32. Cruz #2
“You know what’s messed up?” I say. “We did the same thing. Both of us. Somebody made our bodies a battlefield, and we took the violence they poured into us and gave it rules. A cage. A referee. Tape on our hands. I turned my temper into a talent for a job that I could be proud of. You turned survival into an impressive record that earned you a spot at Oath.”
“Twelve amateur wins.” A ghost of a smile. “Every one of them was his face.”
“Every drunk I choked out at those clubs was my old man’s voice telling me I’d never be anything.” I squeeze her hand. “Controlled violence to burn off the anger and betrayal we lived through. We should get it on a T-shirt.”
She laughs and wipes her eyes with the hoodie sleeve. “Can I tell you what actually scares me?” she says. “More than Gerald showing up?”
“Tell me.”
“That one of you wakes up someday and does the math. Too damaged, too much work, too many nightmares. And they decide I’m not worth it.
” The words come fast now, like she’s been holding them under pressure.
“Everyone leaves, Cruz. My father left. My mother chose the bottle every single day of my life. She chose Gerald over my safety. Nobody has ever once looked at the full picture of me and stayed. So I keep waiting. I keep watching the door.”
“Sweetheart.” I wait until she looks at me. “I’m terrified of the same thing.”
She blinks.
“You think I trust this?” I gesture at nothing.
“I’ve never had it either. People who know the worst of me and pick me anyway.
Some part of me is braced every morning for the text that says it’s over, everybody sobered up, thanks for the memories.
Good things don’t stay. That’s the reality I grew up in. I keep waiting for this one to follow.”
“So we’re both sitting here waiting for the other one to run?” she confirms.
“Pretty much. Whole lot of watching doors in this relationship.”
“That’s so stupid,” she says.
“It’s incredibly stupid.” I pull her hand up and kiss her knuckles.
“Here’s what I figure, though. Staying is a fight too.
Maybe the only fight that counts. Everything in the cage, you train for.
Combinations, defense, cardio. Nobody trains you to believe somebody when they say they’re not leaving.
You just gotta walk into that one raw and take the hits. ”
“You’re better at fortune cookies than Victor,” she teases.
“I learned from the best.”
We clear the plates, moving around my small kitchen like we’ve done it a hundred times.
Then we end up on the couch, and she folds into my side under my arm, and I put on some movie neither of us tracks for a single scene.
There’s no heat to it. First time we’ve been alone with a locked door for a whole night, and neither of us reaches for the other that way.
Her breathing evens out somewhere around midnight, her head heavy on my chest, one hand fisted in my shirt like she’s making sure I stay put.
I stroke her hair and stare at the ceiling and think about what we’re building.
Five people, all broken along different fault lines, all let down by the ones who were supposed to hold the line for us. Now we hold it for each other.
I fall asleep on that couch with her in my arms, both of us fully dressed, my neck at an angle I’ll pay for in the morning. And there’s nowhere else I want to be as much as here, for her.
When I wake up, she’s still there.
That’s the whole thing right there. She heard the worst of me at that table, gave me the worst of her back, and in the morning she’s still here, one leg thrown over mine.
She stirs when I shift. “What time is it?”
“Little after seven.”
“Your couch is terrible.”
“My couch is a war hero. Show some respect.”
We make breakfast in my small kitchen, and it’s so freaking natural.
She scrambles eggs while I handle the coffee, and we move around each other without collisions, without needing to speak, her hip bumping mine when she reaches past me for the salt.
This. This is what I want when I let myself want long-term.
Not just the fire. The morning after the fire, when the coals are still warm and somebody’s stealing bacon off your plate.
“I have to go,” she says around nine thirty, pulling on her shoes by the door. “Eli’s got me on conditioning at ten.”
“Tell him you were up all night with a large emotional man.”
“That’ll go over great at the gym.” She stops at the door, keys in hand, and looks back at me. “Cruz. Thank you. For just... sitting in it with me.”
“Anytime, sweetheart. I mean that. Middle of the night, whenever. You wake up thinking he’s in the room, you call me. I’ll stay on the phone until you know he’s not.”
Her eyes shine, and she nods once. Then she’s gone down the stairs, and I watch from my window as her car pulls away.
There’s a new feeling in my chest this morning that I don’t have a name for yet, but I hope it stays.
Bigger than wanting her. Bigger than the ache I get watching any of the four of them across a room.
It’s the same thing that was in Victor’s eyes at that Waffle House at four in the morning, I think.
The decision, made whole and final, to be the one who shows up.
I’m going to be the person who stays. For her. For Dante and Brady and Eli. Every day, even the ugly ones. Especially the ugly ones.
Family isn’t just blood. It’s who shows up. Who holds your broken pieces without trying to grind them smooth. Who sees you at three in the morning in a holding cell, or crying over pad thai about a monster in Florida, and doesn’t look away.
I have that now. We all have that now.
And I’ll burn the whole world down before I let anything take it from us.