Chapter 18 #2
My hands had gone numb where they gripped the sheets.
Pins and needles crawled up my fingers, into my wrists.
I flexed them once, then stilled again, afraid that if I let go I’d float off into something hollow and endless.
My pulse was loud in my ears. My stomach felt wrong—too empty, too tight, like I’d been bracing for a punch that hadn’t landed yet.
Thomas stood. The chair legs scraped softly against the floor. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I was afraid if I did, I’d see whatever conclusion he’d already reached about me.
He lingered a second longer than necessary. “You know what the worst part is?” he said quietly.
I swallowed.
“You’re not wrong about him.” He paused. “You are wrong about you.”
That finally made me turn to look at him. He met my eyes. There was no anger left there. Just something tired. Sad. Almost afraid.
“You think you’re the only thing keeping him alive,” he said. “But what you’re really doing is teaching him that he can’t survive without you.”
My throat tightened.
“That’s not saving him,” he continued. “That’s building a cage out of your own fear.”
I flinched like he’d struck me. He nodded once, like he hated himself for saying it. Then he left without another word. The door clicked shut behind him with a sound that felt too final for how small it was. I stared at it long after he was gone.
My chest felt… wrong. Heavy. Pressurized. Like I was breathing through something thick and resistant instead of air. I shifted in the chair, trying to shake the sensation loose, but it stayed—a dense, pulsing ache right behind my sternum.
I pressed my palm there, uselessly.
You’re not wrong about him. You’re wrong about you. The words echoed. I dragged in a breath, willing the words to fade.
A sound. Soft and broken reached my ears. It was the most exquisite type of pain.
“An… thony?”
I froze. Every nerve in my body lit up at once. I leaned forward so fast the chair scraped loudly beneath me. “Hey,” I whispered. “Hey. I’m here.”
His eyes fluttered open. They were unfocused at first. Dazed. Then they found me. Relief crossed his face so fast and so completely it made my chest hurt worse than before.
“You’re here,” he breathed. “You didn’t go.”
“I’m here.”
He swallowed. His throat worked like it hurt. “I thought…” His voice cracked. “I thought I lost you.”
Something in me twisted. “Me too,” I said before I could stop myself.
His brows knit together faintly. “I love you,” he said. The words were fragile. Unprotected. Offered like something breakable. They were devastating.
My breath caught. Heat surged behind my eyes. My jaw locked tight to keep my voice steady. “Then stop,” I said.
His face collapsed. The hurt was immediate. Visible. Visceral like I’d slapped him.
“Because I can’t love you back without destroying us both.”
The silence that hung between us like a noose was only broken by the increasing tempo of the monitor. If his heart rate got any higher a nurse would be in here to find out what was going on.
“What?” His eyes glistened. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I—I’ll be better. I’ll be quieter. I won’t need so much. Just—don’t do this.”
“I know.” My voice was hoarse. Throat raw. Every word cut on the way out. “That’s the problem.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m not punishing you. I’m trying to stop this…us.”
“I didn’t mean to ruin anything. I didn’t mean to make you feel trapped,” he said. Panic threaded through the words. “I just—I just feel safe with you.”
The word safe hit like a blade. I closed my eyes for half a second. “That’s not something I should be,” I said.
“Why?” His voice broke. “Why is it wrong if it’s you?”
Because I want you too much. Because I don’t know how to love without consuming or disappearing. Because I’m not built for clean things.
“I don’t want to stop,” he whispered. “I want you.” The words were raw. Bare. “I can’t be alone again. Please. I can’t do that again.”
“You’re not alone.”
“I am if you go.” His voice cracked on go. “I’ll disappear,” he said. “I feel it. Everything just—goes quiet when you’re not there.”
My chest hurt so badly I thought I might actually break open. “You’re not a boy anymore,” I said instead. “But I’m still the man who should have walked away.”
His breath stuttered. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t say that like it’s already over.”
“I have to.”
“No.” His panic surged now. His breathing quickened. “No, no, no—don’t leave me here like this.” His face crumpled. “I didn’t want to die,” he whispered. “I just didn’t want to be alone.”
My chest caved inward. “I know,” I said.
“Then don’t make me be.” The words were quiet. They were absolute.
I stood before I lost the ability to. My legs felt unsteady, like I was standing on something that might give way at any moment. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For being the thing you reached for when you were drowning.”
“That’s not a crime. You saved me,” he whispered.
“No,” I said. “I tied you to me. It’s not a cost I’m willing to pay.” I turned before I could change my mind. Before I could cross back over the distance between us and ruin both our lives even more.
“I don’t care,” he said desperately. “I don’t care what it is. I just don’t want it without you.”
The door was open but just as I was about to step through—
“Anthony,” he cried.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. The sound of my name chased me as the hallway swallowed me whole. My hands were shaking again. My stomach churned like I might be sick. My heart felt too big for my chest, like it was bruising itself against my ribs with every beat.
Thomas’s words followed me. Building a cage out of your own fear. I pressed my palm to my sternum again, hard this time, like I could physically keep myself from shattering.
I had left him alive.
I had left him breathing.
But I had left him broken in a new way.
The worst part—the part that hollowed me out completely—was that some part of me had needed him to be. Because if he could survive this without me… Then I would have to face what I really was.
Not a savior.
Not a protector.
Just a man who loved someone he was never supposed to.
The automatic doors hissed open, and the night air hit me hard enough to steal what little breath I had left. Cold slid under my collar, down my spine. I welcomed it. It felt like punishment. Like proof I was still capable of feeling something sharp.
The parking lot was mostly empty. Sodium lights cast everything in a sickly yellow, flattening the world into something unreal. My car sat where I’d left it, quiet and waiting, like it didn’t know what I’d just done.
I unlocked it with shaking hands. The door closed with a dull, final sound.
For a long moment I just sat there, forehead pressed to the steering wheel, breathing in shallow pulls like my lungs had forgotten how to work properly. My pulse thudded everywhere—throat, wrists, behind my eyes. Each beat felt like it was asking me something I didn’t have an answer for.
I had done the right thing. I repeated it like a prayer. Like a lie I needed to believe in order to keep going.
The drive back to his house blurred. Red lights bled into green.
Headlights streaked past. I couldn’t tell you which streets I took or how long it took to get there.
My body moved on muscle memory alone, hands turning the wheel, foot pressing pedals, while my mind stayed behind in a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and loss.
Every time I blinked, I saw his face. The way relief had broken over him when he saw me. The way it had shattered just as fast. My chest tightened until it hurt to swallow.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, my jaw ached from how hard I’d been clenching it. I cut the engine and sat in the silence that followed, thick and absolute. No hum of monitors. No uneven breathing. No voice saying my name like it was a lifeline.
Just me.
The house greeted me with darkness.
I didn’t turn on the lights right away. I stepped inside and closed the door softly, like I was afraid of waking someone who wasn’t there. The air felt stale, unmoving. Empty in a way that went beyond furniture and walls.
His mug was still in the sink.
The blanket he’d curled under was folded over the back of the couch, still shaped like him, like he might come back and finish existing there if I waited long enough.
I didn’t touch it. I set my keys down carefully. Too carefully. Like sudden movement might break something else inside me.
This was what I’d chosen. Distance. Silence. Space for him to heal.
I leaned back against the counter and slid down until I was sitting on the kitchen floor, my spine pressed to the cold cabinets. The chill seeped through my clothes, into my bones, like it was trying to claim me too. My hands lay useless in my lap, palms open, empty.
I would stay away. I would stop answering his calls. Stop appearing in doorways like a promise I couldn’t keep.
Stop being the first thing he reached for when the world tilted and gave way beneath him.
I would make myself the lesson.
I would let professionals do what I never could. Let them stitch him back together without my shadow hovering over every wound. Let him learn how to breathe without me standing too close, taking up all the air.
The pain in my chest wasn’t sharp—it was heavy.
Dragging. Like something vital had been torn loose and left to die inside me.
My shoulders curled inward on instinct, my body trying to protect a heart I’d already condemned.
I pressed my forearm across my eyes until stars burst behind my lids, welcoming the hurt because it was easier than the alternative.
The house didn’t argue. It didn’t beg me to reconsider. It didn’t tell me I was wrong.
It just echoed.
Every room felt stripped down to its bones. Too clean. Too quiet. Like a place that had already been abandoned. Like the inside of my chest—hollowed out, useless, still pretending to function.
I had told him I couldn’t love him back without destroying us both. What I hadn’t said—what I couldn’t say—was that leaving felt like choosing which limb to sever. That walking away wasn’t restraint or strength or sacrifice. It was self-mutilation.
Slower.
Quieter.
And somehow worse.
That night, I lay awake staring at a ceiling that felt impossibly far away, listening to the empty spaces breathe around me. I counted the hours by the ache in my body, by the way my thoughts kept circling the same truth until it lost all meaning.
Leaving might save him.
But it was already killing me.
All I had to do now—all I had left—was erase myself before he came home and realized I’d been the one thing holding him together.