Page 156 of Break Me

“I know you want to believe it,” I say gently.

“I don’t want to believe it,” he snaps. “I do believe it.”

The words hang there, too certain, too absolute. But I can see it. The crack in them. The place where they don’t quite hold. It’s small, but it’s there.

“I don’t want you to be alone,” I say after a moment.

He doesn’t answer.

“I don’t want you stuck here,” I continue, my voice steady even as something inside me tightens further. “I don’t want you holding onto me so hard that you don’t let yourself have anything else.”

“Rae, stop.”

“Just listen,” I say firmly enough that he stops. “You have too much life left. You don’t get to spend it wishing for something that’s already gone.”

His hand tightens around mine. “I’m not replacing you.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I say. “I’m asking you not to disappear with me.”

That lands.

I feel it in the way he goes still again, in the way his grip shifts, not letting go, but not quite holding the same either.

For a long moment, neither of us says anything.

The water continues flowing.

The air cools.

Time keeps moving.

“Don’t ask me that,” he says finally, his voice lower now.

“I have to.”

He exhales slowly, dragging a hand through his hair before letting it fall, his gaze dropping somewhere between us.

“This isn’t…” He shakes his head once. “This isn’t happening. Not like that.”

But even as he says it, I can hear it.

The part of him that doesn’t quite believe it.

The part that already knows.

I turn my hand in his, holding on just a little tighter.

“Just promise me,” I say softly.

He doesn’t answer right away, and this time I don’t push because I can feel it, the edge of where he is, the place where anything more would force him into something he isn’t ready to face.

I’ve already taken him as far as he can go.

“I’ll try,” he says finally.

It isn’t enough, but it’s everything he has to give.

I let the conversation fall away after that, not because it’s finished, but because it can’t go any further without breaking something neither of us is ready to lose.