Chapter 3: The Test of Trust
The walk back from the library was a silent, shared wound. His hand stayed in mine, not with the possessive grip from before, but with a kind of desperate anchorage, as if I was the only thing keeping him from drifting out to sea. The cold air bit through my sweater, but the heat from his palm was a continuous current running up my arm.
My mind was a null space. The echo of his words in the sterile library—I feel like shit—mixed with the memory of his broken expression. This was the aftermath I’d wanted, hadn’t I? To see the consequence. Now that I had it, it tasted like ash.
We reached my building. He stopped on the front step, finally letting go of my hand to shove his into his pockets. “I should go.”
“You should,” I said. But neither of us moved.
The streetlight above us buzzed, casting a jaundiced glow on his tired face. He looked younger somehow, stripped of his arrogant certainty. He just looked like Harry. The boy who’d shared his headphones with me on the bus in eleventh grade, the one who knew I took my coffee with two sugars and absolutely no cream.
“But you won’t,” I heard myself say.
“No,” he admitted, his breath clouding in the air. “I probably won’t.”
I turned and fitted my key into the lock. The click was loud. I pushed the door open and walked into the dim hallway, not looking back. I heard his footsteps follow, the door sighing shut behind him, sealing us in.
My apartment felt different with him in it this time. The lingering scent of lavender soap from my shower, the soft glow of the string lights over the cluttered coffee table—it was all my sanctuary, but now it felt like a stage for whatever came next. He stood just inside the doorway, awkward, like a visitor.
“You can sit,” I said, my voice too formal. I moved to the kitchen, needing a task. “You want a drink? I have water. Maybe some shitty vodka.”
“Water’s fine.”
I filled two glasses, my back to him. I could feel him moving, the soft creak of the floorboards as he settled onto my couch. When I turned, he wasn’t lounging. He was perched on the edge of the cushion, elbows on his knees, staring at the frayed edge of my teal crocheted blanket.
I handed him his glass and took the armchair across from him, not the space next to him. The distance was a physical thing, a gulf of unsaid words and fresh hurt.
He took a sip, then swirled the water, watching the vortex. “She’s probably already told everyone.”
“Probably.”
“My phone’s been blowing up. I turned it off.”
“Good.” I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. A defensive ball. We were quiet for a long minute, the only sound the low hum of my refrigerator.
“I didn’t know how to do it,” he said, still talking to his glass. “The right way. There isn’t a right way to tell someone they were a placeholder. A mistake.”
“You loved her?” The question was out before I could stop it, sharp and needy.
He finally looked at me. “No. I liked the idea of her. I liked how easy it was supposed to be. I liked that she didn’t know me when I had braces and a shitty bowl cut. She only saw the… the finished product. Or what I wanted her to see. It was a vacation from myself.”
“And I’m the homeland,” I said, not without bitterness. “All the complicated history and the bad wiring.”
“You’re the truth.” He set the glass down on the table with a final click. “And the truth is fucking terrifying. You know all the weak spots. You know exactly where to drive the knife. I think… I think that’s why I did it. If I could make you hate me, then I wouldn’t have to be so scared of how much I needed you. If you were the one who walked away, it would hurt, but it would be clean. This?” He gestured between us. “This is a tangled fucking mess. And I’m the one who tangled it.”
I uncurled slightly, my feet finding the floor again. The armor of my anger was proving difficult to reassemble. He was handing me the jagged pieces of his introspection, and they didn’t fit the narrative of the villain I’d been crafting in my head.
“I’m scared too,” I whispered. It was the hardest admission of all, harder than any moan or cry I’d ever let him hear. “I’m scared that this is all we are. This push and pull. This damaging each other because it’s the only way we know how to touch. I’m scared that ‘real’ for us just means more pain in prettier packaging.”
He stood up then. Not with aggression, but with a slow, deliberate motion. He crossed the gulf, not to my chair, but to kneel on the floor in front of it. His eyes were level with mine. The green was endless, swimming with a sincerity that made my throat tighten.
“Then let’s be scared together,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Let’s be a fucking mess together. But let’s stop using other people to do it. Let’s stop using each other to hurt each other. Just… let me in. All the way in. The good and the bad and the fucking terrified.”
A tear escaped, tracking a hot path down my cheek. He saw it. He didn’t brush it away. He just watched it fall, as if it were a sacred thing.
“I don’t know how to trust you,” I breathed.
“Then let me show you.” He leaned forward, slowly, giving me every chance to pull back. His lips were a breath away from mine. “Let me show you right now.”
His kiss was nothing like the library, nothing like the kitchen. It was soft. A question. A plea. His lips were warm, moving over mine with a tenderness that unraveled me completely. A small sound escaped my throat, a whimper of surrender. My hands came up, not to push him away, but to frame his face, my thumbs tracing the sharp line of his cheekbones. His skin was cool from outside, but warming under my touch.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding against mine, not demanding, but exploring. It was sweet and deep and desperate in a new way—a desperation for connection, not for obliteration. One of his hands came up to cradle the back of my head, his fingers threading into the blue and purple waves of my hair. The other hand rested on my knee, his thumb making slow, soothing circles through the fabric of my jeans.
When we broke apart, we were both breathing raggedly. His forehead rested against mine. “I want to see you,” he murmured. “All of you. Not in anger. Not in the dark. I want to look at you.”
He stood, pulling me up with him. He led me the few steps to the couch and sat, pulling me down to straddle his lap. This position, which had always been about dominance or frenzy, now felt intimate, vulnerable. My knees were on either side of his hips, our faces close. The string lights cast moving shadows across his features as I looked down at him.
His hands went to the hem of my sweater. “Can I?”
I nodded, my voice gone.