Page 160 of Break Me

A faint breath of a laugh leaves him. “You loved it.”

“I loved that you didn’t let anything happen to me,” I say.

Knox doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me like he’s trying to hold onto something that’s already slipping through his hands. Then he pushes up from the chair.

The movement is abrupt, and for a second I think he’s going to walk away. That he needs distance from this, from me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lowers himself onto the couch beside me.

His hand comes up, hesitates for a second like he’s not sure where to put it, then lands gently at the back of my head, pulling me in the way he used to when I was younger, when fixing things meant just keeping me close enough that nothing could get to me.

“That hasn’t changed,” he says, quieter now.

I nod against him because I know that. Because I’ve always known that.

And then I feel it. The way his chest tightens under my cheek before he lets it out slowly, like he’s trying to keep it together and not quite managing.

My hand curls into the front of his shirt without thinking, holding on, the same way I used to when I was small, and the world felt too big.

“I’m okay,” I whisper, even though we both know that’s not what this is.

His hand tightens slightly where it rests against me.

“I know,” he says.

The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s full of everything we’re not saying. Everything we don’t know how to say.

I close my eyes for a second, letting myself stay there, letting myself have this. The steady presence of my big brother, my hero, and the way he still holds me like nothing has changed, even when everything has.

I don’t know what comes after this. I don’t know if anything’s waiting on the other side or if everything’s just gone.

I stay there, tucked against him, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing.

“Knox,” I say softly after a minute.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me a story.”

There’s a small pause, like he didn’t expect that.

“What kind of story?”

“Something from when we were kids,” I murmur. “Something good.”

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Remember that summer Dad left us with Uncle Mike for a week? The one where you decided you were gonna follow me everywhere, no matter what I said?”

A faint smile touches my mouth. “I did not follow you everywhere.”

“You absolutely did,” he says, a little more life in his voice now. “I couldn’t take two steps without you right behind me.”

“I was making sure you didn’t do anything stupid.”

He lets out a quiet breath of a laugh. “Yeah, that’s what it was.”

His hand moves slowly against my arm as he talks.

“You tried to climb that old fence out back,” he continues, “the one with the loose boards, and I told you not to, but you didn’t listen⁠—”

“I did listen.”