Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Tabitha
Henry’s words echo after he falls asleep beside me.
You’re mine. Always were.
The cabin is quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator. Henry sleeps hard, one arm flung over his forehead. Zach’s curled near his feet, twitching at some dream chase.
I rise and find my clothes by the table. I dress quickly and return to the master bedroom to pack up.
It’s afternoon already, and I have class tomorrow.
Every nerve in my body feels awake. Like the night—and just hours earlier—was both a healing and a wound.
Henry is still asleep, and his sleep has become fitful.
I sit next to him, nudging him lightly. “Hey.”
His eyes shoot open. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Just…everything. My mind was full of…everything. Everything about everything.”
I nod. “Same here. I’m thinking about everything. The attack. The seminar. My life. You.”
He exhales slowly. “I’m not good with the dreams.”
I almost laugh. “You’re good at other things.”
“Yeah? Name one.”
“You make me forget the world exists.”
He rubs his eyes and sighs. “That’s not always a good thing.”
“I know.” My throat tightens. “That’s what scares me.”
He tilts his head. “Say what you’re really thinking.”
I stand and move to the window, looking out into the sunny day. “I don’t want to be the one who gets left behind when everything catches up with you.”
He rises, wraps a blanket around his naked body. “I don’t plan on leaving.”
“No one ever does.”
He’s silent for a beat. I feel him behind me, close enough to warm my skin. “Tabitha.”
I look back. His expression is all edges and ache.
“When Ralph pulled that gun,” he says, voice shaking slightly, “I thought that was it. I thought I’d die with every wrong thing I ever did on a loop. I did what I had to do, and I have no regrets, but every day I wonder what if I had been only a second later with the gun? If—”
“But you weren’t,” I say. “You didn’t hesitate, and you saved Angie. Jason. Me. Now let me save you.”
“I’m not asking you to save me.” He steps closer. “I’m asking you to believe I’ll fight for myself. For you. For this.”
The word fight hits something deep in me. Some nerve I’ve been pretending didn’t exist. Because I’ve been fighting, too. Against fear. Against wanting too much. Against the voice that says I don’t get to have this and everything else.
He reaches for my hand. I let him take it.
For a moment, I let myself believe him.
The thunder rolls closer. The sound vibrates through the walls, low and hungry.
Henry glances at the window. “Storm’s coming back.”
“Yeah,” I say softly, knowing he’s not talking about the weather. “Feels like it.”
And for a heartbeat, we just stand there. We’re two people who’ve burned through every excuse and are holding on anyway.
He doesn’t let go of my hand. If anything, he tightens his grip.
“Tell me,” he says. “Not the polished version. Tell me about that night. What it did to you.”
“I told you.”
“No. Tell me how you felt. How you feel now.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you willing to do the same for me?”
“If that’s what you want.”
I sigh. I don’t like to revisit that memory. Remembering that night takes me to the darkest place. There’s a reason I’ve been so focused on the seminar beyond my career. Beyond my feelings for Henry.
It’s an escape from the dark place.
“I don’t want you to relive anything you don’t want to relive,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t ask that of me, either.”
“I’m only giving you the chance to talk about it if you want to. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”
“Good.”
But the thoughts spear through my head, swirling and whirling like tornadoes. Everything I’ve done since that night.
How in the shower, I scrub until my skin burns, until the water runs cold and my fingers ache.
It’s not about getting clean. It’s about trying to wash out the memory of his breath near my ear, the smell of sweat and fear.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror afterward, and I don’t recognize the woman looking back. She’s smaller somehow. With less light.
Sleep is worse. My body remembers before my mind does, and my heart pounds, my chest locks, and I kick against something invisible. I wake up gasping, clawing at sheets that have never hurt me. The room is safe. The lock is on. But I can still feel him invading my space.
And when the world goes quiet, when everyone else moves on, I’m still here. I’m alive. Alive but cracked open.
I tell myself that surviving is enough. That someday, it will feel like victory. But right now, it just feels like standing on the edge of a scream I can’t quite let out.
Damn.
I think that’s the first time I’ve allowed myself to even think those things.
Maybe Henry’s right. Maybe I should tell him.
I clear my throat. “It’s fragments,” I say.
“His hot breath. His hands on my body. His voice. He sounded reptilian, kind of. Evil. And I tell myself how lucky I was that Lance came along and saved me. I tell myself it was my own fault for walking alone at night and not paying attention that I was going beyond the safe zone. Sometimes there are nightmares. Sometimes, even though I know I’m okay, my body doesn’t remember that I am.
” I sigh. “It’s getting better. And I think… ”
“You think what?”
I inhale, and then I smile weakly. “I think telling you is helping.”
He returns my smile.
“I wonder…”
“What?” he asks.
“I wonder if that’s part of the reason I didn’t come to the hospital when you asked. Sure, I told myself it was the seminar, and part of it was, but maybe another part of it was that I felt… I don’t know. Changed, I guess. By the incident. The attack. Even though nothing happened.”
“Don’t say nothing happened, Tabitha. Something did happen. Your world was shaken. For a time, no matter how brief, you believed you were in danger. You were in danger.”
I gulp. “I was.”
“I understand,” he says. “My situation is different from yours, but I know the feeling. My world was shaken, too. First by Ralph, and then by the accident. But I’m okay. Or at least I’m working on being okay. And I will be.”
He sounds sure.
Maybe surer than I’ve ever heard him.
He’s quiet for a moment. Then, “I wish I’d been there.”
“You can’t be everywhere.”
“I can try for here.” He taps his chest once. “I can try for this.”
I want to laugh, except nothing about any of this is funny. “And when it gets bad in your head again? When you can’t sleep and the world goes thin? You’ll…what? White-knuckle it for me?”
The honesty in his eyes makes my stomach flip. “I’ll call my aunt,” he says. “I’ll let her help me. I’ll take Zach on runs. I’ll stop pretending I can carry it alone.”
“You’ll actually do it?” I ask.
“Yes.” The word lands heavy. “Because I shot a man and a beam cracked my skull and the only constant across both is that when it gets dark, I look for you. If I want to be the man who deserves you, I have to fight where it counts.”
There it is. The thing I’ve been trying not to name. He says it plainly. The fight isn’t Ralph or a rogue beam. It’s inside him. Inside me.
I bite my lip. “I should get some help too.”
He nods. “Probably a good idea. I’m sure my aunt would talk to you.”
“I don’t want to bother her. She’s retired. I can find someone in Boulder.”
He nods again.
Boulder.
Yeah.
No use delaying the inevitable any longer.
It’s time for me to go home.
“I can’t let anything get between me and my future,” I say. “Not the attack. Not anything.”
He pauses. Then, “Not me?”
I let out a huff that sounds like a chuckle. “Are you saying we have a future now?”
He grabs my hands. “I’m saying I’d like for us to have one. I mean, we live on opposite sides of the state, and we both have lives where we live.”
“A long-distance relationship doesn’t scare you?”
He laughs. “Of course it scares me. You may wake up one day and decide I’m too fucked up to bother with. Doesn’t it scare you?”
“Of course it does.” I draw in a breath. “I’m scared of wanting you so much that I’ll look up one day and realize I’ve let go of everything else.”
His expression softens, edges lowering. “You won’t. I won’t let you.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can promise I’ll pull you back if you start to drift.” He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body. “And you’ll do the same for me.”
I rest my forehead against his sternum. He slides his fingers into my hair.
“Say it again,” I murmur. “The part where you’ll fight.”
“I’ll fight for you,” he says against my crown. “Every time.”
And some tiny fracture inside me begins to knit together. Not all of it. Not the complicated places. Just enough to stand up straighter.
“How long do we have?” I ask, and I don’t mean the storm.
He hears me anyway. “You’ve got lab tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve got…a life I said I would start living like it matters.”
I nod. “So not long.”
He kisses my forehead. It’s not the kiss I want, which makes it worse. “Maybe long enough,” he says.
“Don’t say maybe.”
“Then long enough.” He tips my chin up gently. “Long enough to make a plan instead of a promise.”
“Plans change,” I say, because we swore to be honest.
“Then we change them together.”
We move at the same time—me toward the table, him toward the door—and collide in the middle. Not hard. Just enough. His hand lands on my hip to steady me. My breath catches. He doesn’t take advantage. He just steadies me and then lets go.
He fumbles with his phone, typing. A few dings of texts go back and forth.
“Aunt Melanie at two tomorrow,” he says casually, as if telling me this is as normal as the sun shining.
Another reminder that tomorrow, he’ll be back on the Slope, and I’ll be in Boulder.
“That’s good,” I say.
He nods. “Thought I’d start the fight before I talked myself out of it.”
“Time’s running out,” I whisper. “For us.”
He tightens his hand on mine. “Then we use what we’ve got.”
I don’t know who moves first. Maybe we both do. We turn toward each other at the same time, the whole world narrowing to the half inch between us.
The clock has started.