I didn't see Davis for three days.
It wasn't intentional at least, that's what I told myself. The town was small enough that avoiding someone took effort, and I wasn't sure whether I was relieved or disappointed that our paths didn't cross. Every time a car slowed near the house, every time footsteps sounded too familiar on the sidewalk, my chest tightened in anticipation.
Nothing.
By the fourth day, the quiet had begun to feel personal.
My father noticed before I did.
"You haven't been out much," he said over dinner, poking at his food. "Town got boring while you were gone?"
"Something like that," I replied.
He studied me for a moment, that look parents get when they sense a shift but don't yet know how to name it. "Davis asked about you."
The fork slipped slightly in my hand. "Oh?"
"Said he hoped you were settling in okay. He was going to stop by yesterday, but something came up."
I nodded, forcing myself to breathe normally. "That's nice of him."
My father smiled. "He's always been good like that."
Always. The word echoed uncomfortably in my head.
I excused myself early and retreated to my room, closing the door with more force than necessary. The house felt too small tonight, its walls pressing in with memory and expectation. I paced, then sat, then paced again, my thoughts looping back to the same place no matter how hard I tried to redirect them.
That afternoon at his house replayed itself in fragments his voice, steady and careful; the way he'd stopped himself from touching me; the words that's the problem lingering like a warning I hadn't heeded.
I knew what this was.
Or at least, I knew what it wasn't.
It wasn't innocent curiosity anymore. It wasn't a leftover crush I could laugh off or bury under time and distance. It was sharper now, clearer. It had weight.
And that terrified me.
I picked up my phone, thumb hovering over his name before I could stop myself. It stared back at me, a simple contact entry that felt heavier than it had any right to.
I didn't message him.
I didn't trust myself to.
Davis, meanwhile, was losing a battle he'd sworn he wouldn't fight.
He sat alone at his kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug that had long since gone cold. The house felt emptier than usual, the silence louder in Fabian's absence. He'd spent years cultivating solitude, convincing himself he preferred it this way. Now it felt like a punishment.
He hadn't expected Fabian's return to affect him like that.
He'd known it would be… something. Awkward, maybe. Emotional. Nostalgic. But he hadn't been prepared for the way he saw him grow, really seeing him had knocked the air from his lungs.
Fabian wasn't a boy anymore. That much was undeniable.
The problem was that Davis had noticed too quickly. Too instinctively.
That first look, that split second where his mind had reordered everything he thought he knew haunted him. He prided himself on control, on knowing where lines were and never stepping close enough to blur them.
And yet.
He'd let Fabian into his house.
He'd listened when he should have redirected, nodded when he should have stopped the conversation entirely. He'd allowed an intimacy that had no business existing.
Davis exhaled slowly, pressing his fingers to his eyes.
This was his responsibility. His failure.
Fabian didn't know the full weight of it the history, the promises Davis had made to himself years ago after his marriage collapsed, after he'd realized that wanting certain things came with consequences he wasn't willing to repeat.
Richard trusted him.
That alone should have been enough.
He picked up his phone, scrolling past messages until Fabian's name appeared. His thumb hovered, mirroring Fabian's earlier hesitation.
He set the phone down.
No. He couldn't be the one to encourage this.
If there were lines, he had to be the one to draw them.
They ran into each other the next morning at the grocery store.
I saw him at the end of the cereal aisle, scanning a shelf with mild concentration, glasses perched low on his nose. The sight of him sent a jolt through me, so sudden, I actually stopped walking.
He looked up at the exact same moment.
There was no pretending not to notice each other. No convenient exit.
"Hey," he said, a little too carefully.
"Hey."
We stood there, the space between us crowded with things unsaid. A woman passed between us with a cart, oblivious to the tension she disrupted.
"How have you been?" he asked.
"Good," I lied. "You?"
"Fine."
Another lie.
We both seemed to realize it at the same time, and something like resignation softened his expression.
"Walk with me?" he asked, gesturing toward the checkout.
I hesitated. Then nodded.
We moved side by side through the store, the mundane setting making the heaviness between us feel surreal. He picked up milk. I grabbed bread. It felt absurdly domestic, and that scared me more than anything else.
"About the other day," he began, voice low. "I've been thinking."
My heart kicked hard against my ribs. "So have I."
He glanced at me, then away. "I shouldn't have let things go the way they did."
"I didn't feel like you let anything happen," I said. "We just talked."
"That's the point," he replied. "Talking led us to somewhere we shouldn't be."
I stopped walking. He did too.
"Why?" I asked, quietly but firmly. "Because of my dad?"
"Yes," he said without hesitation. "Because of your dad. Because of me. Because of you."
The way he lumped us together stung more than I expected.
"I'm not fragile," I said. "You don't have to protect me from myself."
His jaw tightened. "I'm not trying to."
"Then what are you doing?"
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and something like pain crossed his face.
"I'm protecting what matters," he said. "And that includes you even if you don't see it that way."
I swallowed hard. "It feels like you're pushing me away."
"Because I am."
The words landed with brutal clarity.
I forced myself to nod, even as something inside me cracked. "Okay."
We stood there for a moment longer, surrounded by the quiet hum of refrigerators and distant chatter. Then he turned toward the checkout.
"I'll see you around," he said.
"Yeah."
I watched him leave, my chest aching in a way I couldn't ignore anymore.
That night, I dreamed of lines.
Invisible ones. Drawn in sand, in ink, in blood.
Every time I stepped toward him, they shifted never quite to where I expected them to be. Sometimes they felt solid, immovable. Other times, they blurred until I wasn't sure they'd ever existed at all.
I woke with my heart racing, the echo of his voice still in my ears.
I'm protecting what matters.
I stared up at the ceiling, hands clenched in the sheets.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe wanting him was a mistake I hadn't yet paid for.
But if these lines had always been here unspoken, unacknowledged, why did it feel like crossing them was inevitable?
And worse.....
Why did it feel like he was standing on the same side as me, even as he pretended not to be?