Chapter 7 #2
The hallway holds that sentence like a secret. It changes the color of the air. I am not sure I breathe for a second.
“Then, what?” I ask, and even I can hear the fray at the edges of the question.
He takes that half-step closer that feels like being pushed and caught at the same time. “I want you to be honest.” He says. “I want you when you stop pretending that good and safe are the same thing.”
“I don’t pretend.” I say, but it’s gentle, devoid of bite. I don’t have the energy for defense and desire at once.
His eyes leave my face just long enough to map the hallway; exits, angles, who could see if they turned the corner and then his gaze returns. “You gave me the word outside.” He says. Nothing moves in his expression, and still everything inside me moves. “I heard it. I’m not giving it back.”
Something low in me loosens. Owning it isn’t the jail I expected. It feels like the key in the lock of a door I didn’t know I built.
“Okay.” I tell him.
He inclines his head as if we’ve signed something no one else will ever read. “Good.”
For a long beat we stand there with breathing as the only movement, an elastic quiet that could snap if either of us twitches. Then a peel of laughter staggers down the hall and breaks against us. Voices. The storm of the party turns and sends a wave in our direction.
“Go.” He growls in a low command made softer by the way his gaze lingers. “Before he thinks to ask where you are.”
“Will you—” I don’t finish because the question admits more need than I’m ready to hear out loud.
His mouth curves. “I don’t leave rooms you’re in.”
The ridiculous comfort of that lodges in my chest. I nod and step past him, and even though we don’t touch, the sleeve of his jacket grazes my arm and sets off a chain of sparks that travel all the way to my fingertips.
Back in the living room, the volume has shifted from wild to dense.
People have sunk into conversations in corners, laughter at a lower pitch, music stubborn and relentless.
I move through it with a steadiness I’m not sure I own.
My dad is by the mantel now, one hand on the edge like the house might tip without him holding it up.
I angle toward him because that is what I’ve always done.
He sees me coming and someone, one of the guys peels away, leaving my father a clear path to me.
“Hey.” I say, and it is ridiculous how the single word shakes.
He hears it. Of course he does. “Tired?” He asks, like he’s offering me a story to step into. My father has always been good at that. I almost take it because I am soft for him in a way that has nothing to do with tonight.
“A little.” I find a smile. “It’s a lot.”
His eyes soften. “You did good, kiddo.” The old endearment lands tender and heavy. For a second I am a girl with sticky fingers from caramel apples and a brother who kept me close in the dark. Then the second ends. “I’ll start sending people out in a bit.”
“Okay.” I nod. I want to ask if he’s okay and I don’t because we both know the answer changes with the weather and the season and the way grief decides to bend his spine. His hand squeezes my shoulder. He lets go.
Triston slides into my periphery like a shadow finding its source. He’s at the edge of the room, speaking to no one, and somehow the distance between us feels like a thread I can tug that will rearrange the room.
The last hour blurs: trash bags filling, thank-yous, promises tossed toward the door and caught or dropped depending on how drunk the catcher is.
Jenna kisses my cheek and whispers. “You look different, in a good way.” And I don’t ask what she means because I’m afraid she’ll be too right.
The guys clatter out, loud down the walk.
The rookies try to help and get shooed by assistant coaches who’ve done this a hundred times.
When the house settles, it does it all at once.
The quiet is enormous. The clock in the hall ticks like it owns the place.
My dad leans both palms on the edge of the kitchen sink and stares out into the dark yard like he could will it to give him back all the things it took.
Then he scrubs his face, straightens, and turns.
“Knight.” He says, and the way he says the name makes the hair rise on my arms.
I hadn’t seen Triston move, but he’s there now, as if conjured: in the doorway between kitchen and living room, dark and still. The room shrinks. My breath forgets its rhythm. My father’s gaze slides past me, through me, finds its target and holds.
“We need to talk.” Dad says. Not loud. Not for show. But with the weight of a man who lifts a whole season on his back and will lift his daughter’s life if he has to.
A crackling runs through the moment and keeps going. Triston doesn’t look at me. His eyes are on my father, steady as black ice. In the silence, my confession from the yard echoes in my own head—yours—and I don’t know if I should be braver or smaller or if there’s a version of me that can be both.
“Now.” My father adds, and there’s no air left.
Triston inclines his head once, a predator acknowledging another. The shape of the room shifts around that nod. He follows my dad toward the office, the door half-open and then closed.
I am left standing with two cups in my hands and nowhere for them to go.
Jenna appears, then sees my face and thinks better of whatever she was about to say. She squeezes my arm, whispers. “Text me.” And ghosts away into the night.
The house is too still. The shed is a shadow on the lawn; my heartbeat remembers its exact dimensions.
Behind the office door, low voices rumble and cut, too soft to catch words and too sharp to be nothing.
I step closer without meaning to. Old floorboards betray me with a soft creak, and I freeze like I’m twelve outside a room I wasn’t meant to hear.
No one calls me in. No one calls me away.
My phone trembles in my pocket. The message is only two words.
Stay there.
I don’t know if he means the hallway, the house, the life we just tipped on its side. I do what I’ve been doing all night. I listen.
Somewhere in the walls the furnace kicks on.
October presses its face to the glass. On the other side of a single door, the two men who have been the gravity of my life speak in low tones that can change the shape of everything.
I rest my forehead on the cool frame and breathe like I’m learning how.
I am not the girl I was when the party started. I don’t know yet if I’m the girl I became in the yard. But I am someone who says okay to what she wants, someone who can carry two truths at once: that I love my father, and that I stepped into the dark on purpose.
Footsteps shift. Silence follows. The handle turns.
I straighten, blood a bright wire under my skin.
The door opens. My dad fills the doorframe with his presence, then steps sideways enough that I can see past him. Triston’s gaze finds mine first and holds, steady as if the hallway itself is a ledge and he’s telling me not to look down.
For a heartbeat none of us move.
Then my father says my name—just my name, nothing else—and I know the next words in this house are going to redraw the map I’ve been using to navigate since last Halloween.
I don’t know which way is north anymore. I lift my chin anyway.