Chapter 30 Harlow
HARLOW
By Friday morning, I’m done with the space.
I don’t want it anymore. I haven’t wanted it since sometime late Wednesday night, if I’m being honest. But Grayson had an away game yesterday, and no matter how badly I wanted to hear his voice, I knew trying to have this conversation before that wouldn’t have been fair to either of us.
So I waited.
This morning, I texted him and asked if he could meet me at the bench on campus—the one we’ve somehow claimed without ever officially saying so. The one where we’ve talked and laughed and circled around things that mattered before either of us was brave enough to call them what they were.
Ever since Wren left my dorm Wednesday morning after a night of movies and junk food and laughing until my stomach hurt, I’ve known what I wanted.
Honestly, I’ve known since the rink.
Maybe even before that.
Sometimes the truth settles in quietly, long before you’re ready to admit it out loud.
But knowing something and being ready to act on it aren’t always the same thing. Sometimes it’s better to take the space you need and let your feelings untangle fully before you make a decision you might regret later.
At least, that’s what my therapist has spent years trying to teach me.
Sometimes my mind is magic.
Other times, it’s the scariest place I know.
When it lets me live, really live, it can be wonderful.
But sometimes it still reaches for old versions of me I don’t want to be anymore.
The version who could look at salad dressing and hear a voice in her head whisper too much.
The version who would punish herself for softness.
The one who used to believe she had to disappear piece by piece to be worthy of taking up space at all.
The version who let ugly thoughts sink their claws in so deep she started questioning whether her life was worth living.
It was.
It is.
And while Grayson helped me see parts of myself more clearly, he didn’t save me from that. I did that work. I fought for myself. I clawed my way back to the surface with therapists and doctors and the kind of effort no one sees unless they’ve lived it too.
I know that matters.
I know it matters that I found pieces of myself on my own before I gave my heart to someone else.
Because it means when I say that I trust Grayson, I trust him with more than my body. I trust him with the parts of me I had to rebuild.
A movement at the end of the sidewalk catches my attention, and my breath sticks in my throat.
Grayson.
His hands are shoved into the pockets of his shorts, hood pulled up, head slightly bowed. Even from here, I can see it—the weariness in the way he carries himself, the heaviness in his shoulders.
He looks more defeated than I’ve ever seen him.
Worse than after a loss. Worse than after a bad game.
And even though I know I needed the time, even though I know I wasn’t wrong for taking it, seeing the hurt on his face makes something twist painfully in my chest.
I don’t want him to look like that. I don’t want to be the reason he does.
He stops in front of me.
He doesn’t sit. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t pretend this week hasn’t gotten to him.
He just stands there with his shoulders slightly hunched, like he’s bracing for a hit he already decided he deserves, and looks at me with eyes that hold so much quiet pain it makes my own chest ache.
There are dark circles under them. Deeper than usual. Telling in a way I don’t think he realizes.
Sleep hasn’t been kind to him either.
“Hey,” he says.
His voice is careful. Not cold, not distant—just careful. Like he’s afraid the wrong word might send me running.
It won’t.
“Hey,” I say back, softer than I mean to.
His gaze flicks over my face, like he’s checking for damage. My sleeves pulled over my hands. The way my knee is bouncing just enough to give me away.
He swallows.
“You said you wanted to talk?”
I shift toward one side of the bench and pat the empty space beside me. “Do you want to sit?”
For a second, I think he might say no. Then he nods once and lowers himself beside me.
Not too close. Not far either.
Close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him. Close enough that my whole body wants to lean in.
He feels like home, and I hate how much I missed that.
For a few seconds, I stare at my hands in my lap, trying to figure out how to begin in a way that says everything I mean and nothing I don’t. Then I lift my eyes to his.
“I’m not mad at you, Gray.”
His whole face changes.
Not fully, not all at once—but something in him jolts. His eyes widen slightly, like maybe he wasn’t expecting those words first. Like maybe he wasn’t expecting them at all.
“I was upset,” I continue carefully. “And shocked, I think. But not because of you.” I let out a small breath. “If the roles were reversed, I don’t know that I would’ve handled it any better. I probably would’ve been scared too. Scared to tell you in case it meant losing you.”
His jaw tightens like he’s holding something back, but his eyes give him away.
I already know that fear lived in him too.
“I knew by Wednesday morning that I wasn’t angry with you,” I say.
“But knowing that and being ready to talk about it weren’t the same thing.
I needed a minute to sit with it and make sure I understood what I was feeling.
” My voice softens. “I’m sorry if that hurt you.
I’m not sorry I took the time, because I needed it. But I am sorry it hurt.”
Something in his expression eases then. Just a little.
I reach for his hand before I can overthink it, threading my fingers through his.
He looks down at where we’re joined, then back at me, like the contact means more than he knows how to say.
“I cared about you as NumberEleven,” I tell him quietly. “Deeply. I trusted you with things I never even said out loud in therapy. I let you see parts of me I’ve spent years trying to hide.”
His fingers tighten around mine.
“But as Grayson…” I pause because I hear the way he inhales sharply, hear the way he’s still bracing for impact even now. My heart squeezes. “As Grayson, I fell for you.”
His eyes close for half a second.
When they open again, there’s so much raw feeling in them it nearly undoes me.
“In a very non-friend way,” I add, and that earns the smallest, most fragile flicker of a smile from him. It gives me enough courage to keep going.
“You made me feel safe,” I say. “Protected. Seen. And not in a way that made me feel fragile either. Just…like I didn’t have to hold every piece of myself together all the time.” Emotion thickens my throat, but I push through it. “You made me feel bold enough to ask for what I wanted.”
His gaze never leaves mine. I don’t even think he blinks.
“There’s been so much work,” I whisper. “Years of it. Doctors and therapy and hard days and setbacks and trying again. And I’m proud of that.
I’m proud of how hard I fought to become this version of myself.
But then you came into my life, and it felt like…
” I look down at our hands for a second, gathering the words.
“Like there was this missing piece I didn’t even know I was still searching for. ”
His thumb brushes once over my knuckles.
“You didn’t fix me,” I say, because I need him to understand that too.
“That isn’t what this is. But you met me exactly where I was and cared for me there.
As yourself. As NumberEleven. As my friend before anything else.
And somehow that made it easier to believe the things I’ve been trying to teach myself for years—that I’m enough. That I’ve always been enough.”
The tears burn before they fall.
Then I make myself say the most important part.
“I want you, Gray.”
The words land between us like something living.
I stare at our hands because if I look at him too soon, I might lose my nerve.
“I want us,” I admit. “In whatever way I can have it. I want to be the person you come to on hard days. I want to know the things you don’t say to everyone else. I want to be your best friend and…” My voice catches, but I force myself through it. “More than that, if you still want that too.”
For one suspended second, there’s no sound except the wind moving through the trees.
Then Grayson lets go of my hand—not to pull away, but to slide his fingers gently under my chin and tip my face up to his.
There’s no hesitation in him now. No guardedness. Just feeling, wide open and impossible to miss.
“If I want that?” he repeats, voice rough.
A tear slips free, and his thumb catches it before it can fall far.
“Harlow,” he says, and there’s so much in my name when he says it that my whole chest aches.
“Since the first day you walked into our apartment, I wanted to know you. Really know you. I have never felt pulled toward someone the way I was pulled toward you.” His throat moves like he has to swallow around the words.
“There is nothing I want more than you.”
That does it.
The tears come harder, and I let out a soft, embarrassed laugh as I wipe at my face with my free hand.
His expression crumples a little around the edges.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “No, don’t cry, love. That’s the last thing I want.”
That broken little laugh escapes me again. “They’re happy tears.”
He exhales, some of the tension finally leaving him. “You sure?”
“Mostly.” I sniff and try to smile. “There was a part of me that worried me disappearing on you for a few days might’ve changed things.”
His whole face shifts.
Not angry. Not offended.
Just firm in that quiet, Grayson way that never feels loud but somehow always feels absolute.
“Never,” he says.
The word hits me deep.
“I mean it,” he adds. “If you need space, you take it. If you need time to figure something out, you take that too. Whatever makes you feel safe, whatever helps you protect yourself—you do it.” His hand slides from my chin to cup the side of my face. “I’ll take whatever comes with that.”
I don’t even think before moving.
I go straight into him, arms wrapping around his neck as I climb halfway onto his lap on the bench like I need to prove to my body that he’s real and here and still mine to reach for.
He catches me instantly.
His arms come around me tight and warm, one hand spanning the middle of my back, the other settling at the base of my skull like he doesn’t ever want to let me go again.
And maybe he doesn’t.
I press my face into his neck and breathe him in.
He smells like detergent and cold air and something that is just him, something my body recognizes before my brain does. His chest rises and falls beneath mine, slow and solid and steady enough to anchor me.
“I missed you,” he says into my hair.
The quiet ache in his voice nearly wrecks me.
“I missed you too.”
We stay like that for a long moment, neither of us rushing it. He doesn’t fill the silence with words just because it exists. He just holds me like he knows that sometimes being held is its own kind of language.
Eventually, he pulls back enough to look at me.
Both his hands come up to frame my face, and his eyes search mine like he’s looking for any sign that I might disappear again.
“We okay?” he asks softly.
I don’t even have to think about it.
“Yeah, Gray,” I whisper. “We’re okay.”
The relief that moves through him is visible.
It’s the permission he was waiting for.
He leans in and kisses me.
It’s not rushed. Not desperate. Just deep and full and everywhere all at once. A kiss that tastes like apology and forgiveness and longing and the quiet certainty of finding your way back to someone who still feels like home when you get there.
It ends before it can become anything else, but just barely.
He rests his forehead against mine, breathing a little harder than before.
I smile, small and shaky. “I don’t want to do that again.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Which part?”
“Any of it.” I swallow. “But mostly the part where you were hurting and I couldn’t do anything about it because I was the one who caused it.”
He shakes his head immediately. “Harlow, you didn’t do something cruel. You needed time to process something hard. That’s not the same thing.”
“It still hurt you.”
“Yeah,” he admits. “It did.” His arm slides around my shoulders, drawing me against his side. “But I don’t blame you.”
I tilt my head to look at him. “No?”
A humorless breath leaves him. “I blame myself, honestly.”
My chest tightens. “Gray…”
He stares out at the path in front of us for a second before looking back at me.
“I kept thinking I should’ve told you sooner. Should’ve handled it better. Should’ve found a way to make it easier for you.” His jaw flexes. “And every hour I didn’t hear from you, I kept thinking maybe I’d broken the one good thing I’ve had my hands on in a long time.”
Emotion hits me fresh and fast.
I turn toward him fully, reaching for his face this time. His eyes search mine.
“You didn’t break this. You didn’t lose me,” I whisper. “You were never going to lose me over that.”
He lets out a breath like he’s been holding it for days.
Then he dips his head and presses his forehead to mine again.
“Good,” he says quietly. “Because I’m kind of done imagining my life without you in it.”
My heart stutters.
I smile through the last of my tears, brushing my thumb across the edge of his jaw. “That’s convenient.”
His mouth finally curves into a real smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I lean in and kiss him once, softer this time. “Because I’m kind of done imagining mine without you too.”
This time when he kisses me back, he smiles into it.