Because belief isn’t something I give easily, not anymore, not after learning the hard way that trusting someone else to keep your world intact is the fastest way to watch it fall apart.
“I don’t get to gamble with her,” I say, my voice quieter now but sharper underneath it. “That’s not a risk I take, Jace. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“I’m not asking you to gamble,” he says.
“Then what are you asking?”
He exhales, slowly, like he’s choosing his next words carefully instead of just reacting. “I’m asking you to stop acting like leaving makes this disappear.”
“It makes distance,” I counter.
“It makes you harder to find for about five minutes,” he shoots back, and there’s more edge in his voice now. Not out of control, but closer to it than he’s let himself get all night.
“Then what? You think someone like Colt just shrugs and walks away?”
“I think someone like Colt doesn’t follow me out of town if I’m not standing right in front of him,” I say.
“That’s exactly the kind of thinking that gets people blindsided,” he says, stepping closer, lowering his voice so it doesn’t carry. “You leave, you’re alone. No backup. No eyes. No one watching the angles you can’t see.”
“I’ve handled myself just fine for five years,” I remind him.
“Yeah,” he says, nodding once. “You have. And I’m not taking that away from you. But this isn’t the same thing.”
“Because you’re here?”
“Because this is bigger than you,” he says, and that lands harder than anything else he’s said so far. “And whether you like it ornot, you’re already tied to it and I'm not sure why yet, but you are.”
I shake my head, frustration pushing past the control I’ve been holding onto. “I didn’t ask for that.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It doesn’t stop being true because you didn’t ask for it.”
The words hang there between us, heavy and immovable.
I hate that he’s right.
I hate that leaving doesn’t feel like control anymore, not when I can see all the holes in it, all the ways it could go wrong.
But I hate something else more.
The idea of not leaving.
Of letting this pull us in deeper.
Of trusting someone else to stand between me and whatever comes next.
“I don’t trust this,” I admit finally.
His expression doesn’t change. “You don’t have to.”
“That’s not how this works,” I say, shaking my head again. “If I don’t leave, if I keep her here, I have to trust that the people around us can handle it.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “Then trust me.”
It’s not said like a demand.
It’s not even said like a question.
It’s said like a fact he’s putting on the table and leaving there for me to take or walk away from.
