CHAPTER 33
I took one of the prints and put it in an envelope.
No name. No message.
Just the photo.
Him, smiling faintly in the stadium lights. Alone, but unbroken.
I pushed it under his dorm door before sunrise.
A peace offering.
A start.
Or maybe just evidence.
That I saw him.
And that maybe—just maybe—he was finally starting to learn to see himself too.
"You're falling for someone who doesn't know how to love without hurting."
The voice of Arizen cut through the silence like scissors cutting through film. I froze in the hallway, one hand holding my door handle, the other clenched around my keys so that the ridges dug into the flesh of my palm.
She stood with her back against the wall across from me, arms crossed, eyes unyielding. She'd been waiting. I should have known.
I turned slowly. "Is that your diagnosis, Doctor Arizen?"
"It's not a diagnosis. It's a warning."
I managed a tight smile. "Consider me warned."
Her voice softened, but not quite enough. "Mackenzie. You keep telling yourself you're in control. That he's just a detour. But you've already built a house on the fault line and keep pretending it's not shaking."
I wanted to argue.
I wanted to tell her she didn't understand.
But the thing was—I didn't either.
So I said, "You done?"
She nodded. "For now."
I sneaked into my room and closed the door behind me. But her words stuck. Like fog. Like static.
\---
I stayed away from Tony for the rest of the day.
Not because I was mad.
But because I wasn't.
And that scared me more than anything else ever had.
I'd grown used to chaos. To heat. To the whirlwind of being near him. But that kiss. it wasn't a whirlwind.
It was calm.
It was secure.
And I didn't know how to be secure without wondering when the ground would open up.
\---
The knock at midnight.
Three soft taps.
Like a question.
I hesitated. My fingers on the knob.
I told myself not to open it.
I opened it anyway.
Tony stood there, hoodie up, pockets in his hands. No smile. No glint. Only those eyes—the eyes that only softened when nobody was there to notice.
He didn't speak.
He simply held something out to me.
A photograph.
Of mine.
Him—standing by himself on the field. Under the moonlight. Pockets in his hands. Head slightly tilted to one side, as if he was attuned to the quiet.
I looked at the print, heart tightening.
"You still have it?" I questioned.
He nodded. "I shouldn't have."
"Why?"
His jaw flexed. "Because it's not mine. Because I didn't ask. Because you didn't offer."
My chest hurt. "But you wanted it."
He looked at me. Really looked. "Because you see me too clearly."
There was a long silence.
Then he said, "And I hate it."
I didn't answer.
Because part of me hated it too.
Not the seeing.
The being seen.
\---
I stepped aside.
He came in.
\---
He didn't sit.
Didn't speak.
Just stood in the center of my dorm room like he didn't know what to do with himself.
I sat on the edge of my bed, still clutching the photo.
He ran his hand through his hair and said, "I keep trying to play it cool. Pretend like this is a game I'm directing. But I'm not."
I looked up. "What are you directing?"
"Nothing," he answered flatly. "Not for you."
That shouldn't have thrilled me.
But it did.
And that infuriated me.
\---
He sat down at last, close enough so his knees touched mine.
"I could do that once," he said. "Just—flip a switch. Feel nothing. Do what was needed. But then you…"
He didn't complete the sentence.
"You shattered that," he said, quieter.
"Like I shatter everything," I whispered.
He stared at me. "That's not what I meant."
"No," I replied, "but it's what I felt."
He shook his head. "You didn't spoil anything. You looked at it."
I stared at the ground. "And that gives it to me?"
"No," he said. "But it makes it more difficult to lie about."
\---
There was a painful silence.
Not uncomfortable.
Just thick.
As if we both wanted to see if we'd finally arrived at the point where we stopped pretending like we didn't require something true.
"Why me?" I whispered.
Tony just sat there in silence for so long.
Then he said, "Because you looked at me at my worst and didn't flinch."
"That's not love," I whispered quietly.
"No," he said. "But perhaps it's something."
I looked at him.
And he looked like he was unraveling in slow motion.
So I said to him, "I'm afraid of you."
He swallowed. "I know."
"But not the way you think it is."
That got him to cock his head.
"I'm not afraid you're going to hurt me," I said. "I'm afraid I'll stop paying attention when you do."
His eyes flashed shut for a moment. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Then stop making pain feel like attention."
He reached to take my hand but then pulled back an inch from it. "Tell me what to do."
No, I said. "That's the trap. Me teaching you how to be soft so you can do it."
He slowly pulled his hand back.
I glared down at the photo still in my lap.
And then I pushed it over to him.
"I took this because I didn't know any other way to talk to you," I said. "But maybe now it is time that I learn.".
He looked at it once more, like he was seeing it for the first time.
And I knew—this wasn't about us anymore.
This was about what came next.
\---
He did not kiss me that night.
He did not touch me again.
He simply sat with me until I fell asleep.
And when I awoke, he was gone.
But the photograph was still sitting on my desk.
And written on the back, in sloppy, almost hesitant letters, was one sentence:
You scare me too. But not for the reasons you would think.