Chapter Two: Say It Again

POV: Haley

By morning I've cleaned the kitchen twice, done two loads of laundry, and reorganized my desk down to the pens.

I keep my hands busy so my head doesn't go where it keeps trying to go.

It doesn't help.

---

By evening I'm standing in front of my mirror in a half-zipped dress, arm twisted behind my back at a wrong angle, and the zipper won't move.

I've been standing here five minutes.

Not because the dress is small. My fingers won't stop moving, the same way they were last night, and I can't get a proper grip on anything. I let go, breathe, and wait for the pill I took twenty minutes ago to do something. Maybe it has. Maybe this is just me now.

The doorbell rings.

I look at myself in the mirror. Hair half dry. Lipstick only on the bottom lip. Dress unzipped.

Great.

I open the door.

Nathan steps in and kisses my cheek, then pulls back. "You're not ready."

"I'm almost ready."

"You said that twenty minutes ago when you texted me."

He walks past me into the living room and sits on the couch. I go back to the mirror and try the zipper again.

"Hurry up," he calls. "Kai's going to be there before us."

My hand goes still on the zipper.

Nathan appears behind me. "Need help?"

Before I answer, his hands are on the zipper, pulling it up in one easy motion.

"There." His hands settle briefly at my waist as he looks at our reflection. "Perfect."

Perfect.

He says it like he fixed something.

I look away first.

---

"You're going to love him."

That's the fourth time Nathan has said it since we left my building.

The city slides past the passenger window, and I watch it all move without really seeing any of it.

"Eight months is a long time." Nathan shakes his head. "I've missed him."

"Mm."

"Kai's intense, but he's honest. You'll understand when you meet him."

I don't say anything to that.

"Haley."

"What?"

"You're doing that thing."

"What thing?"

"Where you go quiet and I can't tell what's going on in your head." He glances at me sideways. "What are you thinking about?"

I'm thinking about a stranger in a bathroom doorway who looked at me like he could see through everything I was doing.

I turn to him. "I'm thinking I'm hungry."

He laughs and reaches over to squeeze my knee. "Okay. Food first. Then you can go back to being mysterious."

He doesn't know.

He has absolutely no idea.

---

The restaurant is the kind of place lined with mirrors everywhere. I keep catching pieces of myself I don't recognize.

Nathan holds my hand as he leads me through, scanning the room.

"There he is."

There's a guy in the corner booth. Dark hair. One hand wrapped around a glass. He's saying something to the waitress when we walk up.

Then he turns.

And stops.

I look up.

Oh.

Oh, no.

It's him. The guy from the bathroom. The guy who watched me fall apart and didn't look away.

His chest rises, a breath he didn't mean to take.

He smiles, but not the polite kind you give your best friend's girlfriend when you're being introduced. A full stop, his eyes locking on mine before shifting to Nathan.

Nathan waves. "Kai!"

Kai slides out of the booth and stands slowly.

Nathan pulls me forward, his hand wrapped around mine. "This is Haley. My girlfriend."

Kai extends his hand, his face giving absolutely nothing away. "I'm Kai."

I take his hand. His palm is warm and dry, and mine is neither of those things.

He is not going to mention it. Right? The bathroom. The tears. The side exit.

My chest caves.

"Haley."

"I know." He doesn't let go yet, eyes staying on mine. "Nathan's told me everything about you."

"Hopefully not everything."

His thumb moves once against my knuckles, so brief I almost think I imagined it.

"Not yet."

Then he lets go.

I look at him. He looks back, expression flat, like he didn't just do that.

---

We sit. Nathan beside me, his arm going around my shoulders. Kai across from us, reaching for the menu.

"She's quiet at first," Nathan says. "Give her time. She'll surprise you."

Kai doesn't look up from the menu. "Does she ever open up?"

"Eventually." Nathan kisses the side of my head. "When she trusts someone."

Kai's eyes flick to me, then away.

Heat creeps up my neck. I can't tell if I'm embarrassed or irritated.

I look at Nathan's face. Open, warm, completely unaware.

---

Nathan's phone buzzes halfway through the meal. He looks at it and grimaces.

"Work. Give me two minutes."

He slides out of the booth and walks toward the entrance with the phone already at his ear.

Kai doesn't move.

The table feels different with Nathan gone. Smaller, somehow.

"You didn't tell him." Kai says it with a slight pull at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, more like he finds the whole thing privately amusing.

My chin lifts. "Neither did you."

He stands and walks around the edge of the table toward me.

I take one step back without meaning to, and my spine meets the wall beside the booth.

He stops a foot away and looks at me.

"Why are you scared of me?"

"I'm not scared."

"Your heart is pounding."

"You can't hear my heart."

"I don't have to." His eyes drop to my chest for just a second, then come back to my face. "It's written all over you."

My hands start shaking. I feel it before I see it, that familiar tremor starting at the fingers, and I press them against my sides.

He looks down at them. Then back up. "There it is."

"What?"

"The thing I saw in the bathroom. The thing you keep trying to put away."

He takes one step closer, and now there's barely any space between us.

"What are you so afraid of, Haley?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"Kai—"

The second his name leaves my mouth, something changes in his expression.

"Say it again."

My throat closes. "What?"

His voice lowers slightly. "My name. Say it again."

I should step away.

Instead I hear myself whisper, "Kai."

It comes out smaller than I want it to.

His eyes darken. "Yeah. That's it."

We stand there. A foot apart. Not touching. His gaze holding mine like he has all the time in the world and no intention of looking away first.

Then Nathan's voice cuts across the room. "There you guys are."

Kai steps back and turns to Nathan, his face giving nothing, like the last two minutes didn't exist. "Just getting some air."

Nathan slides his arm around me and pulls me close, looking at my face. "You okay? You look pale."

"I'm tired."

"You're always tired lately." His forehead creases. "Maybe you should see the doctor again, yeah?"

Behind him, Kai watches.

His face says nothing.

His eyes say everything.

---

The dinner is finally over and Nathan is driving me back home.

"Tonight was good, right?" Nathan's hand is on the wheel, relaxed, the same way it was on the drive there. Like we went to a perfectly normal dinner and nothing happened in it.

"You and Kai. You clicked."

I don't answer.

"Oh." Nathan taps the steering wheel once. "I forgot to tell you. Kai's transferring."

I turn my head slowly. "What?"

"To our college. Starting Monday." He smiles, glancing at me. "Same campus. Same building. We're all going to be in the same space."

My hands go still in my lap.

I shove them under my thighs before he can see them.

Nathan keeps talking. I stop hearing the words. The city outside the window blurs into streaks of light, and I sit there with my hands pressed under my legs, my heart beating unsteadily in my chest.

Same campus.

Same building.

Same space.

---

We arrive at my building. He walks me to my door the way he always does.

"I love you," he says.

"I know."

He waits, like he's expecting something else from me.

"Goodnight, Haley."

"Goodnight."

He adjusts my scarf and walks back to the elevator.

I close the door and slide against it, my legs folding under me.

My phone falls out of my pocket. I don't pick it up.

It lights up on the floor beside me.

Nathan: Kai said you seemed off tonight. He asked if you were okay.

I stare at the screen.

Nathan didn't notice my hands shaking. He didn't notice me leaning against that wall. He didn't notice any of it.

But Kai did.

Another buzz.

Nathan: He said to tell you goodnight.

I hold my breath until my chest burns, then let it out slow. Like I've been underwater and only just remembered I need air.

And I hear it. His voice, quiet and certain.

Say it again.

Then, softly, like admitting something I shouldn't—

I whisper it to the empty room.

"Kai."

The name sits in the dark between me and the door.

Wrong.

Except it didn't feel wrong when he was looking at me.

And that might be the worst part.

---