Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maya
The engine of Zachary’s car cuts out, plunging us into a sudden, weighted silence.
The only sounds are the rhythmic ticking of the cooling metal and the faint, frantic thrum of my own heart against my ribs.
Outside the window, the familiar brick facade of our apartment building looms, each window a dark, unblinking eye.
Usually, it represents a sanctuary, a quiet place to shed the armor of the day.
Tonight, it looks like a cage. A place where my thoughts can corner me.
I don’t move. I can’t. My hands are clenched in my lap, my knuckles white.
The exhaustion is a physical weight, a lead blanket stitched into the lining of my muscles, a side effect of the new medication that’s supposed to be helping but mostly just feels like it’s stealing my energy and my focus.
It leaves me in a fog, a haze that’s all too easily pierced by the sharp edges of anxiety.
The biopsy. The word itself is a stone in my gut.
I’ve been so good at not thinking about it, at pushing it down beneath layers of grading and lesson planning and faculty meeting grievances.
But now, in this quiet car, it floats to the surface, ugly and unavoidable.
And bubbling right alongside it is the frothing, useless rage from this afternoon’s meeting.
Trevor, with his condescending smile and his strategic delegation.
As if Zachary and I have time to help our coworkers plan collaborative lessons while we try to plan our own. Our plates are full enough as it is.
The last thing I want is to walk through that door, turn on the lights, and face all of this alone.
The silence in my apartment won’t be peaceful, it will be an amplifier, turning every whisper of fear and flicker of anger into a deafening roar.
I don’t want to feel these things. Or, no, that’s not true.
I want to feel them, I have to feel them, but I can’t bear the thought of feeling them by myself.
My gaze slides from the building to the man in the driver’s seat.
Zachary. He’s just sitting there, his hands resting on the steering wheel, giving me space.
He isn’t rushing me, isn’t filling the silence with pointless platitudes.
He’s just…present. He turns his head, and his eyes, a deep and inviting brown, find mine in the dim glow of the streetlight.
There’s a question in them, a gentle concern that undoes me.
The words are out of my mouth before I can second-guess them, before the part of my brain that calculates risk and consequence can clamp down. “Do you want to come in?”
A flicker of surprise crosses his face, but it’s gone in an instant, replaced by something I can’t quite read. He doesn’t hesitate. Not for a second. “Yeah,” he says, his voice a low rumble in the quiet car. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
The relief is so immediate and so profound that I feel dizzy with it. I nod, a single sharp jerk of my head, and unbuckle my seatbelt. My door is suddenly open and Zachary’s there, helping me out, then guiding me into the building with the heat of his palm on my lower back.
Inside, the air is still and cool. I flick on a lamp casting a soft, golden glow over the living room. I drop my keys and bag on the small entry table with a clatter that sounds impossibly loud.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I say, my voice sounding strained to my own ears. “I don’t really have… well, anything, for dinner.” My fridge is a wasteland of condiments and a half-empty carton of almond milk.
Zachary toes off his shoes and sets them neatly by the door. “Frozen pizza?” he suggests, a small smile playing on his lips. “I’m a connoisseur.”
I can’t help but laugh a short, sharp sound. “I think I have one of those. The fancy kind with the cracker-thin crust.”
“My favorite,” he says with a mock-seriousness that coaxes another, more genuine smile out of me.
While we wait for the ancient oven in my galley kitchen to creak its way up to four hundred degrees, a task that seems to require the concentration and effort of a space launch, the silence descends again.
It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s present.
I lean against the counter, wrapping my arms around my middle, feeling the day’s anxieties begin to crawl back up my throat.
Zachary opens a cabinet, then another. “Where are your mugs?” he asks.
“Uh, to the left of the sink.”
He finds one, then rummages through my pantry. He emerges holding a canister of hot chocolate mix, a relic from last winter. “Is this okay?”
I just nod, my throat suddenly tight.
He fills the kettle and sets it on the stove.
He moves around my small kitchen with an easy, unhurried grace.
He measures the powder into the mug, his brow furrowed in concentration.
It’s such a simple thing. A cup of hot chocolate.
A gesture of basic, human kindness. But it feels like a monumental act of care.
No one has made me hot chocolate in years.
My mom used to when I was a kid and would come in from playing in the snow, my fingers and toes numb with cold.
The memory is so sharp, so bittersweet, that it stings behind my eyes.
And just like that, the dam I’ve so carefully constructed inside of me, the one holding back the flood of fear and frustration and fury, cracks.
The kettle whistles, a piercing shriek that mirrors the one building in my own chest. Zachary pours the steaming water into the mug, stirs it carefully, and slides it across the counter to me. My hands are trembling as I wrap them around the warm ceramic.
“They said I’ll have to wait another week for the biopsy results,” I say, and the words are a torrent rushing out of me, unstoppable.
“A week. Like it’s nothing. Like I’m just supposed to go about my life—teach my classes, grade my papers, sit in pointless meetings—with this…
this thing hanging over my head. Are my kidneys failing?
Are they not? Just let me know so I can deal with it, you know?
But no. I have to wait. And this new medication is making me so damn tired I can barely think straight.
I feel like I’m moving through Jell-O all day, and my head is full of cotton, and then Trevor dumping all of this extra work on us today.
I’m so angry I could scream. And my mom…
I called to tell her and my dad about having to go to the hospital.
Of course she made the whole thing about herself.
She called me selfish and asked if I had any pictures of myself from the hospital stay that she could paint. ”
The words pour out, a messy, incoherent jumble of everything I’ve been holding inside.
I’m pacing the small space between the kitchen and the living room, the forgotten mug of hot chocolate still clutched in my hands.
I rant about my mother, work, the impossible-to-navigate insurance portal, and the pressure to pretend that everything is fine, that I’m fine, when I feel like I’m splintering apart from the inside out.
Through it all, Zachary just listens. He doesn’t interrupt.
He doesn’t offer solutions or tell me to calm down.
He stands leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze never leaving my face.
He listens with an intensity that makes me feel seen, truly seen, for the first time in a long time.
When I finally run out of steam, the silence that follows is thick with my spent emotion.
I’m breathing heavily, my cheeks are wet with tears I didn’t even realize I was crying, and I feel utterly exposed.
I wait for it. For the gentle dismissal.
You’re overreacting. It’s probably nothing.
You’re just stressed. The things people say when they don’t know what to say.
But Zachary doesn’t say any of that. He pushes off the doorframe and takes a step toward me.
“That’s all bullshit,” he says, his voice low and firm.
“You have every right to be angry. You have every right to be terrified. Waiting a week for results like that is torture. Trevor is a prick who is giving you too much extra work. And your mom… your mom is being clueless and unhelpful when you need her most. Everything you’re feeling is completely valid, Maya. ”
My breath catches in my throat. He heard me. He actually heard me. He didn’t just hear the words; he heard the hurt and the fear and the rage beneath them.
He takes another step, closing the space between us. “So,” he says softly, his eyes searching mine. “What can we do? How can we get you through tonight? And how are we going to handle the next week, and everything at school?” He pauses, his gaze intensifying. “Specifically, what can I do to help?”
We. He said we. And then, what can I do?
Something inside me shifts. The fear and anger don’t disappear, but they recede, replaced by a different kind of energy, a powerful current of want that zings through my entire body.
For weeks, I’ve been operating on pure logic, navigating the treacherous waters of our shared workplace, but also our shared attraction.
That night we met at the bar and kissed on the sand dune and the night we kissed in front of our apartment building and then I pulled away, something to be analyzed and rationalized away.
We’re colleagues. It was a mistake. It can’t happen again if we’re going to maintain a professional working relationship.
But tonight, I’m done with logic. I’m done with worrying about consequences and repercussions and what-ifs. All I know is that the man standing in front of me just offered me a lifeline, and I want to do more than just hold on to it. I want to wrap myself up in it. I want to wrap myself up in him.
Just for tonight, I’m not going to think. I’m just going to act.
I set the mug down on the counter with a soft clink. I take the last step toward him, slide my hands up his chest, link them behind his neck, and pull his mouth down to mine.
I kiss him. And this time, it’s not a frenzied, desperate collision on the front steps of our apartment building.
It’s deliberate. It’s a statement. I feel the surprise that stiffens his body for a half-second before he melts into it, his hands coming up to cup my face, his thumbs stroking my tear-stained cheeks.
The kiss is soft at first, a question and an answer all at once.
But I don’t pull away. There’s no panic, no sudden rush of regret.
There is only a deep, resounding rightness.
I deepen the kiss, parting my lips, my tongue tracing his.
A low groan rumbles in his chest, and his hands slide from my face down my back, pulling me flush against him.
The flimsy barrier of our clothes does little to hide the heat of his body, the hard lines of his muscles.
I feel alive, every nerve ending singing.
I break the kiss only to hoist myself up so I’m sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter.
Without a word, I part my thighs and pull him forward into the space between my legs.
His hands find my hips, his fingers digging in slightly, and he presses into me, his mouth finding mine again.
This is where I want to be. This is the only thing that makes sense. I pull back just enough to speak, my voice a ragged whisper against his lips. “Do you want to go to my bedroom?”
His eyes are dark, his breathing as uneven as mine. I can see the battle raging in his head. The desire is there, plain as day, but so is the caution. The pragmatism.
“Maya,” he murmurs, his forehead resting against mine.
“Are you sure? About this? What if… what if this just makes everything at work even more complicated? It’ll mean we’re hiding two secrets instead of one.
” He starts to pull back, his hands loosening on my hips.
“What if someone finds out? What if it messes up our friendship? What if—”
I cut him off with another kiss, hard and demanding this time. I pour all my certainty, all my need into it. “I don’t care,” I breathe against his mouth when I finally let him up for air. “I don’t care about any of that right now.”
I can tell he needs more. He’s trying to be noble, trying to protect me, protect us, from a future mess. But I don’t want protection right now. I want him.
“Zachary, listen to me,” I say, my voice low and earnest, my hands framing his face so he has no choice but to look at me.
“The second I pulled away from our kiss outside, I regretted it. I’ve wanted to do this, and more, every single day since then.
Honestly, every day since our kiss on the beach the first night we met.
” His eyes widen slightly, and I press on, needing him to understand.
“You’re my friend. You’re my colleague, yeah, but you’re also the person I talk to about stupid memes and terrible days at work.
You’re the person who listens to me. You’re the person I like spending time with more than anyone else. ”
I take a shaky breath, laying the final, most vulnerable truth bare. “I don’t know what this is, and I don’t care what it becomes tomorrow. All I know is that right now, I really, really need it to be you.”
The last of his hesitation evaporates. The worry in his eyes is replaced by a raw, consuming want that mirrors my own. He dips his head, his lips brushing mine in a silent promise.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Me too.”