Page 38 of You, Only You

"Besides what?"

"Besides watch." The word came out wrecked. "Besides standing three car lengths away watching your car spin into a guardrail and not being able to do a goddamn thing about it."

The room was very quiet. The morning light came through the windows and made shadows on the floor and neither of us moved.

He wasn't performing. I could see that. I'd spent my whole life learning to spot performances, and this wasn't one. The crack in his voice, the way his hands had curled at his sides, the look on his face, it was real. He was terrified. Genuinely, deeply terrified, and the tracking app was what terror looked like when it came from a man who didn't know how to be afraid without also being in control.

But my father had been genuine too. Every justification, every excuse, every "I did it for the family." He'd meant it. He'd meant all of it. And it hadn't mattered, because meaning it didn't make it okay.

"I understand why you did it," I said. And I did. That was the terrible part. I understood completely. "I understand you were scared. I understand the crash was traumatic. I understand that you have spent seven years trying to make sure you never feel helpless again, and this was how you made yourself feel less helpless."

He was staring at me. Waiting. Knowing there was a 'but.'

"But you promised me, Will. In the hallway of my apartment, with the police sirens getting closer. You looked at me and said you'd ask. That we'd decide together. That you wouldn't..." I stopped. My throat had gone tight despite the calm. "Was that just something you said? In the moment? Because it was the right thing to say?"

"No."

"Then what happened between that promise and this phone?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "I watched your car get hit. And after that... the promise felt like a luxury I couldn't afford. Like following the rules while someone is..." He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. "I know that's not an excuse. I know it's exactly what... I know."

"What do you know?"

"That it's what your father said. 'The rules don't apply because the situation is different.' 'The circumstances justify it.' I know." He dropped his hand. His eyes were red. "I knew while I was installing it. I knew it was wrong. I did it anyway because the alternative was lying awake imagining your car spinning into a wall, and I couldn't... I couldn't live in that. So I chose this instead. Chose to be the person who..."

He stopped. Swallowed. Looked at the floor.

"The person who controls things," I finished quietly.

"Yes."

The word sat between us. Small and honest and terrible.

In the apartment hallway, I'd been angry. Furious. The fight had been hot, loud, two people colliding at full speed. This was different. This was the aftermath kind of pain, the kind that comes when you realize the problem isn't a single bad decision but a pattern, and patterns are harder to fix than decisions because patterns are who someone is.

And here's what I hadn't expected: the thing I felt most wasn't betrayal. It was grief. For the version of this that I'd been building in my head, the version where he kept his promise and I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop and we just... figured it out. The version where I didn't have to be afraid that the person I was falling for would turn out to be another person I couldn't trust.

"I need you to delete it," I said. "Right now. While I watch."

"Okay."

"And then I need you to understand something." I stood up, and the ribs screamed, and I ignored them. "This is the second time. The apartment was the first. The phone is the second. There isn't going to be a third."

"I know."

"If it happens again, I'm done. Not as a threat. Not as leverage. Just... done. Because I can't be with someone who..." The word 'love' was right there. Right at the edge of the sentence, ready to fall out. I felt it in my throat, heavy and terrifying, and I swallowed it back down. "I can't be with someone I have to check up on. I spent my childhood doing that. Watching my father for signs that something was wrong. Scanning for lies. It nearly destroyed me. I won't do it again."

He pulled out his phone. I watched his hands, watched his thumbs navigate the settings, watched him find the application, watched him hesitate for one second, two, three, before he pressed delete. The hesitation told me everything. It wasn't easy. It cost him something real.

Good. It should cost him.

"It's gone," he said. Held the phone out so I could verify.

I took it. Checked. It was gone.

"Thank you," I said, and the word tasted like nothing.

He stood there in the middle of the guest room, phone in his hand, morning light making him look washed out and young. He looked like a man who had just broken something and was staring at the pieces and didn't know which ones to pick up first.