BreatheFight Me #2
He pulls back far enough to meet my eyes. His hair is a disaster—my fault—and his lips are swollen and his eyes are wild with something I’ve never seen in him before.
“No,” he admits. “I really don’t.”
“Then don’t.”
He doesn’t.
We don’t.
And I can’t regret this. Won’t let myself.
Eventually, we surface. Bennett rolls onto his back beside me on the mat, both of us staring at the flickering fluorescent lights and trying to remember how to breathe normally.
“Well,” he says.
“Yeah.”
Silence stretches. Not awkward, exactly. Just... loaded. Waiting to see what comes next.
“Post-it time,” I say.
He turns his head to look at me. “What?”
“You heard me.” I push myself up onto one elbow. “Part of the deal. After significant emotional experiences, you name what you’re feeling. Out loud.”
“You want me to pick a Post-it after that?”
“I don’t have the board here, but I want you to tell me. What are you feeling right now?”
He looks at me for a long moment. I watch him consider deflection, see it rise and then fall away.
“Terrified,” he says finally. “And... alive. More alive than I’ve felt in months. Maybe years.”
“Those are good words.”
“Are they?” He reaches over, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Terrified doesn’t sound good.”
“Terrified is honest. Terrified means you understand that this matters.” Terrified means you’re not pretending this is casual. Not acting like it’s just chemistry or convenience or years of proximity finally snapping.
I catch his hand, hold it against my cheek. “What else?”
He thinks about it. Really thinks, the way he never used to before I started forcing him to.
“Exposed,” he says. “The same way I felt in the chair yesterday. Like you’re seeing parts of me I don’t show anyone.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” His thumb traces my cheekbone again. “It doesn’t feel bad. It just feels... new.”
“New can be scary.”
“New is definitely scary.” He sits up, runs his hand through his destroyed hair. “Gisele, what is this?”
I sit up too, tucking my legs underneath me.
The question hangs between us—the question I’ve been avoiding for three years because I was afraid of the answer.
The question that has a thousand possible answers and only one true one: this is everything I’ve wanted and everything I’m afraid of wanting.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I started this because I was worried about you. Because I watched you break down in the street and I couldn’t keep standing on the sidelines pretending everything was fine.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m sitting on a mat in an equipment room having just kissed you senseless, and I’m realizing I might have been lying to myself about my motivations.”
His mouth twitches. “Kissed me senseless?”
“Don’t fish for compliments. It’s unbecoming.”
“I’m not fishing. I’m clarifying.” He leans closer, voice dropping. “Because from where I was, it felt pretty mutual.”
“It was mutual.” I meet his eyes. “That’s what makes this complicated.”
The word lands between us. Complicated. A placeholder for everything we’re not ready to name.
“I should tell you something,” he says slowly.
“Okay.”
“The reason I’ve been keeping you at arm’s length all this time. The reason I never—” He stops, starts again. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want this.”
My heart stutters. “Then why?”
“Because you’re the only person I can’t afford to lose.
” The words land hard. Because I know exactly what he means.
I’ve been living the same truth from the other side.
“Everyone else—teammates, friends, even family sometimes—I can hold them at a distance. I can protect myself. But you were already in. You were already past every wall I built before I even realized I was building them.”
“Bennett—”
“And I thought if I let this happen—” He gestures between us. “If I let us become more, and then I screwed it up the way I screw everything up, I’d lose you completely. So I kept it... contained.”
The vulnerability in his words cracks my chest open.
“You’re not going to lose me,” I say softly.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that I’ve been here. I know that I watched you at your absolute lowest two days ago and my only thought was ‘how do I help.’ I know that whatever happens next, I’m not walking away just because it gets hard.”
He stares at me like I’ve handed him something precious and fragile. And maybe I have. Maybe we both have. Maybe that’s what this is—two people handing each other their hearts and trusting the other not to drop them.
“This changes everything,” he says.
“I know.”
“We can’t go back to pretending we’re just friends. We can’t unknow what it feels like to—” He stops, jaw working. “This.”
“I know that, too.”
“And I don’t know how to do this.” He gestures at the space between us, the mat, the whole impossible situation. “I don’t know how to be in something that matters without destroying it.”
“Then we figure it out together.” I reach for his hand, lace my fingers through his. “That’s kind of been the whole point of this, hasn’t it? Learning how to feel things without falling apart?”
“I thought it was about emotional kindergarten and Post-it notes.”
“Same thing.” I squeeze his hand. “Come on. We should get out of here before someone finds us and Shep has new material for his livestreams.”
We stand. I brush off my jeans, try to fix my hair, fail completely.
I look like I’ve been thoroughly kissed.
There’s no hiding it. My lips are swollen, my hair is a disaster, and I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my waist. Bennett watches me with an expression I can’t quite read—something between wonder and terror.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “Same time. We’ll figure out what this looks like going forward.”
“I can’t tomorrow. Four day road trip.”
I move toward the door, then pause. “Oh, okay. And Bennett?”
“Yeah?”
“For the record?” I let myself smile—the real smile, the one I’ve been hiding. “I’ve wanted to do that since we were fifteen.”
The confession costs me nothing. I’ve already given him everything that matters.
His face does something complicated. “Fifteen?”
“Fifteen. See you when you get back, Hothead.”
I open the door. I make it three steps down the corridor before I have to stop and lean against the wall.
My hands shake. My heart races. Every nerve ending in my body fires like he’s touching me.
We kissed.
After years of waiting, of wanting, of telling myself it would never happen—we kissed.
My phone buzzes.
For the record: me too. Since before fifteen. Since as long as I can remember wondering how it would feel to kiss you.
I stare at the words until they blur. Read them again. Again.
What a waste.
What a beautiful, terrible waste.
I push off the wall and walk out into the night, feeling like the ground has shifted beneath my feet.
There’s no going back now.