Chapter Four: Built, Not Said

POV: Haley

My phone rings before I can decide whether to get out of bed. I grab it too fast, already rehearsing what I'll say before I even check the screen.

Dr. Reeves's office. Not him.

"Miss Winters." Her voice is clipped and too awake for whatever time it actually is. "Your monitor flagged an episode yesterday. A long one."

I press the heel of my hand against my eyes. "I'm aware."

"You didn't call it in."

"I didn't think it needed calling in."

"Eleven minutes of irregular rhythm needs calling in, Haley." A pause, softer. "I need you to come in today."

"I'll come in tomorrow."

"Today," she says again, like repetition is a treatment plan. "This isn't optional. If your medication's stopped keeping up, we need to know before it happens somewhere worse than a classroom."

I don't tell her it already did. That someone else's hands found my pills before mine could.

"Tomorrow." I hang up before she can push again, and immediately feel the specific guilt of having just done to her exactly what I did to Kai in that hallway. Managed. Minimized. Sent away.

---

Nathan texts before noon.

Nathan: come over? I want to show you something

Nathan: not a big deal if you're busy

Nathan: it's a big deal actually please come

I almost smile despite everything. It's such a Nathan thing, undercutting his own sincerity before anyone else can reject it first.

Nathan: also you still haven't brought your stuff over. The week's going by already, my love.

I stare at my love longer than the message deserves.

---

His apartment smells like burnt garlic and something he's clearly trying to salvage.

"Don't judge the kitchen," he says, already steering me toward the living room instead. "The kitchen didn't survive what I was attempting."

"What were you attempting?"

"Something ambitious. And wrong, apparently." He stops in front of the window, nervous in a way that doesn't fit him at all. "Okay. Close your eyes."

"Nathan."

"Just — humor me." 

I do. I hear him cross the room, something light scraping against the table.

"Okay. Open."

It's a model. Careful, exact, built from foam board and what looks like actual architectural restraint — a rooftop, a parking structure, the skyline behind it rendered in tiny cut strips of gray.

"You mentioned this place once." He says it fast, like he needs to get it out before he loses his nerve. "A year ago. In passing. You said it had your favorite view in the city and then you never brought it up again, and I don't know, it just stuck."

I don't say anything for a second, because I'm trying to figure out how he remembered a single sentence I said in passing a year ago, filed it away, and turned it into this.

"You built this because I mentioned it once?"

"I build weird things when I'm stressed. The crit stressed me out." He picks at a spot of dried glue on his wrist, not quite meeting my eyes. "Figured it'd be less weird if I gave it to you instead of just having it."

"It's not weird." I pick it up carefully, turning it in the light, the precision of it, the hours it must have taken. "It's actually kind of the nicest thing anyone's built me."

"Built you. Not said to you?"

"Said things are easy. This took effort."

He laughs, surprised, and for a second the whole stressed, nervous version of him drops away, replaced by something easier. "Noted. I'll stop saying things and start building them instead."

"Please don't. I like the things you say too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He kisses me then, unhurried, and for a few real minutes I manage to just be here, in this moment, not thinking about anything except his mouth and the particular way he's smiling against mine like he can't quite believe his luck.

Then it cuts through anyway. A hallway. A voice telling me to breathe.

I pull back before he notices, or before he does and doesn't say anything. I can't tell which.

---

He insists on driving me to get my things himself, some chivalrous nonsense about not trusting me to carry boxes alone, and I don't fight him on it.

We're still a mile from my building when he goes very still beside me, both hands tightening slightly on the wheel.

"Is that—" He doesn't finish. He's already pulling over at the curb beside a restaurant we'd just passed.

I spot Kai through the restaurant's glass front, slouched low in a chair too nice for how he's sitting in it, several empty glasses crowded in front of him. Across the table, a woman about my age sits with her arms crossed, clearly saying something he doesn't want to hear.

Nathan's already out of the car.

"Stay here," he says, not unkindly, and shuts the door before I can argue.

I watch through the windshield, too far to catch a single word. Nathan reaches Kai's table and crouches beside him. Kai's head comes up slow, and even from here I can see it. Whatever's underneath the drunk, something raw and unguarded he usually keeps locked somewhere I'm not allowed to see.

The woman stands abruptly, says something to Nathan while gesturing at the empty glasses, and walks off toward the lot, heels sharp against the pavement, not looking back once.

Whatever Kai says next makes Nathan's whole body go rigid. His shoulders drop after, the specific kind of drop that means he's just understood something he didn't want to.

His father. Has to be.

Kai's eyes find the car. Find me.

Something crosses his face, fast, gone just as quick, and he's pushing up from the table before Nathan can stop him, already walking the opposite direction, unsteady but fast.

"Kai." Nathan goes after him. "Kai, come on—"

I don't decide to get out of the car. My hand's just already on the door, and then I'm standing on the sidewalk, and Nathan's turning around with an expression I've never seen on him before.

"Haley, get back in the car."

"I'm not—"

"Please." Something in the way he says it makes me consider getting back in. "Just this once, let me handle something."

I don't get back in the car.

Kai's stopped a few feet away, swaying slightly, staring at me like I'm something he wasn't prepared to see today.

"You shouldn't be here." His voice comes out wrong, loose at the edges, nothing like the composed version of him I've gotten used to.

"Neither should you, clearly."

"Go home, Haley."

"Not until you tell me what's—"

"I said I'd call." He laughs, short and bitter, swaying again. "Funny how that went."

"Kai—"

"You scared me half to death in that hallway and I haven't been able to think about anything else since, and then my father—" He stops himself too late, eyes going wide like he just heard what he said.

Nathan goes very still beside us.

"What hallway?" Nathan says.

—