Chapter 14 #2
So why did my chest tighten every time his phone lit up? Why did I start memorizing the shapes of cars in the driveway, the cadence of voices outside, the timing of his returns?
Sometimes he came home smelling like smoke and cold air, eyes bright, cheeks flushed with something that looked dangerously close to happiness. He’d nod at me in passing, murmur a quick “night,” and disappear upstairs before I could say anything more.
I never followed. Instead, I pulled back even further. Shorter conversations. Fewer glances held too long. I told myself this was discipline. Control.
If he was finding warmth elsewhere, then maybe this distance—this careful, aching restraint—was the right thing to do.
Some days I felt like I would die on that hill, watching the only light I cared about drive away without me.
“Morning,” I said, neutral. Careful. It sounded forced and fake even to my own ears.
“Hey,” he replied. That same robotic neutral tone. It wasn’t cold. Just… empty of everything that had been there before.
Unable to stay away, I turned to face him. The sight of him stole my breath, and I clutched the dish rag between my hands tighter. He stood near the doorway, hair still damp from the shower, hoodie hanging loose on his frame. His face was calm.
Too calm. There was no redness around the eyes. No tension in the line of his mouth. No visible cracks. If I hadn’t known him better, I would’ve thought he was fine.
But I did know him. And he wasn’t. He was the furthest thing from fine.
He didn’t look at me for more than a second. Not like he was avoiding me like I was him. Just… not seeking me out like he once did.
That felt worse than anger. It was like cold hard rejection had built an insurmountable wall between us. The irony wasn’t lost on me: the fact I was the one who built it.
Out of habit, I made him a coffee and set it on the counter near to where he stood. He walked over and took it. Our fingers didn’t touch. A tiny, stupid thing to miss. Yet it felt enormous.
“Thanks.”
“Sure. Any time,” I said and plastered a smile on my face.
We stood there. Two feet apart. In utter silence. A whole ocean between us. I could feel him watching me. Not obviously. Not with his eyes. With his attention. It felt like pressure. Like warmth. Like standing too close to a fire without being able to step toward it.
It crawled across my skin.
It made me hyperaware of my own movements. The way I shifted my weight. The way I held my mug. The way my shoulders stayed a fraction too tight. I felt like I was being witnessed. Not in a judging way. In a… waiting way.
As if he was watching to see what I would do. To see if I would reach. To see if I would come closer.
I didn’t. I hated myself for that.
“How’s your arm?” I asked instead.
There it was. The professional tone. The careful distance. The I’m here but I won’t touch you voice. The one I used when I was pretending this was enough.
He blinked once. “Fine.” He shrugged too quickly. “Doesn’t hurt.”
My mouth twitched despite myself. A lie.
Not a dramatic one. Just the kind meant to smooth things over, to keep the conversation shallow and survivable.
I knew better. I’d seen the bloody bandages in the bin.
The way he favored one sleeve. The careful way he moved, like pain was something to negotiate with instead of acknowledge.
But asking was part of the role I’d assigned myself. Concern without closeness. Care without comfort. And it would have been negligent—not just cowardly—not to try.
He took a sip of his coffee and winced. Then pulled out his phone and kept his eyes fixed on that instead of me. It made my skin itch not to be the center of his attention.
I watched him over the rim of my mug and felt something in my chest fold in on itself. Made it hard to breathe. This is what I’d done. Done to us. Not protected him. Not steadied him. I had taught him how to be alone in front of me. I had taught him how not to reach for me.
The realization hurt in a way that had nothing to do with desire. It was another form of suffocating grief. That was a language we were both well versed in.
“I’m going to head out for a bit,” I said. Too quickly. “I’ve got some errands.” That was a lie too. But a kinder one.
He nodded. “Okay.”
When he didn’t respond I grabbed my keys. My jacket. Slipped into my boots and paused at the door. I waited to see if he’d ask for anything. But he stayed focused on his phone.
Without a backward glance, I turned and headed for the door. He was watching me now. When he thought I wasn’t aware of him. Not openly. Just… quiet surreptitious glances. Like someone watching a train leave a station they aren’t chasing.
Something in my chest cracked. “Elliot.”
He lifted his eyes fully then. A spark flared in them. It gutted me. “Yes?”
I almost said I’m sorry. I almost said come here. I almost said please don’t stop wanting me. I almost said a lot of things that would’ve been selfish. I said none of them.
“Nothing,” I said instead.
Then I left. The door closed behind me with a sound that felt final in a way I didn’t have words for yet. And the whole time I walked to the truck, all I could think was: I am not protecting him. I am teaching him how to survive without me.
I left the house like I was running from a fire I’d started myself. Not because he’d touched me. Not because he’d asked.
But because I had seen the wanting on his face before he had time to hide it and I had wanted it back.
That was the part I couldn’t forgive.
The part that made me feel unclean.
I drove without knowing where I was going, hands locked around the steering wheel so tight my knuckles burned.
My chest felt too full, like something was pressing outward from the inside and there was no place for it to go.
I kept replaying the moment I’d pulled away—the way his mouth had parted, the way his breath had caught, the way his eyes had searched my face like I might hand him an answer if he just looked hard enough.
I hadn’t given him one. I had left him with the space instead. I told myself it was restraint. I told myself it was protection. But the truth sat heavier.
It felt like cowardice dressed up as virtue.
The grocery lot was empty when I parked up and didn’t get out. Just sat there with my forehead against the steering wheel like I was bracing for impact that never came. My pulse thudded in my throat, slow and loud and humiliatingly alive.
I thought of David and Natalie. The way they’d trusted me to take care of Elliot when they couldn’t. The thought made my stomach turn.
What kind of man becomes the center of a grieving boy’s world and then resents the weight of it?
What kind of man feels wanted and thinks: this is dangerous — but still feels the wanting back?
I dragged myself through the store like a penance. Bought things we didn’t need just to make the trip mean something. Milk. Bread. Batteries. Like I could power myself back into being someone simpler. I couldn’t.
When I came home, he was on the couch. The green journal was open in his lap. The thing I’d given him to keep him from hurting himself. The thing that now felt like a confession I wasn’t supposed to read.
He looked up when I entered. Not hopeful. Not angry. Just present. Just there. The way you look at someone you’re quietly depending on. It made my chest tighten with something that felt too close to pride and too close to shame at the same time.
Ignoring him, I went into the kitchen and started doing things that didn’t matter. Putting groceries away. Rearranging cans in the cupboard multiple times. Wiping a counter that wasn’t dirty.
Anything to avoid standing still where he could see me. Where he could see the fracture. I could feel him behind me. Not watching. Waiting. That was worse. Waiting meant I was the one holding the distance.
Me.
The one who had promised not to leave. The one who had said I’d stay.
“Did you get what you needed?” he asked. His voice was careful. Like he was trying not to ask for anything.
It made something twist low in my gut. “No,” I said. Then, quieter, “I didn’t need anything.”
He just nodded and accepted what I had said without question. That was the moment I hated myself the most. I turned and leaned against the counter and closed my eyes.
My hands were clenched into fists. I hadn’t noticed when that happened. My body had decided before my mind caught up.
I wasn’t restraining myself from him. I was restraining myself from becoming someone I didn’t recognize. From becoming the man who took. The man who blurred lines and called it connection.
The man who accepted being needed and confused it for being loved.
“My hands ache with everything I’ll never let them do,” I whispered.
It wasn’t poetic.
It was true.
They ached like hunger. They ached like grief. They ached like holding something too heavy for too long.
I went upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom like a coward. Sat on the edge of the tub and stared at my hands. They were steady. That terrified me more than if they had been shaking.
Because it meant this wasn’t a moment. It meant it was a want. And I didn’t trust myself with it.
His face was the only thing I saw when I closed my eyes. Not the wanting one. The hurt one. The one he hadn’t meant me to see.
It felt like I had taken something from him without touching him. Like I had made him smaller just by refusing to meet him where he stood.
I pressed my palms to my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to no one.
To him.
To David.
To the version of myself I still pretended I was.
I didn’t know how to stay without harming him. I didn’t know how to leave without breaking him. And I was starting to understand that restraint wasn’t a clean thing. It was a wound I was choosing to make instead of a different one.
I didn’t know how long I could keep choosing it.