Chapter 12 #3
"I didn't, not completely. I just decided the fear wasn't allowed to make every decision anymore.
I let myself be wrong about worst-case scenarios sometimes, instead of always assuming I already knew how the story ended.
" She squeezed his hand. "You're not your dad, Beck.
You're sitting here terrified of becoming him, which is the opposite of what he ever did.
He never once worried about the damage. That's the whole difference. "
He pulled her into him then, holding on tighter than usual, like he was trying to physically anchor himself against the fear instead of just talking through it.
"I'm sorry," he said into her hair. "I'm not going to do that again. Pull away instead of just saying what's actually happening. I promise you that."
"You don't have to be perfect at this. Neither of us are going to be perfect at this. I just need you to stay in the room and tell me the truth instead of disappearing into your own head and letting me guess."
"Deal," he said, and meant it, and the two days of distance dissolved into something that felt, afterward, like proof rather than damage.
It wouldn't be the last time fear tried to talk one of them into leaving first.
? ? ?
It happened in March, weeks before the email, a small preview of the fracture that would come later, though neither of them recognized it as a preview at the time.
Beck had a rough week — a bad practice, a coach who'd singled him out in front of the whole team for a mistake that wasn't entirely his fault, and a phone call from his dad that left him quiet and distant for two full days, well-meaning but heavy, full of gentle questions about scouts and timelines and what Beck was thinking for next year that Beck didn't have good answers to yet.
He canceled their Wednesday dinner with a text that was shorter than usual, just rain check, sorry, not great company tonight, and Tessa spent the following twenty-four hours spiraling in a way that surprised her with its intensity, given how far she thought she'd already come.
He's pulling away. This is the part where it starts. This is exactly how it started with Tyler too, small distances first, before the bigger ones.
She showed up at his apartment uninvited on Thursday, something she'd never done before, heart pounding the whole walk over, half convinced she'd find evidence of exactly what she feared.
He opened the door looking exhausted, surprised to see her, and something in his face when he registered her expression made him step back immediately to let her in.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I panicked. You've been distant for two days and I know that's probably not fair to say, you're allowed to have a bad week, but I couldn't stop the thoughts, and I know that's not your fault, and I'm sorry for showing up like this—"
"Hey." He pulled her inside, closing the door, guiding her to sit down beside him on the couch. "Don't apologize for that. Talk to me. What thoughts, specifically?"
"That you're pulling away. That this is how it starts. That I did something, or that you're realizing something about me that you don't like, and it's easier to just slowly disappear than to say it directly."
He was quiet for a moment, processing that, and then he took both her hands.
"I had a genuinely terrible week. My coach embarrassed me in front of the whole team over something that honestly wasn't fully my fault, and my dad called asking about scouting timelines and what I'm planning for next year, and I don't have an answer yet, and it got in my head in a bad way.
I retreated the way I always do when I don't have an answer for something that matters.
It had nothing to do with you. I should have told you that instead of just canceling with two words and going quiet. "
"I know that logically. I just couldn't make the fear listen to logic."
"That's okay. That's allowed." He pulled her against his chest. "But I need you to also hear this — I'm not going to become a man who disappears on you slowly.
If I'm struggling, I'll tell you I'm struggling, even when my instinct is to go quiet instead.
I need to actually practice that, and I will, starting now.
And you can tell me when the old fear is talking loud enough that you need extra reassurance.
That's not a burden, Tessa. That's just what this is supposed to look like. "
She stayed at his apartment that whole night, both of them a little raw, a little more honest than usual, and understood, lying awake at two in the morning listening to him finally sleep peacefully beside her, that this — this specific willingness to name the fear instead of just surviving it silently — was going to be the actual, ongoing work of loving someone after everything Tyler had taught her love wasn't supposed to require.
It wouldn't be the last time the old fear showed up uninvited.
She understood that now, understood it wouldn't simply vanish because one good boy proved himself different from one bad one.
But she was starting to believe, slowly, that she didn't have to fight it alone anymore, that naming it out loud took away at least half its power.