You woke to warmth and silence—the kind of stillness that feels like it could crack. Calder's body was curved beside yours, back bare to the morning light slipping through half-closed blinds.
His breathing was even. One arm folded under the pillow. His hair was a mess of brown across his forehead, and you smiled without meaning to. Then your gaze trailed lower—and stilled.
Scars.
Not faint ones. Not accidental ones.
Raised, pale, ragged. Some long and shallow like lashes. Others small and puckered, like old cigarette burns. They littered his back like a secret he never meant to keep forever—and yet never wanted found.
You didn’t move at first, just stared. As if pulled by something older than thought, you reached out. Fingers trembling, you ran the tips gently along the jagged path of one, then another. Reverent. Careful. Not trying to solve, just witness.
He flinched in his sleep.
Then he was awake.
A sharp inhale. His whole body stiffened. In a blink, Calder pushed upright, spinning so fast the sheet fell away, exposing more of the damage that mapped his back.
Your hand froze mid-air. Calder’s eyes locked on yours, dark and wide and something close to panicked.
“I haven’t seen those before,” you said softly, voice still husky with sleep but laced now with something rawer.
He looked away. Fast. Like shame had teeth.
“Yeah, well,” he muttered, standing, grabbing for his shirt on the floor. “You weren’t supposed to.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You touched them.”
You sat up, pulling the blanket to your chest. “Calder, I didn’t—”
“No,” he snapped, louder now. “Don’t do that. Don’t go soft on me now.”
His tone cut through the air, but it wasn’t anger. Not really. It was fear, dressed up as fury. The way people shout when they’re trying not to shatter.
You watched him pace, shirt clenched in one hand, the other running through his hair like he didn’t know what to do with his own skin.
“You know,” you said, gentler now, “you can talk to me about anything. You know that, right?”
He stilled.
His back was still to you when he spoke, voice low. “That’s the thing. I don’t need a therapist with benefits.”
“That’s not—"
"You don’t want to know this shit,” he said, whirling around now. His expression was twisted—pain, pride, terror all folding into one. “You think you do, but you don’t. You see a couple scars and think it makes me some tragic poem. I’m not a fucking metaphor. I’m not romantic.”
You blinked, your throat tightening. “I never said you were.”
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m worth loving.”
The silence that followed was instant and suffocating.
You stood slowly, blanket slipping from your shoulders. The air felt cold against your skin, but not as cold as the look on his face—or the fear in his voice.
“You are,” you said.
Calder stepped back.
You reached out, just enough to close the distance. Fingers brushing his.
He recoiled.
“Don’t,” Calder said, voice cracking on the single word. “Don’t touch me like I’m clean.”
“You’re not dirty.”
“I left home at sixteen,” he snapped, and this time it wasn’t shouting—it was breaking. “I slept next to dumpsters. I stole food. I begged people who looked like your parents for money and they walked right past me.”
Your lips parted, but nothing came out.
“I’ve done shit,” he whispered. “Shit I don’t talk about. Because if I do, it becomes real again. And I can’t survive it twice.”
“You survived it once,” you said. “You’re here. That counts for something.”
He laughed. Bitter.
“You saw me. Really saw me. And now you can’t unsee it.”
“I don’t want to.”
That stopped him.
Calder turned his head, and for the first time that morning, your eyes met without armor. His were bloodshot. Wet. And something like a child lived in them, shaking under all that practiced indifference.
“I fell for you,” you whispered. “I don’t know when it happened. But it did.”
He froze.
“I know you don’t want me to. But I did. I’m in this. With you.”
Calder’s fists clenched at his sides. His lips trembled.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” he whispered.