to be whole.
So I called the only person who might know how to help me.
“Anthony?” Thomas’s voice cracked through the line, warm and jarring. “Holy shit, man. You’re alive?”
“Barely,” I muttered, the laugh caught somewhere between a wince and a sob. “How’s work? My business still running?”
“Oh, you know. Concrete still dries slow. Subcontractors still lie fast. We’re surviving.”
We talked about nothing for a while—foundation delays, inspection drama, the extra client meeting he now had to do—the usual litany that used to anchor me. Today, every word sounded like it belonged to someone else’s life.
Thomas went suspiciously quiet. “You okay?”
I tipped my head back, stared at the tumultuous gray clouds above me and let the silence stretch until it hurt. “No,” I said. “I don’t think I am.”
“What’s going on?”
And I told him. Not everything. Not the parts that would make it too real. Not the things I couldn’t say out loud without sounding like I was losing my mind.
But I told him about Elliot.
About the way he’d started to disappear piece by piece.
How his eyes no longer tracked the world, how his voice had hollowed out until even silence felt louder.
About how David’s absence hadn’t just left a hole, but a canyon.
And how Elliot was teetering on the edge of it, looking down like he couldn’t remember why he should hold on.
I told Thomas about the days Elliot didn’t leave his bed. About the dishes piling up. About the job he probably didn’t have anymore. About the way he stared through me like I wasn’t there.
How every time I tried to pull him back, it felt like drowning in quicksand—like the harder I reached, the deeper we both sank.
But I didn’t tell him everything. Not how it broke something in me every time Elliot flinched from a simple act of kindness.
Not how I found myself watching him when he wasn’t looking, cataloging every breath, every tremor, like maybe if I knew the signs well enough, I could stop him from vanishing completely.
Not how it gutted me to be so close to someone I couldn’t touch without bleeding for it. Not how I ached with guilt for the way my heart kept falling into his, even as he slipped further away.
“Jesus,” Thomas breathed. “What do you need?”
I laughed, bitter and frayed at the edges. “A time machine. Or maybe an instruction manual on how to care for someone who's already halfway gone.”
He didn’t speak right away. I could feel him looking at me, trying to fit the pieces together, trying to name what I hadn’t said.
Finally: “Is he breaking you?”
“I think I’m breaking myself,” I said, then shook my head like I could take it back.
“Or maybe I’m just tired. I don’t know. Maybe this is what it’s supposed to feel like when you don’t walk away.
Because I keep reaching for him, and he’s just..
. not there. And I don’t know how much more of that I can take. ”
Thomas exhaled slowly. “That doesn’t sound like a choice, man. That sounds like gravity.”
I frowned into the horizon. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re not staying because you want to,” he said gently. “You’re staying because you don’t know how not to.”
I opened my mouth to argue. To say he was wrong, to say I could leave anytime, to say I wasn’t trapped by this. But nothing came out.
“That’s not the same thing,” he added.
I swallowed. “It feels the same.”
The silence that followed pressed heavy on my ribs.
Maybe the worst part was knowing I didn’t just want to help him because I cared—I wanted to help him because I needed to.
It wasn’t love, not yet. It was loyalty, obligation, habit, and something darker I didn’t want to name: the pull of someone falling, and the instinct to catch them even if it consumed me.
“And if David never comes back?” he asked quietly.