“I wanted to help you,” she said. “I wasthere. I held you that night. I stayed until you were asleep. I was ready to come back — and you locked a door I didn’t even know you were closing.”
She paused. Eyes down for a moment. She wasn’t done.
“The cheating gave it a shape. A clean line of fault.He cheated, it’s over, that’s why.It covered over something harder to name.” She looked at her hands for a moment, then back at me. “But that wasn’t the wound, Holden. The wound was that when you were drowning, I wasn’t who you called.”
She paused for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“Do you know what I do for a living, Holden? I sit with people on the worst day of their lives. I help them carry things they can’t carry alone. That’s my whole job. That’s theone thingI know how to do. And when the worst night of your life came, you locked yourself in a room with a bottle and you didn’t call me. Me, Holden.Me. I’m a therapist. I would have come. I would have sat with you all night. And you wouldn’t let me.”
There was no defending it. She was right.
My legs gave in. Not dramatic — just a slow buckle, the kind that happens when you’ve been holding yourself up too long and someone finally tells you to stop. I went down. Both knees on the floor in front of her.
“Bea—”
“Holden.”
“I’m sorry.” It came out wrong. Too quiet. I tried again. “I’m sorry, Bea. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shut you out. I shouldn’t have come to your door the next morning. I shouldn’t have made the choice for both of us. I was a coward. I knew you’d come and I knew if you came I’d have to deal with it. So I closed the door first. So I wouldn’t have to.”
She didn’t move.
“I want you back.” My voice broke on it and I let it. “I want you back, Bea. I’ll do anything. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’ll go to therapy. I’ll go to meetings every night of the week. I’ll move out of the clubhouse. I’ll sleep on your floor. I’ll never close another door on you in my life. I’ll be the man I should have been that morning. Just, please. Tell me what you need. Tell me what to do.”
I was crying now. I hadn’t cried in front of her since the night she’d held me in my room after Danny. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m so fucking sorry, Bea. Please.” I’d never said please to anyone like that in my life.
She’d been right there the whole time. Now she just looked down at me — not the counselor look, not the careful one. Just Bea, looking at the man at her feet. Then she put her hand on the top of my head. Light. Brief. Like she was patting a dog. “Get up,” she said. Quiet. “Holden. Get up.”
I got up.
For a second neither of us said anything. Then she spoke, and her voice came out harder than it had been all night. “What if I say yes?”
I looked at her.
That wasn’t the yes I’d been driving here for. In the truck, I’d had a different version of this conversation in my head. I’d tell her what Glitch had found. I’d tell her I wanted her back. She’d pull me down the hall to her bedroom and we’d fuck the last few months out of both of us until neither of us could remember being apart.
That was the yes I’d been driving here for. This yes had a knife in it.
“What if I say yes, Holden. What if I take you back. Right now. Tonight. And the next time something happens — the next time you lose someone, the next time something breaks you open — you reach for a bottle and a closed door instead of me. What then?”
Fuck me. I didn’t have an answer. I wanted to tell her that wouldn’t happen again but I couldn’t.
She closed her eyes. Slow breath in. Hold. Out. When her eyes opened she’d softened — a little. Not because she’d changed her mind. Because she’d told herself something I could guess at.That’s not fair. He’s already on the floor. Don’t kick him while he’s down.
“You need help, Holden. Real help. Not your brothers. Someone who knows what they’re doing. With the drinking. With the shutting people out. With the part of you that closes doors before anyone can get through them. Those aren’t things you can will your way through alone. And they’re not things your brothers can help you through, no matter how much they love you.”
“I’ve booked an appointment.” It came out fast. “Next week. A therapist.”
She nodded, slow.
“That’s a good start. But you have to follow through, Holden. Every appointment. Every week. Especially the times you wantto skip it because it’s too hard. You have to do this the way you’d road captain a run. Map it. Plan it. Contingencies for when it goes sideways. Backup plans for the days you can’t get out of bed. Do the work the way you’d do a job for the club. Like it’s the most important run you’ve ever planned.”
She took a breath.
“And you have to do it for yourself. Not for me. If you do it for me, the second it gets hard, you’ll stop. I’ve watched that happen too many times in my office to pretend otherwise. I can’t be the thing you’re working toward. I have to be the thing that maybe —maybe— comes after.”
She let that sit.
“I need you to not be here, pushing, while you figure out who you are without me to fix things for. I need space. So do you, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”
