Page 63 of Saddle and Scent
The way he sounded almost desperate, like my pain was his fault, like he'd rather hurt himself than see me in distress.
My pouty response, thick with tears and wounded pride.
"You wouldn't care anyway."
Then being scooped up, strong arms that smelled like sawdust and Old Spice, Beckett's dad loading me into the truck with the kind of gentle efficiency that spoke of experience with injured kids.
And Callum's whisper, so quiet I almost missed it.
"I would care 'cause I like you."
The words that changed everything and nothing, the confession that rewrote the entire landscape of our friendship in six simple syllables.
"What did you say at the last part?"
My question, hopeful and uncertain, hanging in the air like a promise.
"Nothing."
His denial, quick and panicked, the door slamming shut on possibilities that were too big for fifteen-year-old hearts to handle.
The memory fades, leaving behind the taste of old heartbreak and the echo of voices that belonged to people we used to be.
People who were brave enough to care without calculating the cost.
Those who hadn't yet learned that love could be a weapon as much as a gift.
I can feelconsciousness creeping back in around the edges, reality bleeding through the sepia-toned filter of nostalgia.
There's something soft beneath me—grass, maybe, or a blanket. The sun is blocked by something, creating blessed shade that feels like a reprieve from divine punishment.
And there are voices.
Real voices, not memory voices.
Adult voices that carry the weight of ten years' worth of careful distance and unspoken regret.
But underneath all that adult restraint, I can still hear the echoes of the boys they used to be.
The boys who would panic at the sight of my tears.
The boys who would promise ice cream and anything else I wanted if I would just please, please stop being hurt.
The boys who cared so much it scared them.
The boys who became men who still care, despite everything that's happened between then and now.
The boys who whispered confessions they were too young to understand and too scared to repeat.
The boys who never really left, no matter how hard we all tried to pretend they had.
The dizziness is fading, replaced by a different kind of light-headedness—the kind that comes from remembering things you'd forgotten you knew, from seeing the present through the lens of the past and realizing how little has actually changed.
We're still the same people underneath all the armor we've built.
The same hearts beating the same desperate rhythm.
Those souls circling each other like planets, held in orbit by a gravity we've never learned to escape.
