Chapter 50
Fifty
“Bri.”
I’ve been on this deck long enough for the sky to change colours.
Fifty-four minutes. I counted. Each one telling me go in. Each one going ignored.
Now he’s here.
Carson.
His shadow comes to me before he does.
Hair messy, features slack, the grey of his eyes dulled in that way they get when he hasn’t slept. But the second they land on me—my face, the words stretched across my shirt—dawn breaks in them.
He closes the distance in a handful of strides, arms out like he can’t reach me fast enough. I just about catch the fleeting curve of his lips before I’m swallowed against his chest. Salt, sleep and something I’ve started to call home.
That’s him.
“You’re so cute,” he mumbles, rocking us side to side. It’s a sway I shouldn’t fall into to, but I do. I do because the part of me that wants to fall into him still outweighs the part that knows I can’t.
I’ll miss this.
“You know when I knew?” His voice brushes my crown, softer than breath. “That you were my kind of girl?”
My eyes shut on instinct, like that might hold me together.
“You were picking up plastic on the beach. Early morning. No one else around. Just you and the seagulls.”
I remember.
I hadn’t slept. The sky felt too wide, the beach too empty, and the music louder than it needed to be.
He was there? That was long before I ever believed I could mean anything to him.
“What about you?” That’s even fainter now, almost… shy? God help me. “Was there a moment for you?”
So many. Too many. But they crowd against each other, unable to find their way out. He pulls back when the silence stretches too long. Whatever he sees on my face makes him falter.
“Hey,” he ducks, aiming for a clearer view. “What’s wrong?”
God. God. I don’t want to do this. I’ve turned it over a hundred ways. Tried to cheat the logic, to find a side door out.
But no matter how much I spin it, I still end up here. Right here… to this.
“I had therapy.”
His features ease a little. “Yeah?”
“We talked about some things. About you.”
The softness thins. Caution now, like he can sense it. “And?”
“She thinks…” The words scrape out of me. “She thinks I might be using you as an anchor. A patch. That I lean on you like I used to lean on drugs and on alcohol. That maybe I’ve just found a new way to fill the same hole.”
At first, he just stares. Blank. Like the words don’t register.
Then, slowly, “No.” His head shakes, once, twice. “No, Bri. That’s not—” The protest catches, but he drags it back, firmer. “This is you. You’re doing this. You didn’t even let me in at first. How could I be your crutch if I wasn’t even in the know?”
He’s trying to ground it in logic, but when I don’t answer, something in him unravels.
“So what—she thinks I’m just your fix? That this”—his hand slices the air between us—“is no different than a drink or a pill? Do you believe that?” It trembles toward the end.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “It might be true.”
His expression collapses inward. He drags both hands through his hair, turns away as if distance might steady him, then comes right back, seizing me with frantic force. “I don’t care. If I’m what steadies you, then let me. I want that. I want to carry it. Let me hold you.”
I shake my head, wrenching free. “That’s not healing, Carson. That’s leaning until I forget how to stand.”
“But you’re not!” His reply pierces like it’s the one truth he’s willing to stake everything on. “You were, at first, maybe. But baby—” the words are a fault line, barely holding, “now you feel. You talk about her. You laugh and you cry. That’s not running.”
“But I don’t know who I am.” My chest shakes. “Not really. I had Bryce then I had you. I’ve never had to stand alone. I don’t know what that looks like.”
“So what are you saying?” Toned down now. Afraid.
I look him in the eyes. Don’t break.
“I need to go back to our beach house. I need to be on my own for a while.”
“No.” He’s already shaking his head. “No—Bri, please. You don’t have to do that. Stay here. You can have the room, I’ll take the couch. I’ll give you space—”
“Carson.”
“—I won’t even talk to you if you don’t want me to, just let me—”
“Carson.”
I catch his hand. His fingers flinch against mine.
“I have to. I know it hurts, I know, but I have to.”
He clasps his neck, elbows jutting wide, and I swear I’ve never seen him look more destroyed. I feel it too, like if I look down, I’d see both our hearts split open on the floor.
“It’s okay.” The lie leaves me anyway. “We’ll be fine.” God, I hate seeing him like this. It’s worse than when he found me with the pills. Lower than that. And I want to make him feel better so badly it fogs my judgment. I don’t even think before I say it—
“If this means you need to move on while I’m still fighting through this, then do it. I don’t want you stuck.”
It shreds a thousand different ways coming up, and I know then if he ever takes me up on it, I’ll never recover.
For a moment, he doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t even breathe. He just… stills. Then his arms slip down, heavy at his sides, and his gaze fixes somewhere beyond me. The fight that burned in him only seconds ago is wiped clean. Gone, like it was never real.
Then he moves.
A step back.
Two.
The space between us feels impossible.
And when he turns, walks inside, I wonder if it’ll ever fill again.