Page 9 of Keep Me

“I still do,” I told him. “It’s just…” I sighed, trying to bite a lie off my lips. “I’m just tired, my brain’s tired. And… do you ever feel like you just want to be over… it?”

“Over it?” Zane asked me, “you mean over what Jax did to you?”

I nodded, pressing my lips together as if I wanted to seal the feeling inside me. “Sometimes I wish we could just… move on.”

Zane did not answer right away. He did not flinch, and he did not offer a quick, empty sentence about how time heals all wounds. He just watched me, his eyes absorbing the weight of what I had just admitted. He set his sandwich down again, completely abandoned now.

“I know,” he said softly. “I know you do, Seren.” The way he said my name landed in my stomach, that golden peace he floods me with became a bath of warm water on my chilled skin.

“But you can’t rush it,” he continued, leaning his forehead forward just enough that if I tilted my head, our temples would touch. “What happened… it wasn’t a car accident or a broken bone. It was a winter that almost froze us both out. You don’t just wake up one Tuesday and decide the snow is gone. We just have to wait until it melts. And it has melted. Some of it has melted.”

“I know,” I whispered, looking down at our hands. “But I’m just so sick of it. I’m sick of carrying it into the grocery store, and into lectures, and into conversations with some harmless guy who just wanted to buy me a coffee. I want to be a normal girl who eats a tuna sandwich on a Tuesday afternoon without analyzing whether the universe is trying to flip upside down and take everything away.”

“You are eating a tuna sandwich on a Tuesday afternoon,” Zane reminded me. “And you’re doing it with me.” He reached up, his fingers gently catching my chin, moving my face until I had no choice but to look at him. His eyes were wide, clear, and certain.

“Lucy isn’t there to make you walk through the storm every week,” he said, his thumb brushing the corner of my lower lip where I’d been biting it. “She’s there to help you figure out what happens when the snow melts.”

“I know, you’re right,” I muttered, tracing the skin on the back of his other hand. “You are always right. You always know what to do.”

“I’m not,” Zane said, a low, rough sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. I looked up, surprised by the sudden shift in his voice. He was looking at our hands now. For a second, the infallible, unbreakable wall that was Zane felt incredibly normal.

“I don’t always know what to do,” he said, his eyes lifting to meet mine. There was no judgment in them, just raw honesty. “I don’t always know what to do. Half the time, I’m just guessing. I’m just looking at you and trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing so I can stand in front of it.”

He reached over with his other hand, taking my face between his palms. His skin was warm, his grip firm but incredibly gentle.

“When you say I’m always right, it sounds like I have a map,” he said. “I don’t have a map. I just have you. If I look like I know where I’m going, it’s only because I’m following your lead. When you break, I just try to be the ground you land on.”

Hearing him admit that did not make me feel less safe; I knew he was right. He wasn’t a machine built to protect me. He was a boy who loved me enough to let my storms batter him, too.

“You are wrong about one thing though,” I told him, watching him react to my words. He looked both cautious and curious.

“What am I wrong about?” he asked me.

“You might not always know what to do, but you always know what to do for me. You always know how to help me, you always know how to make me smile, and how to make me feel less alone. You always know what to do with me.”

Zane blinked slowly, running his eyes across my face as he seemed to turn what I said around in his mind. “Okay, baby.”

He let his hands slide down to my shoulders, giving them a brief, reassuring squeeze before finally letting go and leaning back in his chair. The intense, heavy atmosphere broke, letting the ordinary campus sounds rush back into the space between us.

“So,” he said, picking up his forgotten sandwich and giving me a look that was pure, classic Zane, dry, demanding, and utterly devoted. “You’re going to call Lucy. And right now, you’re going to eat that tuna before I start questioning my own sanity for letting it sit in the sun this long.”

He picked up his sandwich, but he took my hand again, forcing himself to unwrap it one-handed with a casual sort of clumsiness that made a tiny laugh escape my throat.

“You’re ridiculous,” I whispered.

“I’m efficient,” he corrected, a genuine smirk finally breaking across his face. “Eat your tuna, Seren. We have twenty minutes before I have to go watch people stare at their watches in row four.”

Nerve

The memory of that West Bridge office, with the purple butterflies on Lucy’s shirt and the bright ponchos that made me roll my eyes, felt like a lifetime ago. Now, she was a small, glowing square on my laptop screen, sitting in that same armchair, a ceramic mug held between both hands. Even through a monitor, she peered over the edges of her small-framed reading glasses with that same subtle, unhurried presence that used to make me squirm.

There was no chaise to perch on here, no physical distance to cross, yet closing my bedroom door and opening the call link always felt like stepping into an airlock. Outside this room, I had boundaries. Outside, I had witty deflections, a catalog of hyper-specific observations about the sidewalk, and Zane’s broad shoulders to hide behind. In here, none of that worked. Lucy knew the drill. She could still pull poetry from my chaos, which meant she also knew exactly when I was trying to perform.

“You’re quiet today, Seren,” Lucy said, her voice coming through my laptop speakers with that familiar cadence. “Even for you. Where are we starting?”

I shifted my weight, pulling my knees closer to my chest, my bare toes digging into the heavy fabric of the quilt. “I’m just tired,” I muttered, looking at the small square in the corner that showed my own face. Pale, guarded, eyes too round for the space. “Do you ever feel like we’re going to run out of things to talk about, once I’m over it?”

Lucy didn’t shift in her chair. She didn’t offer a sympathetic tilt of her head. “Over it… over what happened in high school?”