Page 138 of Your Place or Mine

“You’re terrified,” he said, a little more gently now. “And maybe she is, too. But she came here, Cal. She took a risk. And you’re just... hiding behind your tap handles.”

I hated that he wasn’t wrong.

I glanced around the Rusty Stag. The place I’d built from a broken-down bar and a broken-down life. Everything in here bore my fingerprints. My sweat. My grief.

And lately?

Every part of it was starting to carry her name.

The quiet corner booth where I’d caught her laughing with Riley. The bar stool she always picked, like it didn’t matter, but absolutely did. The way her voice sounded in the backroom, soft and sleepy and curious about every part of this world I’d locked away.

She was weaving herself into the fabric of this place without even trying.

And I’d been too much of a coward to let it happen.

“She makes things feel... light,” I said, the words catching somewhere in my throat. “Even when they’re not.”

Drew tilted his head. “So what are you doing about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe start by using your phone like it’s not cursed. Text her back. Or better yet, go find her.”

“What if she’s done with me?”

“Then you’ll deal,” he said. “But you’ll know. And maybe, for once, you’ll stop assuming the worst just because you’re scared of the best.”

I stared down into my coffee like it might offer divine guidance.

It didn’t.

But it did taste a little less bitter than usual.

And that felt like a start.

Drew had a way of saying the exact thing I didn’t want to hear.

Mostly because he was right more often than not, and that annoyed the hell out of me.

I sat there for a while after he left, and the bar suddenly felt too quiet. The kind of quiet that rattled around in your chest and made you itch to move just so you wouldn’t hear the truth echoing in your own damn head.

Lydia made things feel lighter.

I’d said that without thinking. Without guarding it.

And it was true.

I hadn’t felt that kind of ease in years. Since before Lucy got sick. Since before the weight of being the guy who holds everything together crushed me until I couldn’t tell where the bar ended and I began.

Lydia cracked something open in me that I didn’t even realize had healed over wrong. She made me laugh again—reallylaugh, not that dry bark I handed out like a receipt with every drink. She challenged me, pushed every button I didn’t know I had, and then somehow looked at me like I wasn’t broken.

I hadn’t known how much I missed beingseen.

But I also didn’t know what the hell to do about it.

Because the last time I let myself feel anything that deep, I watched it wither and die in a hospital room that smelled like bleach and sorrow.

I couldn’t do that again.

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