Page 133 of Boiling Point
Gabrielle stepped closer, but not into my arms. She hovered at the edge of the kitchen tile, hands knotted at her sides, assessing the damage—glass, whiskey, me.
“Go sit.”
A command. I obeyed it.
In the living room, the afternoon sun slanted across the floor, drawing a gold line nearly to my feet. I sank into the sofa and let my gaze drift over the furniture, the dust motes, the impossible ordinariness of the room.
She sat beside me, knees tucked to her chest, and watched me. The light caught her hair and set it aglow.
“When do you fly out?” she asked, her voice softened to a near whisper.
I looked at the glass. Then at my hands. Then her. “I haven’t booked it yet,” I admitted, pulling my phone from my pocket. The screen wavered under my thumb. I was too far gone—too scattered—to make sense of the airline apps. All those boxes and drop-down menus, the infinite loop of payment screens and confirmation codes…it was all too much.
She watched me fumble for a minute, then slid her hand over mine and eased the phone from my grip. She set it face down on the coffee table, close enough to reclaim but far enough to make a point. “Talk to me, Cal. Don’t let it eat you alive. Let’s work through it. What’s the worst that could happen right now?”
I slouched back, the cushions swallowing my shoulders. The ceiling above was wide and blank—like a clean whiteboard to diagram all the ways I’d failed myself, my father, her.
“Even if I fight this circus at Page, I’m done. No university will touch me now.” I forced the laugh. “Another scandal of my own making. Maybe James was right about me after all.”
“Don’t,” she said, slicing through my self-pity with a clarity that startled me. She swung her legs off the sofa, planted both feet on the floor, and turned her whole body to face me. Her voice was low and steady—no trembling, no tremor, just iron wrapped in silk. “You’re not what they say. Not even close. And I won’t let you talk about yourself like you’re guilty of something.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off again, sharper this time.
“I mean it, Cal. I don’t care how many idiots post stories or how many times Sloane Cartwright tags the college on her socials. You’re not a monster. You’re not even a villain. You’re someone with principles and morals who actually gives a damn. More than anyone I’ve ever met.”
The words should have comforted me. Instead, I felt the gouge of guilt, sharp as a splinter under a fingernail. I looked away, out the window, over the low roofs and parched lawns ofthe town I’d never truly learned to call home. I swallowed hard. “You asked what the worst thing that could happen was.”
She waited, watching me with the kind of patience that made it harder, not easier, to speak.
“It’s not losing my job,” I said finally. “It’s not the public shaming, the institutional fallout, or the fact that my father died thinking I’d torched my career again.”
I looked at her—really looked—and the words slid out before I could temper them.
“It’s you looking at me…and wondering if any of it might be true.”
Her breath caught, just faintly, and I saw the flicker in her eyes. Not doubt. Not fear. Just heartbreak—mine reflected back at me.
“That’s what I can’t stomach,” I went on, voice low. “That somewhere in the back of your mind, even for a second, you might start seeing me the way they do. That you’d question what we are—what we’ve been.”
She didn’t speak right away. Just reached out, slow and steady, and placed her hand on my chest. “I know who you are,” she whispered. “And nothing they can say could make me forget the man who made me feel whole.”
I closed my eyes. Just for a second. Let that truth wrap around me. Let it hold me up when my own spine wouldn’t. “I don’t deserve you,” I whispered.
“Too late,” she said, quiet and firm. “You’ve got me anyway.”
She held her hand steady over the hammering ruins of my heart. But instead of drawing back, she leaned in and pulled me into her arms.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I didn’t know how. My body was still caught in the reflex of holding everything in—shoulders locked, jaw set, spine stiff with pride and panic.
But then she tucked her chin over my shoulder, and I breathed her in—her warm skin, the faint aroma of her shampoo—steady and real. And that was it. The dam broke. Not into sobs exactly, but something more visceral.
I clawed at her back like a man pulled from a wreck, unsure where the pain ended and the relief began. My body shook once, then again—sharp, silent, involuntary jolts I couldn’t suppress. I buried my face in her shoulder and held on like the air had gone thin.
She said nothing. Just held me—arms wrapped firm, breath slow and sure. Like she knew the ground was splitting beneath me…
And she was determined to hold me through the fall.
Chapter 48
