Chapter 10
ANTHONY
Daddy.
Who knew one word could hold so much power. Who knew a single word could knock your entire world off its axis.
My reaction wasn’t intentional. I didn’t mean to hurt him when I’d promised not to. When I’d promised to stay no matter what. But the way every muscle in my body seized up was involuntary. Instinctive.
That word carried too many meanings. Too many layers. I hadn’t known it could reach so far inside me. But it did. It came ungloved, raw, and suddenly I was facing versions of myself I didn’t recognize.
So many possible meanings. So many versions of me it could belong to.
And I just… froze.
I watched Elliot pull back from me like he was something fragile I’d already broken.
Like glass that had finally realized it was shattered.
He folded in on himself—shame, fear, apology—all because of me.
My heart kicked once, hard and wrong, like it had slammed into something solid.
Heat rushed through me and then drained just as fast, leaving a hollow, buzzing cold behind my ribs.
Words turned to ash on my tongue. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t disgusted. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t wrong. I wanted to tell him it was too much—not because he was, but because I was.
But I couldn’t speak. I could have reached for him. I could have closed the distance he’d already started to build. My hands even twitched as if they might.
But fear got there first, quick and efficient and cruel.
The darkness closed in. The air went thin, sharp in my lungs. Pain burned white-hot through my chest as the truth landed fully formed:
I had failed him.
The kindest thing I could do now was leave before I hurt him again.
That was the lie I told myself. That leaving was mercy.
That disappearing from him was somehow less cruel than staying and wanting what I wasn’t allowed to want.
I didn’t remember walking away. I didn’t remember leaving the beach.
I only remember the sound of the ocean behind me—relentless, endless—and the feeling of something tearing loose in my chest as I went.
And the way his breath hitched when I pulled away.
The sound of it followed me longer than the waves did.
By the time I realized I was no longer on sand, that my feet were on hard gravel and grit instead of wet earth, I was standing beside my truck outside the house.
Breath wouldn’t come. My lungs screamed for it. I suffocated on my guilt.
I tore the door open, slammed it shut again, threw it into reverse, and peeled down the driveway with no destination. Just the animalistic need to escape whatever I’d become.
I’d promised to protect him. And all I’d managed to do was become another person who hurt him. I didn’t go to Jax’s because I wanted to drink. I went because I didn’t know what else to do with the weight of that inside my body.
Time warped and lost all meaning. Hours collapsed into something shapeless and thin as the world passed by in a meaningless blur.
When I finally pulled up outside Jax’s—the dive bar just outside town—the sky was still black and the neon sign flickered like a dying pulse.
Liquor laws never seemed to apply here. This was where people came to hide. To drown their shame quietly in cheap whiskey and bad decisions.
And that was exactly what I intended to do.
I thought about calling Thomas as I locked the truck, but I couldn’t face his judgment. Couldn’t take the I told you so that would sit behind every word he said.
He’d warned me. He’d told me I couldn’t fix the past. That I couldn’t replace what I’d lost with something fragile and doomed and aching. That I was building a future on a fault line.
I hadn’t listened.
And now Elliot was paying for it.
The fear that had taken hold when Elliot disappeared for hours that night—when he wouldn’t answer his phone, wouldn’t text back—still hadn’t released me.
It sat under my skin, coiled and poisonous.
I kept thinking of how small he’d sounded when he apologized.
Like he thought needing someone was a failure.
His depression was like the ocean. It came in waves. Relentless. Pulling him under again and again.
And I’d just given it another reason.
What should have been a tender moment had curdled into something sharp and bitter. Not because of him. Because of me.
Because I was afraid I wasn’t enough. Afraid I couldn’t be the safe place he needed. Afraid that if I was, he would stop being able to survive without me—and that I wouldn't survive being needed like that. I proved it with my silence.
Jax’s was dim, washed in broken red neon and smoke so thick it burned the eyes. A girl who looked barely old enough to vote swayed on the stage, eyes empty, body offered like a transaction. Men folded bills into her waistband like she wasn’t human.
Bile rose in my throat at the sight. I turned away before I could do anything I’d regret and took the only empty seat at the bar.
It was almost two in the morning, but places like this were never empty. The bartender didn’t ask my name when he stopped cleaning the sticky surface in front of me. Didn’t ask what I wanted. Just slid a glass in front of me.
I stared at it like it possessed the power to solve all my problems. The words slipped out before I could stop them. “Why didn’t you tell me it would be him?”
The bartender paused. Not just because the question surprised him but because it wasn’t meant for him.
A voice from two seats down answered instead. “Because no one ever thinks it’s going to be the one that ruins them,” he said. “It’s always the one that feels like home.”
I turned. The man was older than me. Not old-old. Late fifties maybe. Graying at the temples, shoulders slumped in the way of someone who had learned to carry too much alone. He nursed his drink like it was a truce, not a pleasure.
He glanced at me sideways. Not judging. Just… recognizing. Like he’d seen this exact moment play out before. Just with different faces.
“You don’t look surprised,” I said.
He huffed a quiet laugh. “That’s because I’ve been you.”
I frowned.
“Not your story,” he clarified. “Your shape. Just the outline of it. The part where you think wanting someone is the same thing as saving them.”
The words hit too close to be coincidence. “I didn’t ask to save him,” I said. Too quickly.
“No one ever does.” He took a sip of his drink. “But if you’re the one he leans on when he can’t stand, you don’t get to pretend you’re not holding him up.”
I stared at my glass. My fingers curled around the edge of the bar until the wood bit into my skin. “He’s not dependent.”
“Didn’t say he was.” His eyes stayed on his drink. “I said he leans. There’s a difference. But you feel it. That weight. That pull. The way they start to look at you like you’re gravity. Like if you moved, the whole world would tilt with you.”
My jaw tightened.
“He called you something,” the man said gently.
It wasn’t a question.
My spine went rigid. Heat climbed up my neck. “That’s not—”
“Shame doesn’t mean wrong,” he interrupted. “It just means it touched something that mattered to you.”
Silence stretched between us.
“I left,” I said finally. “Because I thought staying would hurt him.”
The man exhaled slowly. “Or because staying would cost you.”
That landed harder than anything else.
“You think you’re the danger,” he continued. “So you become it. By disappearing. You make the thing you’re afraid of inevitable.”
I swallowed.
“I’ve been on the other side of that,” he said quietly. “You don’t protect someone by vanishing. You just teach them they were right to be afraid of needing you.”
Something inside my chest cracked. Unable to speak, I grunted and cleared my throat.
The man nodded once. “No. He probably just asked you not to leave.”
The girl on the stage turned slowly, mechanically, like something wound too tight. A man tucked a bill into the front of her G-string. She didn’t even flinch, just kept moving in her reflection.
The glass was empty before I realized I’d finished it. “You said I was confusing comfort with salvation.”
“And did you?”
That hurt. That was the one that stuck. I sucked in a shuddering lungful of shame and closed my eyes. Elliot’s beautiful face smiled back for a split second before he folded in on himself. And the horrors of the night flashed behind my eyes.
The way his voice went small. The way he apologized for needing me. The way he looked like he already believed he was too much.
My chest tightened. “He didn’t ask me to save him,” I said quietly. “He just asked me not to leave.” And I had done the one thing I was afraid of.
The man beside me didn’t say anything right away.Then quietly: “And you left anyway.”
The words weren’t cruel. They weren’t soft either. They were just… honest.
The truth hit harder than the whiskey. I dragged a hand down my face. “I thought leaving was the kind thing.”
He tipped his glass, watching the ice slide. “You thought leaving would make you clean.”
That landed where it hurt.
“You said I’d hurt him,” I muttered.
His eyes finally lifted to mine. “You already have. But not in the way you think.”
Silence pressed in around us—even though the music blared from hidden speakers. The kind that didn’t wait for answers. Just demanded you accept the thing you were pretending not to see.
I stood abruptly, the stool legs scraping against the rough floor, nearly toppling it to the ground.
“I’m not going to be the reason he disappears,” I said. The words sounded brave. They didn’t feel it. They felt like a bargain with something I didn’t understand yet.
The man didn’t stop me. He didn’t chase me. He didn’t try to fix it for me.
That felt like him handing the choice back to me.
What if leaving was the thing that finished him. What if the absence I told myself was a mercy was the very shape of the wound. The thought hollowed me. I turned and walked out before I could talk myself back into staying. Cold air hit my face like a slap.