Chapter 38 #2
At home I put on music. Upbeat, trying too hard, but it's better than the silence we dragged in from the car. Blake washes the tomatoes. Laine stocks the fridge. We move around each other the way we've learned to — practiced, efficient, careful. Nobody bumps. Nobody touches.
I'm putting the honey in the cabinet, about to rattle out of my skin, when Laine stops moving.
"Blake."
He looks up from the sink. Water running over his hands. Face neutral. Waiting.
"I'm sorry. At the market, when I —" Her voice catches. She pushes through. "I dropped your hand. When I saw Joyce. And I didn't — I kept holding Reid's."
"I know."
Two words. Steady. Almost gentle. And I hate them because I know what I know means in Blake's language. It means of course I noticed. It means I've already filed this with every other piece of evidence that I'm the one people let go of.
"It was reflex. It wasn't — it wasn't a choice."
"I know that too."
Laine's not letting it go, thank fuck. "She already knows, Blake. Joyce already knows about us. I told her weeks ago. There was no reason to—" Laine presses her hands over her face. "There was literally no reason."
The water shuts off. He dries his hands. Walks to her. Pulls her hands gently from her face.
"Laine. Look at me."
She does.
"It's okay," he says.
And that's where I can't keep my mouth shut anymore.
"It's not, though."
They both look at me. Laine startled. Blake — something flickers across his face. Warning, maybe. Stay out of this.
Not happening.
"It's not okay." I keep my voice even. This isn't about starting a fight.
But I'm not letting this slide into the place where Blake forgives everything and carries it alone and we all pretend the wound closed.
"What she did hurt you. And you standing here saying 'it's okay' when it's not — that's you taking care of her again. Like always."
"Reid—" Blake starts.
"I'm not attacking her. I'm not attacking either of you.
" I look at Laine. She's pale. "But I watched you drop his hand and keep mine, and I watched him spend the rest of the market carrying bags so his hands had something to do, and I watched both of you not talk about it.
And I'm not doing the thing where we all go to bed and pretend this is fine. "
Silence. The music I put on is still playing — some acoustic thing that's way too cheerful for this room.
Laine's eyes are wet. "I know it's not okay. That's what I'm trying to—"
"I know. I know you are." I cross the kitchen, stand closer to both of them. "But Blake's going to forgive you in about ten seconds because that's what he does, and then he's going to go sand something in the workshop and never bring it up again. And you'll feel better. And he won't."
Blake's jaw tightens. I can see him wanting to argue. Wanting to say I'm fine, drop it, don't make this bigger than it is.
"Tell me I'm wrong," I say to him.
He doesn't.
Laine lets out a shaky breath. "He's not wrong."
"I know he's not wrong," Blake says quietly. "I just — what do you want me to do? Be angry?"
"I want you to feel what you feel instead of pretending you're fine," I say. "For once."
That lands. I can see it land — the way his shoulders drop a fraction, the way something behind his eyes shifts from locked to... not unlocked. Cracked, maybe.
Laine steps closer to him. "Can I explain something? Not as an excuse. I just — I want you both to understand what happened in my head."
Blake nods. I nod.
She takes a breath. Wraps her arms around herself.
"The strangers — the looks, the whispers — I can handle those.
Those people don't matter to me. They're just..
. noise." She pauses. "But Joyce isn't noise.
Joyce is — she's been in my corner since my first shift.
She believed in me when I was just the new nurse who didn't know anyone. She matters to me."
"She already knew," I say, not accusing just stating facts.
"She already knew." Laine's voice breaks on it.
"That's the worst part. She already accepted it.
She's been wonderful about it. And I still — when I saw her face, my body just..
." She opens and closes her hand. The one that let go.
"It's not the strangers that scare me. It's the people I love.
It's the people whose opinion could actually hurt me. "
She looks at Blake.
"I wasn't choosing Reid over you. I wasn't — it wasn't about who's acceptable and who isn't. It was about me being a coward. For half a second, with someone I love walking toward me, I was a coward. Reid and I have a history. She knows him. And I just…glitched."
The kitchen is very quiet.
Blake reaches out. Traces her cheekbone with his thumb. "I know the difference between a choice and a reflex, Laine."
"But it still hurt."
He doesn't answer right away. And I'm glad, because that pause — that honesty of not just saying no it didn't — is finally real.
"Yeah," he says finally. "It still hurt."
Laine makes a small sound and steps into him, her face against his chest, and his arms come around her. He holds on. Presses his mouth to the top of her head.
I stay where I am. Close enough to be part of it. Not inserting myself into a moment that belongs to them.
"It won't happen again," she says, muffled against his shirt.
He doesn't say I know. Doesn't say okay. Just holds her. I hope like hell it never happens again.
But what if it does? How many hits can Blake take before he stops bouncing back?
After a minute, she pulls back. Wipes her eyes. Looks at both of us.
"I need a nap," she says. "I'm — God, I'm so tired."
"Go," I tell her. "We'll clean up."
She kisses Blake. Soft, careful, like an apology she knows isn't enough. Then she comes to me, rises up on her toes, and presses her lips to mine.
"Thank you," she whispers. "For not letting us bury it."
"I'm pretty proud of myself honestly. I'm getting to be such a big boy."
She almost smiles. Almost.
Then she's gone, her footsteps quiet down the hall, and the bedroom door clicks shut.
Blake stands at the sink for a long moment, hands braced on the counter. Not moving. Just breathing.
So I stare at him, imagining he can feel my eyes boring through his back like laser beams. Finally, he cracks.
"I'm fine, Reid."
"I know you're not, but okay."
He exhales. Pushes off the counter. "Workshop."
"Yeah. I figured."
Blake's shoulders drop the second he crosses the threshold of the workshop. I've seen it a hundred times — the way this space rearranges him. Puts the pieces back in some order that makes sense after everything's been scrambled.
He doesn't turn on the overhead lights. Just the lamp at his bench, the one that throws warm light across whatever he's working on and leaves everything else in shadow. He picks up a hand plane, runs his thumb along the blade, sets it down again. Picks up a chisel. Sets that down too.
I sit on the workbench across from him. The one I always sit on.
The wood is worn smooth from years of this — me showing up in his space, parking myself on a surface he'd rather I didn't, waiting for him to talk or not talk.
Blake took care of me, yeah. But I'm starting to realize that I took care of him too.
"You didn't have to do that," he says finally. "In the kitchen."
"Yeah I did."
"I can handle—"
"I know you can handle it. You can handle anything. That's not the point." I pick up a wood scrap, turn it over in my fingers. "The point is you shouldn't have to."
He's quiet. Runs his hand along the edge of the workbench.
"She didn't mean it," he says.
"No, she didn't."
"It's not—" He stops. Starts again. "She wants me. I know she wants me."
"But?"
His jaw works. "But for about thirty seconds today, I was the thing she was ashamed of. And I know that's not fair to her — I know it was reflex, I know she felt terrible about it—"
"Blake. You're allowed to be hurt even if she didn't mean it."
He goes quiet again. Picks up the hand plane. This time he actually uses it — one slow pass along a scrap of wood. The curl of shaving peels away, pale and thin. He does it again. And again.
"I thought we were past this," he says, so quietly I almost miss it. "Today was good. The whole morning. She was holding my hand and I was — I was there, Reid. Not behind you guys. Not on the outside. Right there."
"You were. I saw it." I felt it, kind of an us against the world thing. I liked it.
"And then—" Another pass with the plane. "One person. One person she knows and trusts, and I'm the one she lets go of."
And I'm the one she kept.
I've been carrying that since the market. Haven't said it. Haven't known how to say it without making this about me when it's not about me.
But it is, a little. It's about all three of us.
"You want to know something that's been fucking with my head?" I say.
Blake looks up.
"She kept my hand. When she let go of yours, she kept mine." I meet his eyes. "And part of me — part of me liked that. That I'm the safe one. The easy one to explain. This is my boyfriend Reid. Simple. Clean. Nobody does the math."
Blake's expression doesn't change, but he's still. Listening.
"And I hate that I liked it. Because what does that make me? The presentable boyfriend? The one she can hold on to when it gets scary?" I shake my head. "That's not what I want to be. Not if it means you're the one she drops. That shit's not okay."
The plane starts up again.
"I don't want to be the easy choice, Blake. I want all three of us to be the choice. Every time. Even when it's hard."
Blake sets the plane down carefully. Lines it up with the edge of the bench, because he can't help himself.
"You know what's fucked up?" he says. "I see you and Laine together and I think — that's right. That makes sense. You light her up, she settles you down. You're good together. And I watch that and part of me knows I'm just the extra piece. The thing that doesn't fit in the picture."
"That's bullshit."
He shrugs, mouth twisting. "Maybe. But it's what my head does."
"Yeah, well — you want to know what my head does? When I see you and Laine together?" I wait until he looks at me. "I see her go still. In a good way. She's always moving, always thinking. But with you, she stops. She just... lands. And I can't do that for her. I don't know how."
Being still is hard as hell for me. It only works when I can fixate on something. Like her skin, or the way she smells. But I'm not the restful guy. Not sure I ever can be. I'm just not built that way.
Blake's the master of restful. Of slow and deliberate.
Also the Mayor of Grumpytown, but I'm not going to bring that up right now.
Blake blinks. Like this is information he genuinely didn't have.
Oh my god, I'm Yoda.
"You're not the extra piece," I say. "You're the foundation. You're the thing the rest of it is built on. And I'm not just saying that to make you feel better — I'm saying it because I watch her with you and I see something I can't give her, and I'm glad you can."
He looks down at his hands.
"We're both idiots," he says.
"Huge idiots."
"Both feeling like the third fucking wheel."
"In a three-wheeled vehicle. Which, if you think about it, means we're all equally important structurally—"
"Don't make it a metaphor," he says on a groan.
"Too late. It's a tricycle now. We're a tricycle, Blake."
He shakes his head, but there it is — the ghost of a smile. It's small, but I'll take it.
"She's still got one foot out the door," he says after a while. "Not with us. With... everything. The apartment. The life she set up in case this doesn't work."
"Maybe that's part of it," I say. "Today.
The flinch. She's brave enough to hold your hand at a farmer's market but she's still paying rent on a place she doesn't live in.
She's still half in. Course, we haven't talked about her moving in, even though I really, really want her to.
But I don't want to spook her either. Slow and steady and all that shit. "
Blake's quiet for a long time. Too long. I don't do quiet.
"What are you thinking?" I ask.
"Nothing. Just—" He picks up the plane again, but doesn't use it. Just holds it. "Nothing yet."
I know that look. That's Blake building something in his head. I don't push.
We sit in the workshop while the lamp throws shadows across the walls and the sawdust settles and the afternoon turns to night. I pull out my phone, scroll through nothing. Blake runs his hand along the scrap of wood he's been planing, feeling the surface he's made smooth.
"Thanks," he says eventually. "For not letting me bury it."
"That's what I said to Laine."
"I know. I heard."
"Emotional support." I point at myself. "It's my new brand."
"Your brand is terrible."
"My brand is excellent." I hop off the workbench. "Come on. Let's go make some supper with the fifty million tomatoes you bought. Tomorrow's going to be better."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It has to be. Statistically. I think."
"Real reassuring."
"I'm not a statistician, Blake. I'm emotional support. I'm staying in my lane."