He dragged himself upright, then shoved his other hand under my shirt like one wasn’t enough. Forehead pressed to mine, he exhaled.
“My mom hasn’t left her house since Abel went missing.”
I could’ve told him he didn’t owe me his scars or a map to all his pain.
I didn’t.
Because the truth was—I wanted it.
All of it.
Every piece he’d been carrying around, every part that made him shake like this when something as small as a door didn’t open fast enough.
If it belonged to him, I wanted it.
“She stopped letting me leave the house.”
The pads of his thumbs pressed harder where they were braced under my shirt, circling my nipple around and around.
“I was homeschooled until high school, and even then, it was… supervised,” he said. “Otto would pick me up. Drop me off. Bring me home.”
A small, humorless laugh slipped out.
“No clubs. No sports. No birthday parties or field trips.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure he heard me.
“She locks everything. Sometimes, if it was really hot out, she’d crack the window. Just barely.”
Christ.
He hadn’t just grown up sheltered. He’d spent his childhood watching the outside world through glass that never fully opened.
A fucking fishbowl.
And now something as small as a stuck handle was enough to drag him right back into it.
“I moved to campus freshman year and everything was just… open. People coming and going. Anywhere they wanted. It was like something out of a movie, which sounds corny as fuck, but?—”
“No.”
It did actually, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. My baby could feel whatever the hell he wanted.
“I didn’t realize I had a problem until something closed and didn’t open right away. I—” He cut himself off, looking away for a beat. “The elevator in the dorms stopped running. I was only in there for fourteen minutes, but it wasawful.I took a third job to afford therapy, which is its own brand of fuckery by the way, and avoided elevators for a year.”
A sad smile tugged at his lips. “First time I rode one again was with Rhys. I threw up on his shoes afterward.”
I should’ve told him it wasn’t his fault—that he didn’t have to explain or justify why his body reacted the way it did.
But I wasn’t interested in softening it.
I was interested inknowingit.
In understanding exactly what got under his skin and what made him break.
So I could make sure nothing ever got the chance again.
“It’s been years since it was bad,” he said, like he thought he had toapologize. “It’s mostly just… that house. It’s a trigger.”
