GARRETT GRAHAM

You drove Garrett's black Jeep down a two-lane road that cut through Massachusetts like a scar, the headlights carving weak tunnels through the dusk. The dashboard glow was the only warmth in the vehicle—amber needles, digital numbers bleeding green, the faint scent of leather and the cedar air freshener he'd hung from the rearview mirror three months ago and refused to replace because "it still smells like something, babe, what more do you want?"

You wanted a lot of things right now. You wanted to be back at The Boys' house, where the radiators clanked and Dean was probably making some inappropriate comment and Logan was definitely eating someone else's leftovers. You wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere but this stretch of asphalt that felt like it was pulling you both toward some inevitable collapse.

Garrett hadn't spoken since you'd pulled out of his father's driveway. Not a word. Not a grunt. Not even the sarcastic comment about Cindy's "aggressive floral arrangement" that you'd been bracing for—the one that would have meant he was okay, or at least pretending to be. Instead, there was only the sound of the engine, the whisper of tires on pavement, and the weight of his silence filling the Jeep like water rising in a locked room.

You glanced at him in your peripheral vision. He was staring out the passenger window, his profile cut sharp against the darkening sky, his jaw working like he was chewing on something bitter that wouldn't dissolve. He had one hand braced against the door, the other fisted in the fabric of his jeans. His knuckles were white. His breathing was too controlled, too deliberate—the kind of breathing people did when they were trying not to scream.

The bruise on Cindy's wrist had been the color of a sunset you didn't want to watch—purple blooming into yellow, the kind of mark that spoke of fingers wrapped too tight, of a grip that didn't know its own strength or, worse, knew exactly what it was doing. You'd seen it during the prayer, when Cindy had reached for Garrett's hand and her sleeve had slipped back just enough. You'd watched Garrett's eyes track to it, watched his whole body go still in a way that wasn't peaceful at all, watched the muscle in his cheek jump once, twice, three times before he'd pushed back from the table so hard his chair had scraped against the hardwood like a scream.

"Garrett." You'd reached for his arm, but he was already moving, already out the door, and you'd mumbled something to Cindy—something about you not feeling well, about the drive being long, about thank you for dinner, it was lovely—while Phil Graham sat at the head of the table with his wine glass halfway to his lips and his eyes flat and cold as river stones.

Now, in the Jeep, you drove past a sign that said BRIAR UNIVERSITY — 12 MILES, and you knew you couldn't make it twelve more miles like this. You couldn't make it one more mile with him dissolving beside you, with the silence growing teeth and claws.

So you guided the Jeep to the shoulder, the tires crunching over gravel, the vehicle rocking slightly as it settled onto the uneven ground. You killed the engine. The sudden silence was absolute, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal and the distant whisper of wind through bare trees.

You unbuckled your seatbelt and turned to face him fully. The dashboard lights cast his face in strange shadows, turned his cheekbones into ridges, his eyes into hollows. He looked young and old at the same time, a boy who'd grown up too fast and a man who was still trying to outrun the child he'd been.

"Talk to me," you said. It wasn't a request. It was a demand, soft but unyielding, the same tone you used when he was being stubborn about taking his vitamins or going to therapy or admitting that maybe, just maybe, he didn't have to carry everything alone.

He didn't look at you. He stared at his hands, at the broad palms and the scarred knuckles, the fingers that could handle a hockey stick with surgical precision and could also, you knew, play the piano with a tenderness that made your chest ache. He turned them over, studying them like they belonged to someone else.

"What if I'm just like him," he said, and his voice was barely audible, a thread of sound that frayed at the edges. "What if it's in me. What if I—"

"Stop." You reached for him, cupping his jaw in both hands, forcing him to look at you. His skin was hot, feverish, and you could feel the tension coiled in the muscle beneath your palms, the way he was holding himself together with nothing but willpower and terror. "Garrett, look at me. Look at me."

His eyes met yours, and the pain in them was staggering—a depth of anguish you'd only glimpsed before, in the dark hours after nightmares, in the moments when he thought you weren't watching. It was the pain of a child who'd watched his mother shrink into herself, who'd heard the thud of a body against a wall, who'd learned early that love and violence were two sides of the same coin.

"I saw the bruise," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintered like ice under too much weight. "On her wrist. The same place. The same—" He broke off, swallowing hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "He used to grab my mom there. When he was drunk. When she said something he didn't like. When I was too loud, or too slow, or too—" He laughed, but it was a terrible sound, hollow and broken. "She used to wear long sleeves. Even in summer. Even when it was ninety degrees and we didn't have the AC on. She said she was cold. She was always cold."

Your thumbs traced the line of his cheekbones, your touch feather-light, reverent. You didn't speak; didn't trust your voice not to shatter.

"He started on me after she died," Garrett continued, and the words came faster now, tumbling out like they'd been waiting years for permission to exist. "The whistle. You know about the whistle. But it wasn't just the whistle. It was—" He closed his eyes, his lashes dark crescents against his skin. "He'd push me against the wall. Shake me until my teeth rattled. Tell me I was worthless. That I'd never be half the player he was. That I was an embarrassment. That my mom would be ashamed—" His breath hitched, a sharp, wounded sound. "He said my mom would be ashamed of me. And I believed him. I believed him for so fucking long."

The first tear tracked down his cheek, and you caught it with your thumb, held it like it was precious, because it was. Because Garrett Graham didn't cry. Garrett Graham made sarcastic comments and flexed in mirrors and pretended that nothing could touch him. But here with you, he was unraveling, and you were witnessing it, and you had never felt more honored or more helpless in your entire life.

"I wanted to kill him tonight," he whispered, and his eyes opened, blazing with a ferocity that should have frightened you but didn't. "When I saw that bruise. When I saw the way she looked at me—like she was scared. Like she thought I was going to—" He shook his head, his curls falling into his face, and you pushed them back, your fingers threading through the dark waves with infinite gentleness. "I wanted to put my fist through his face. I wanted to—" He stopped, his whole body trembling now, a fine vibration that started in his chest and radiated outward. "That's the worst part. That's the part that scares me. Because I felt it. I felt that rage, and it felt—" He laughed again, that broken sound. "It felt good. It felt right. And what does that say about me? What does that say about what I am?"

You pulled him to you. You didn't ask permission. You didn't wait for him to reach for you first. You simply leaned across the center console and wrapped your arms around him, burying your face in the curve of his neck, breathing in the scent of him.

His arms came around you then, crushing and desperate, his face pressed into your hair, his body shaking with sobs he was trying to muffle, trying to contain. But you wouldn't let him contain it. You held him tighter, your hands moving over his back in slow, soothing circles, your lips brushing the shell of his ear, his temple, anywhere you could reach.

He broke apart in your arms, this beautiful, broken, brave man, and you held the pieces of him together with nothing but your body and your love and the absolute, unshakable certainty that you would spend the rest of your life proving to him that he was worthy. That he was good. That the boy who'd watched his mother suffer and the man who'd walked away from his father's table rather than become the monster were the same person, and that person was extraordinary.