“Don’t Let Go”

No one saw the way your hands shook in the morning.

Not in class, not in the hallways, not even in the mirror when you stared at yourself with tired, swollen eyes. But Kevin saw.

He always saw.

It had been months since you started smoking every day. First it was for the numbness. Then it was because you couldn’t go without it. Then it became a routine—wake up, light up, drift through the day. You told yourself it wasn’t a problem. You weren’t like the people in those videos they showed in health class.

You were functioning.

Until the nights got harder again.

Until the weed wasn’t enough.

Until one night, when the yelling at home became static, and your chest hurt so bad you needed the pain to be somewhere else.

You sat on your bedroom floor with your knees tucked to your chest, and you did it quietly. Just enough to feel it. Just enough to breathe.

It was never supposed to happen again. But it did.

Again. And again.

You hid it. You covered the marks with sleeves and jokes and smoke and silence. But Kevin knew. Even before you said a word.

One night, you showed up at his house shaking. Your hoodie sleeves stretched over your hands.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” you mumbled.

He let you in without a word. Let you sit on his bed, curled in on yourself, eyes red.

“I messed up,” you whispered.

Kevin knelt in front of you, his hands on your knees. “Are you high right now?”

You nodded.

He sighed, not in anger—just in quiet heartbreak. “And… the other thing?”

You didn’t answer. Just tugged your sleeves up an inch. Just enough.

His eyes filled, but he didn’t cry. He just wrapped his arms around you and held you like he was afraid you’d vanish.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” he said. “Not ever.”

“I don’t want to feel anything,” you whispered. “And when I do, it’s too much. Kevin, it’s always too much.”

He rested his forehead against yours. “Then let me feel it with you. Don’t carry it all by yourself.”

You broke. Right there in his arms.

All the smoke in your lungs and weight in your chest melted into tears, and he held you like he was holding the pieces together.

That night, he took every sharp thing out of your pockets. Hid your lighter. Sat on the floor beside the bed, watching over you like he was guarding your sleep.

You still relapsed. The weed. The cutting. The spirals.

But now, when it happened, you didn’t do it alone.

Kevin would pick you up, whisper “We’ll get through this,” and never look at you like you were broken.

Because you weren’t.

You were just hurting.

And he loved you through it.