Chapter 20 #2
Maps, some peeling at the corners. A globe with worn gold lines and fingerprints smudged along the equator.
Shelves brimming with textbooks and rock samples and the kind of clutter that only makes a place feel lived-in rather than messy.
The chair still has the sea-glass colored pillow slouched against it, and a stack of dog-eared field journals crowds one side of the desk.
I don’t mean to think it, but I wonder—briefly, traitorously—if his apartment feels like this.
Or if it’s more Theo’s aesthetic. Or some blend of chaos and order that’s entirely, achingly theirs.
The thought evaporates when Holden clears his throat.
He’s leaning back against the closed door, hands buried in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders tense in a way that makes his whole frame look sharper, more angular. He’s studying me—not intrusively, just… carefully. Like he’s trying to solve an equation he’s not sure he has all the variables for.
“You know there’s nothing you could’ve done, right?” he says, quiet but firm.
Ever the pragmatist. Even when it’s supposed to hurt.
And suddenly I feel like a fraud for crying over Damon. Like I’ve walked in here carrying a grief that’s too soft, too absurd, in front of someone who’s shouldered real loss. A brother. A life. What’s one octopus compared to that?
I swipe at my eyes. “I know. It’s fine, really, I’m just being—”
“Don’t do that.” His voice cuts clean through my deflection. He pushes off the door, takes a step closer, and his brows pinch like it physically pains him to see me pretend. “Don’t pretend you’re okay just to make me more comfortable,” he says. “Especially not when you let it all out for Theo.”
It takes me a second too long to process the sting in that sentence. My eyes widen.
“I… It’s not like that, I just—” My words scatter, useless. Because how do I explain what even I barely understand?
That Theo is safe in a familiar, untouchable way. That being held by him feels like borrowing someone’s hoodie—comforting, oversized, no strings attached. But Holden…
Holden is a mirror I haven’t figured out how to look into without flinching.
With him, I feel safest. And yet, it’s exactly because I feel so safe that I don’t want to fall apart.
Because he sees everything. Because his opinion weighs more.
Because the way I break in front of him would mean more than I’m ready to admit.
I meet his eyes, finally, and the truth slides out of me before I can stop it.
“I don’t know how to fall apart in front of you.”
He softens, just slightly. Enough for the wall between us to tilt.
“What do you really feel, Coralie?”
My bottom lip wobbles. That’s my answer.
And it’s enough. He doesn’t press. Just unfolds his arms, offering them to me like a question I don’t even hesitate to answer.
Always and forever allowing me the choice to be touched or not.
I step into him, let my forehead rest against the steady plane of his chest, and his arms come around me, warm and steady and exactly what I didn’t know I was waiting for.
The heat of him wraps around me, anchoring me in a way that makes my throat ache.
This—his scent, the solid weight of his arms, the quiet rumble of his breath—is the comfort that unspools me even as it holds me together.
The only person whose presence manages to both steady my nervous system and completely scramble it.
“They even erased the cephalopod vandalism,” I mutter into his shirt.
“The scribbles behind the tank?”
I lift my head just enough to look at him, surprised. “You knew?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You can’t be serious.”
“I thought me and the other vandal were being subtle.”
His mouth quirks in a knowing smile. One hand moves to gently comb through my hair, slow and soothing. “It was a pretty good drawing, Trouble. The attitude was spot-on.”
A watery laugh escapes me, but it’s hollow. I’m too spent to properly react—too tangled up in the grief, the shame of showing it, the sheer unfairness of it all. And yet, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be standing than in the middle of this tiny office, in his arms.
For a while, he doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t shift or fidget or fill the silence with empty comfort.
He just holds me. Steady and quiet. Letting my breathing settle and my thoughts find their own gravity.
Letting the ache of it—this strange, disproportionate grief over something small and once-alive—move through me without judgment.
And when I finally look up at him, his eyes are already on me.
“Why didn’t you come here?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.
There’s no accusation in it. Just something soft and deeply vulnerable sitting behind the question. A trace of hurt, maybe. A suggestion that he’s wondering if he did something wrong.
“Theo filed the paperwork with me,” I say quietly. “So I figured… he’d know more.”
He nods, once. Understands it. But the look in his eyes doesn’t fade. It lingers—something a little too tender, a little too bruised.
“And,” I add, “you and I still have to talk.”
That knocks something loose. He straightens slightly, like he’s bracing himself.
But then, without a word, he steps forward.
It’s slow, deliberate. His arms still around me, guiding me back, inch by inch, until the back of my legs meets the edge of his desk.
Then, with that same careful reverence he always reserves for me—like he knows I’m a fragile ecosystem in and of myself—he lifts me gently onto the surface.
Now we’re face to face. No craning, no hiding. Just the two of us in this quiet, sunlit office that suddenly feels too small for everything between us.
He plants his palms on either side of my thighs, caging me in without ever making me feel trapped. And then he leans in, his gaze steady and anchored entirely to mine.
“What do you want right now?” he asks. His voice is low, assured. “Because if you want to spend the day mourning Damon, I’ll drive you to your dorm—or my place—and we’ll do just that. If you want answers, I’ll call admin. If you want to talk, we’ll talk.”
Something in me stutters at the simplicity of it. At the sheer gentleness of being asked. No pressure, no expectation. Just Holden, standing in front of me, offering me every version of himself without condition.
I nod once, slowly, as the pressure behind my eyes rises again—not from sadness this time, but from the staggering relief of being given that kind of choice.
I take a second to revel in the shade of his eyes—those deep, molten browns that have haunted me since day one. They’re the color of something you crave: rich chocolate, slow-brewed espresso, the last flicker of warmth before sleep takes over.
“I want to talk, Holden.”
He frowns, head tilting. “You sure? We don’t have to do this now.”
I shake my head. “No. Holden… I hated you when we first met.” His brows twitch, but I keep going.
“Or more like—I hated that you hated me. And I couldn’t figure out why.
But now it feels like… maybe we’re finally in the same place.
At least about what we want. So I need to know what’s been holding you back. ”
His eyes drop to my mouth before fluttering closed, and when he leans in, his forehead touches mine like a weight or a vow.
“I never hated you, Trouble,” he says, voice wrecked. “I hated what you did to me.”
I blink. My breath catches.
“From the moment you opened your mouth in my lecture hall—a rambling little thing, you were—I haven’t had a single quiet thought.
” His lips ghost mine, so soft it’s almost not there.
“I tried to keep my distance but, every time, you found a way to get closer. And I hated… how badly I wanted to let you.”
His voice roughens on the last word, like it scrapes against something inside him.
“You should’ve run. Seen the mess. The sharp edges. The way I close up. You should’ve walked away. But you didn’t. You stayed. Worse—you chased. And that made it impossible.”
A tear slips down my cheek, hot and uninvited. I thought he resented me. Tolerated me at best. That I was a complication he didn’t want. But now…
“Is that why you call me Trouble?” I whisper.
He smiles, just barely. “That, and your constant state of proverbial pickles.”
A laugh escapes me, thin and wet and real.
But the next question is harder. “If you wanted me… why push me away?”
His expression shifts. Something tightens. He steps back and runs a hand through his hair—his go-to tell for stress. And now that I know how his hair feels between my fingers, the motion makes something ache low in my chest.
He hesitates.
“You need to know,” he says finally, “that I’ve never—not once—doubted your brilliance. Or your ambition. You’re capable of anything, Coralie. You’ve earned everything that’s come your way.”
The compliment lands harder than I expect. Because I believe him. Because it’s not flattery for the sake of it—he means every word.
But then he exhales, slow and heavy.
“When I was in undergrad, one of the sharpest people I knew was this girl, Carla. She dated a graduate student—Phil. Really decent guy, respected in the department. She got a massive internship at the end of her degree and everyone—everyone—said it was because of Phil. That she’d slept her way into it. ”
My breath catches.
“It happened again. And again. Different names, same story. Women I looked up to—fucking brilliant women—got reduced to who they dated. Got written off as tagalongs.”
Malcolm’s face flashes through my mind. How his name ended up on the papers I wrote. How I became the assistant instead of the architect.
My throat tightens.
“That’s…” I shake my head. “That’s devastating.”
He nods once, then steps forward again. His thumb traces the edge of my bottom lip, soft but certain.
“Do you understand now?” His voice breaks a little. “Why I kept pulling back?”
I nod slowly, chest heavy.