Chapter One: Your Hands Are Shaking

POV: Haley

I count my pulse against my collarbone without meaning to. Three, four, five. Too fast but not enough to mention. Not yet. Not to him.

"Come on, say something." Nathan stands frozen in the doorway, fingers wrapped hard around his keys.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

He looks at me, long enough that I almost give him the answer he's looking for.

"You know I called Dr. Reeves today." He finally moves from the doorway, shrugging his coat off one shoulder like he's planning to stay a while. "She said you've been missing your appointments."

"I rescheduled them back." I busy my hands with my sleeves, anything that isn't looking at him.

"Yeah, after I called."

A laugh escapes me, short and ugly. "You want a medal?"

"I want you to survive this, Haley." He doesn't raise his voice. That's the worst part. He never does. "Is that so insane to you?"

The room goes quiet enough that I can hear the rain again, hitting the window in that same syncopated pattern I sometimes catch myself tapping on my knee.

"You told your mom I might not make it to Christmas."

He doesn't deny it fast enough.

"She asked how you were." A beat too long before he says it. "I didn't know what else to—"

"But it's not yours to tell." My voice breaks with the words. "All of this — you still don't get it, do you?"

He sets the keys down now, carefully, like he's handling something else entirely. "Tell me what you want from me, then."

The true answer sits in my throat, thick and humiliating. I want to stop being something you manage. I want to be reckless once before I die of being careful.

I grab my jacket instead.

"Running away doesn't fix—"

"I know." I'm already at the door. "I'm going anyway."

---

Outside, the cold hits harder than it should, and I stand on the curb a second too long, trying to decide if that's my heart or just November.

I don't decide to walk toward BREWED, but my feet do before I catch up.

The gold letters on the sign are peeling at one corner now. Last time I stood under it, I was eleven years old, ordering a hot chocolate my dad let me pretend was coffee. Whipped cream builds character, he used to say. I haven't tested whether the memory survives daylight since the funeral.

It does. Barely.

Inside, it's loud in the way that lets you disappear, steam machines and overlapping voices. Nobody looks at me, and that holds me up more than it should.

I make it to the bathroom before my face does anything I can't take back.

---

The mirror doesn't help. My eyes are too bright, my collarbone's flushed, and none of it has anything to do with the temperature.

Nathan's voice won't stop looping.

Tell me what you want from me.

I want to stop apologizing for staying alive so carefully. I want one reckless—

The door bangs open before I finish the thought.

"—yeah, I heard you, I said I'd call him back—" A guy shoulders in, phone at his ear, and he's three steps in before he sees me.

Whatever he was about to say next stops in his throat.

"I'll call you back." He hangs up without waiting for an answer, already looking at me like I'm something he didn't expect to find in a bathroom. "You bleeding or something?"

"What?"

"You look like something happened." He says it way too direct. No softness in it, like he's already annoyed with himself for asking. "Forget it. Not my problem."

He turns to go, then stops. Yanks a paper towel from the dispenser instead and holds it out without asking.

"I don't need—"

He doesn't withdraw it. Just waits, arm out, like he's got nowhere better to be, even though thirty seconds ago he clearly did.

I take it and wipe under one eye harder than necessary.

Then, before I can decide the conversation's over: "So what's actually wrong with you?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." He leans back against the sinks like he's settling in, which might be the most irritating thing he's done yet. "You gonna answer, or just be offended about it?"

"Careful. Might not like the answer."

"Try me."

For one stupid second I almost do. The word's right there — dying — sitting on my tongue like his bluntness gave it permission.

"It's none of your business." I fold the paper towel into a smaller square, buy myself a second before I look at him.

"Yeah, you're right." He watches my reflection instead of turning to face me. "But maybe next time you want to cry in a public bathroom, try locking the door, if you want your privacy."

"Okay. Thanks for the advice." I catch his eyes in the mirror. "Now can you leave?"

"Sure." He pushes off the sink, closer now than he needs to be to reach the door, and for a second neither of us moves.

"Your hands are shaking, you know."

I look down. They are. The paper towel's trembling between my fingers like it's got its own pulse.

He reaches. Not for my hand, for the towel, like he's going to take it back, some half-formed excuse to still be standing there, and his fingers catch mine instead. Just barely. Just long enough that I feel exactly how unsteady I am against how still he is.

Neither of us says anything about it.

Then he lets go, stepping back like the door's on fire, and whatever was about to happen closes itself behind his face.

"Forget I said anything." He's already leaving, and this time he doesn't look back.

---

Nathan's asleep on the couch when I let myself in, one hand curled loose around his phone like he fell asleep mid-scroll waiting for me to text back.

I watch him a second too long, chest rising slow and even, and all I can think about is a stranger who took one look at me and knew exactly which nerve to press.

I cross the room quiet enough not to wake him, and before I've decided to, I'm pulling the throw blanket off the armrest to lay over him.

His eyes open halfway through. "Hey." None of the earlier edge in it.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."

"Wasn't really asleep." A lie, and a bad one, and I let him have it.

He catches my hand before I can finish with the blanket and tugs me down onto the couch beside him. "I hate fighting with you."

"I know."

He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, his thumb trailing along my jaw after, like he could spend the entire day doing so.

Some of the night starts to come undone, just from this. Just from him.

Then he pulls back and says the thing that ends it before I know it's coming.

"Oh, I almost forgot." Already reaching for his phone with the hand that isn't holding me. "Kai's back in town. I want the three of us to have dinner together tomorrow night."

"Who?"

"Kai. Best friend since freshman year. I've told you about him." He's still scrolling, thumb moving fast. "Here."

He turns the screen toward me, and then it hits.

Dark hair. That same restless, half-annoyed set to the jaw, like the camera caught him mid-argument with somebody.

I know that face.

"Haley?"

"Hm."

"You good?"

"Fine. Just tired." The word comes out flatter than I mean it to.

He tucks the phone away, satisfied, already talking about reservation time — seven o'clock, the place with the patio he knows I like.

I'm not listening.

I'm doing the math on how many ways tomorrow night can go wrong, and every version of it starts the same way: he already knows exactly what my hands look like when they shake.

—