Page 163 of Meet Me In The Dark

“It’s not your heart,” she says, leading me to a nearby bench. “It’s your brain lying to you. Sit.”

She pushes down on my shoulders, then crouches between my knees.

“Hands here.” She takes my shaking palms and presses them to her chest. “Feel me breathe. Match it.”

I follow her instructions, but the tightness stays, choking me. “Definitely dying.”

“You’re not dying. Now in.” She breathes slowly. “Out.”

The world feels far away, like I’m watching it through glass.

“I’m right here.” Her thumbs press against my wrists, grounding me. “Again. In. Out.”

I follow her rhythm, holding onto her voice like a rope in the dark.

Gradually, the pounding in my ears eases, the tightness loosens, and air finally reaches where it’s supposed to.

By the time I can lift my head without the world tilting, I’m drained and embarrassed as hell.

She reads it instantly. “Don’t do that. You don’t get to be embarrassed.”

I huff out something that’s almost a laugh. “You’re bossy when you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” she teases softly. “Maybe we cut the run short this morning.”

I’m about to protest when she holds up a finger. “Just give me a second.”

I keep my focus on her as she walks to a nearby coffee truck.

My pulse is still uneven, and my pride is more than bruised, but if she can sit through me breaking down on a bench in public, the least I owe her is an explanation.

When she returns and presses a coffee cup into my hands, I stare down at the swirling steam and say, “My mother died.”

Her head snaps toward me. “Julian, what?”

“Not my real mother.” I fumble, correcting myself. “Or she was, technically. Fuck, I don’t know.” I drag a hand through my hair, struggling to speak clearly. “My birth mother died, and it’s been messing with my head.”

She doesn’t push. She just watches me with quiet patience, giving me space to fill the silence.

“I lied to her,” I admit, feeling the guilt fucking choke me. “Celeste, she asked for my forgiveness, and I told her she had it, but I’m not sure she does.”

Those gray, stormy eyes pin me to my seat with nothing but understanding. “Then maybe it’s not about whether she deserved it. Don’t you think you deserve the peace of giving it?”

I realize now that if I want to keep this woman in my life, I need to open up and speak the same truth I’ve spent a lifetime running from.

Inhaling a steadying breath, I rest my elbows on my knees and tell her everything.

It spills from me like water through a broken dam. I speak about my earliest memories—the neglect, being left alone for hours, sometimes days, even as a toddler. How the first person to ever abandon me was the woman who was supposed to love me unconditionally. How I used to sleep with my shoes on because I never knew when we’d have to leave in the middle of the night. How she would disappear for so long that I stopped asking when she’d come back.

After she surrendered me to the system, every new home felt colder than the last. The first foster house smelled like bleach and cigarettes. The second one was loud, the kind of loud that’s made up of screaming and slamming doors, where the safest place to be was invisible. I learned fast not to trust affection or promises. I learned to take what I could carry and not to unpack it all in case I had to leave again.

Her hand finds mine at some point. I’m not sure if it’s to comfort me or herself, but it steadies me.

I describe the day my parents took me in when I was nine. How I didn’t believe them when they said it was permanent. I’d hide food in my room just in case,test their patience on purpose, wait for the moment they’d decide I wasn’t worth the trouble. How I acted out as a teenager, fighting all the time, giving them endless headaches and heartaches. Celeste’s lips twitch into a soft smile at that, as if she can picture it perfectly—me, a scowling, rebellious kid with more anger than sense.

I tell her about the nights I’d still wake up in a panic long after I’d been adopted, certain I was back in one of those houses, my bag packed in the corner, waiting to be moved again. How even as I got older, I couldn’t shake the feeling that stability was something borrowed, not something I owned.

I keep talking, sharing pieces of myself that no one else knows. I think about how I spent my childhood feeling unwanted and unworthy, how I convinced myself that love was a weapon and affection was a trap, how I made a career out of control because it was the only thing that kept people from leaving before I could push them out myself.