Chapter 35
thirty-five
MORGAN
I've been staring at the same paragraph for twenty-seven minutes, which means I'm either having a stroke or Mills's surveillance operation is working.
She's across from me at my kitchen table, her textbook propped open to a page she hasn't looked at once.
Instead, she's conducting reconnaissance with the subtlety of a SWAT team at a yoga retreat.
Every time I shift, her eyes track the movement.
When my fingers drum against the table, she catalogs it.
Because she's not here to study.
She's here on a welfare check, because apparently my emotional state has reached DEFCON 2 and triggered the buddy-system. It's been the same since our run and discovering the locker room had been… refreshed… although she hasn't said a damn word about it.
My irritation should be stronger, but underneath the annoyance, there's this tiny, treacherous warmth. Because Mills cares enough about keeping me emotionally stable enough to sacrifice her Tuesday night to make sure I don't spiral into complete dysfunction.
It's been forty-eight hours since I discovered what James did, and my response has been vintage me: complete tactical withdrawal from any display of emotions, with walls up, bridges burned, and all communications severed.
James hasn't tried to contact me, nor I him, and that would usually be just fine.
Except this time, the isolation isn't delivering its promised numbness. My apartment feels wrong—too clean, too quiet, too much like a showroom for someone who forgot humans need oxygen and joy—and the silence I've relied on for years has turned against me.
God, I'm so fucking lonely it hurts.
As much as I still haven't figured out what to do about James's little gesture of apology, the usual part of me that's happy to close myself off and keep people at a distance is failing miserably. I don't necessarily want him—do I?—but I'm starting to wonder if I want… need… something…
Someone?
Mills's textbook slams shut hard enough to send my tea into cardiac arrest.
"OK, intervention time." Her voice carries that determined edge she gets before doing something spectacularly inadvisable. "You've been cosplaying as a Victorian widow for two days, so we're going to O'Neil's, and you're going to have a beer and some food…"
The automatic "no" rises in my throat, but then I stop.
Because what's the alternative? Another evening perfecting my impression of furniture? Another restless night of sleep, tossing and turning over how to handle James and the new insights about him? Another week ensuring I never feel anything by never risking anything?
Mills watches me, her expression shifting from drill sergeant to something softer. "Morgue, come on," she says. "One beer…"
My throat constricts as I close my laptop. The word emerges raw and surprising even to me. "OK," I say.
Mills's eyebrows shoot toward her hairline, her mouth forming a perfect O of shock. "Wait, seriously? You're agreeing to leave the bunker? Voluntarily?"
I nod, not trusting myself with complex sentences. This isn't surrender to her command, it's surrender to the possibility that my system might be fundamentally broken and a distraction might be what I need to kick the can down the road on reconciling my feelings about James.
Her smile could power a small city. "Holy shit. Someone mark the calendar. Morgan Riley just agreed to fun."
"Let's not get carried away," I manage, standing on legs that feel theoretical. "I agreed to a meal. Everyone needs food, right?"
"Five minutes to change," she orders. "And lose the depression hoodie. We're aiming for 'alive human' not 'ghost of semester past.'"
I head to my room to get ready, trying to ignore the existential dread that comes with leaving my depression cave. As if sensing my uncertainty, Mills positions herself strategically by the door like a bouncer at the world's saddest nightclub, ready to tackle me if I make a run for it.
I freeze when I catch my reflection in the full-length mirror on the closet door.
Jesus.
Who is this person?
My hair, usually pulled back in a ponytail that screams "I have my shit together," hangs limp and greasy around my face.
The dark circles under my eyes aren't just bags, they're luxury luggage.
Even my freckles look exhausted, like they've given up trying to add character to my face and are just phoning it in.
But it's my eyes that stop me cold.
Where's the girl with the bright eyes? The one who used to look at the world like it was a puzzle she could solve if she just worked hard enough? When did I replace her with someone who looks like she's been surviving on a steady diet of cortisol and resentment?
This is what winning looks like, apparently.
I've successfully defended my position, maintained my walls, kept everyone at the exact distance required to ensure I never get hurt again.
Mission accomplished, Captain, except I look like death warmed over and there's less than five people in the world who'd give a shit if I stayed in bed until I fossilized.
And worse is the realization creeping in like water through a cracked foundation: protecting myself from pain hasn't protected me from anything.
It's just exchanged one kind of hurt for another.
Instead of the sharp, acute pain of potential betrayal, I've chosen the chronic ache of complete isolation.
I haven't been living. I've been existing in a sterile bubble of my own making, so focused on not getting hurt that I've forgotten what it feels like to feel anything good. And running away from James in the library was just the latest episode, fleeing from the feelings and the danger and the mess.
And the potential joy.
So a beer it is.
And a meal.
Baby steps, but steps.
And after that, maybe some more.
It's absolutely terrifying.
It's also the first real thing I've felt in days…
Suddenly, I'm wondering why I agreed to leave my apartment.
Mills abandoned me ten minutes ago for a cluster of soccer players near the dartboard, sliding into their circle with that easy charm I’ll never possess. They’re laughing at something she said, leaving me at my corner table, which exists in its own social dead zone.
Because apparently, even when I'm being social, I repel anyone and anything.
I take another sip of my beer and scan the room.
I look past the freshman girls whose November-issue crop tops are an exercise in hypothermia denial, past the two guys from my poli-sci seminar currently explaining the electoral college to a girl who’s been trying to escape for ten minutes, and past the—
My entire body seizes.
He’s at the far end of the bar. For a second, my brain rejects the data, because that can’t be James, the human embodiment of kinetic energy who treats silence like a virus. Because that guy is sitting motionless on a barstool, shoulders curved inward, one hand wrapped around whiskey.
The stillness is fundamentally wrong on him.
There's no drumming fingers and no restless shifting. Instead, his free hand lies flat on the scarred wood, utterly still. The neon Coors sign above the bar paints shadows under his eyes, aging him a decade. And, more than anything, he just looks alone and sad.
My body betrays me instantly. Heat floods my stomach. My pulse hammers in my throat. Every nerve ending suddenly decides to make its presence known. Every synapse is screaming at me to walk over there, wrap my arms around him, and tell him I forgive him.
Stop, I try to command my heart… hell, my whole body. Please, don't!
But stopping requires control I don’t have, because his profile in the dim light is the sexiest thing I've seen, jaw rough with stubble and hair falling across his forehead in that way that demands fingers through it.
And, at the exact moment I'm feeling alone and vulnerable and a little sorry for how I drove him away…
Well, he's lethal.
His thumb circles the rim of his glass slowly, methodically, as he silently works through whatever is on his mind. It's the same way his hands moved across my skin in the library, with the same reverent touch that made me feel like something worth keeping.
Every trained instinct screams at me to leave, but then I remember the protein bar wrapper in the freshly painted locker room, the evidence forcing me to change my charge sheet, and how I got scared, ran away, and then treated him like radioactive waste.
The guilt arrives sharp and immediate, because it’s what I’ve been avoiding: I helped trigger the gala disaster. Not deliberately, but through silence and cowardice. I ran, and James did what damaged people do when they're shocked and upset.
He reverted to form.
He made a loud, grand gesture, when for the last month he'd been showing me there's more to him than that. And now he’s paying for it, suspended from his team, all because he tried to help using the only method his programming allowed once I'd closed him out.
Mills tracks my stare and whistles low. “Holy shit. You and Rook?”
Mills's words hang in the air.
The denial rises automatically to my throat—a reflexive defense mechanism, the same one that's kept me safe for years—but as I open my mouth to deliver it, something fundamental shifts, because the lie tastes like ash before I can even speak it.
Because this is the moment I can choose a different path.
I can choose to feel and to live.
So I don't lie. Instead, I just nod. A single, terrified admission.
Then, before logic can intervene, I’m standing.
Mills’s eyes widen. “Morgan, what are you—”
I don’t let her finish, because if she says one more word, I'll chicken out.
You know this script. You’ve lived this ending. You'll trust him, and he'll hurt you.
My mind's usual warning comes through, loud and clear, as predictable as breathing. But there’s another voice now—small, insistent, terrifying—born on that bench at dawn after running myself half to death.
The voice that said yes to Mills tonight instead of choosing isolation, the one that just admitted feelings…
What happens if you don’t run?
My legs feel disconnected from my body as I cross the worn wooden floor. Each step is a conscious choice… a rebellion against every instinct screaming at me to turn around, to run, to rebuild the walls, and to protect myself before it's too late.
But I keep walking toward him.
When I reach the bar, I focus on the bartender and position myself close enough to James to be noticed, but far enough to maintain plausible deniability if I decide to bail out. He hasn't even noticed me yet, so lost in his thoughts and so trapped in his isolation and misery.
“Yeah?” the bartender asks.
I gesture my chin toward James. “Two of whatever he’s drinking.”
The bartender’s gaze slides between us, cataloging drama. “Jameson rocks?”
“Yeah.”
As the bartender reaches for the bottle, James turns, drawn by the transaction.
Our eyes meet, and the air crystallizes between us, heavy with history and unfinished business. I catalog his micro-expressions: pupils dilating to black, lips parting on unformed words, fingers white-knuckling his glass before forcing relaxation.
Then, when the bartender puts the whiskey in front of him, understanding arrives in waves across his face. Confusion, first, because I'm suddenly acknowledging his existence after weeks of silence. Next, recognition of the gesture.
And, finally, understanding.
His mouth curves into something barely qualifying as a smile.
Just one corner lifting, so subtle it could be involuntary.
But I know his entire smile catalog—the performance pieces, the manic versions, the armor. This is none of those. This is private. Real and grateful and wounded and warm enough to fracture something frozen in my chest. It's the smile from the library, from before the wreckage.
It’s devastating.
He nods. Once. Barely perceptible, but enough to kick off our silent conversation. I understand. I’m sorry.
I nod back. Sharp. Definitive. This doesn’t fix us. But it’s something. And I'm sorry, too. I fucked up.
Truce offered.
Truce accepted.
I turn and cross back to my table, each step lighter. My skin feels electric, hyperaware that he's tracking my every movement, hungry for more but content with the fragile truce we've just reached. But, more than anything, knowing that's all I can give him right now.
Mills stares at me, stunned. “Did you just—”
I nod. "It's a start."
I grab my beer with both hands because one isn’t steady enough. The Ultra tastes worse now, but I drink it anyway, because I need something to do that isn't running away in fear or marching back over there for something catastrophically stupid.
His painted locker room was his first brick in rebuilding whatever we are.
This gesture in a college dive is mine.
But, for me, it's more than that. It's an attempt to melt the ice around my heart just a little, to open the curtains a crack and let the sunlight filter in.
It's standing tall in a world that can be so cruel and so painful and accepting the risk because that's the only way happiness and joy and connection can be found.
And in return?
Well, that smile will follow me home. It will live in my chest beside the guilt and fear and this new sensation that might be hope.
If hope feels like cracking open. If hope tastes like possibility.
If hope has brown eyes and looks at you like you gave him something precious when all you did was buy him a drink.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
The beer remains awful.
But for the first time in maybe three years, I’m not alone.
That’s terrifying.
That’s everything.