Page 33 of Her Unending Horizon

He wiped the spilled coffee in one smooth swipe, crumpled the towel, and tossed it. Then he reached for another one and wiped the same spot again.

“The world won’t stop spinning if you leave it alone,” I said quietly.

He paused, paper towel mid-swipe. “What?”

I took the mug he held out to me, our fingers brushing for a breath. “The counter,” I said, nodding toward the perfectly clean space. “It’ll survive a coffee stain.”

He frowned, genuinely puzzled. “I was just cleaning up.”

I didn’t argue. Not directly.

Instead, I glanced at the oven. Three dish towels hung off the handle in a tidy row—edges lined up, seams straight, no hint of a wrinkle.

I walked over, set my coffee down, and deliberately messed them up. I tugged one lower, twisted another slightly, made sure the edges no longer matched.

Behind me, I heard his inhale. His footsteps shifted. The air in the kitchen changed.

He moved like he was about to fix them.

I turned, leaning back against the counter to block his path with my body and a small, crooked smile.

“Leave it,” I said gently.

He stopped. His hand twitched. His gaze bounced from the towels to my face and back again. For a second, he didn’t look like a firefighter who ran into burning buildings or a man who’d gone three rounds with someone at an MMA gym.

He looked… lost.

“What’s going on?” he asked, voice low, almost hoarse. “With me? Because this—” he gestured at the towels, the spotless counters, the vacuum lines in the carpet visible through the doorway— “this isn’t normal.”

My heart cracked a little.

I stepped closer, careful of his ribs, and eased my arms around him. I rested my cheek against his chest, right over his heart, and pressed the softest kiss there.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “That’s what we need to figure out. How did it make you feel when I messed up the towels?”

He stiffened.

“For God’s sake, it doesn’t matter how it made me feel,” he snapped, pulling back. “It just proves something’s wrong with me.”

There it was. The jagged edge under the control.

I wanted to argue. To tell him nothing was wrong with him. That he was just coping.

Except that wasn’t entirely true, and we both knew it.

“Zarek,” I said softly. “You went through hell. Twice. And then you watched me fall apart on top of it. Your brain grabbed onto something it could control. Clean floors. Straight lines. Perfectly folded towels. That doesn’t make you broken.”

He shook his head sharply. “You’re healing, Chloe. You’re drawing again. You sound… lighter. You came here to take care of me last night and I let you see me like this.” He waved at his bruised face, his taped ribs, the too-clean house. His voice turned rough. “Let’s face it. I’ve got problems. I’m spiraling.”

“Zarek, you’re not⁠—”

“You can keep the house. I should be the one in an apartment.”

My breath caught.

There it was. The thing he’d been circling since the hospital. Since the move. Since the first time he didn’t reach for me in the dark.

I studied his face, the desolation hiding behind the stubborn tilt of his jaw. I stood up straighter and drawled, “Yeah, well, that’s just not going to happen, big guy.”