Page 89 of Open Water

"So what do we do?" he said.

We.Notyou.He said it like it was obvious, like there had never been a version of this where it was only my problem, and something in my chest that had been clenched for two months loosened half a turn.

I looked at the suitcase half-packed on the bed. Then at Liam, in a hoodie that cost nine dollars, the boy from the marina who was never supposed to set foot in this world and had become the only thing in it I'd fight to keep.

"I go home," I said.

"And—"

"I go home for Christmas." The words came steady now, the fear underneath them but not steering anymore. "And I sit down across from him, and I look him in the eye, and I don't blink." I shook my head.

Liam nodded, sharp green eyes watching me.

I picked up the shirt I'd been folding and put it in the bag. "I'm going to go home and I'm going to call his bluff."

Liam stood up off the bed.

He crossed the room and he didn't say anything brave or comforting, because Liam doesn't do brave or comforting, he doestrue.He just held my eyes, the river and the bridge andboth our worlds going dark in the window behind him, and then he reached out and put his hand on the back of my neck, warm, steady, the one solid thing in the whole machine.

"I'll leave the door open," he said.

And I knew exactly what he meant. His mom's place.

"Okay," I said.

"I mean it. Whatever happens up there. You come to me. Doesn't matter what time. The door's open."

"Okay," I said again.

I zipped the suitcase.

Liam's hand stayed on the back of my neck while I did it, and I let it, and for a second the two of us just stood there in the dying light of the last afternoon of the semester, in a room that might not exist for me come spring, and didn't say anything at all.

Outside, the snow that had been threatening all week finally started, fine and slow past the window, catching gold in the lamplight off the bridge.

Saturday I'd drive up to the lake. To the frozen water and the long lawns and the stone house with the wooden launch nobody rowed. To the dock where I'd first seen him, almost two years and a whole lifetime ago, before I knew his name, before any of it.

And at the head of that table, in the calm he'd built out of three weeks of silence, my father would be waiting. He'd have the whole thing arranged by then. The board, the money, the leverage, the trap laid out so cleanly I wouldn't see the edges of it until I was already standing in the middle.

Let him.

I'd been raised by the man. I knew exactly how he closed a file.

He'd just never once had to close one on a son who'd stopped being afraid of him.

I shouldered the bag, and took Liam's hand off my neck and held it instead.

I leaned my head against his.

"I'm so lucky I found you."