Page 78 of Disarm
He pulls back, cheeks flushed, eyes a little wild but clearer than they were under those damn gym lights. “You wouldn’t.”
I raise a brow. “Oh, I absolutely would. But we both know you’re too much of a good boy to risk it.”
He huffs, rolling his eyes, but his hands loosen on my hoodie. “You’re so full of shit.”
“You wanna test that theory,hermoso?” I open the passenger door for him. “Get in. I’m taking you for tacos before we go home.”
The taco truckis a few blocks from campus, parked under a flickering streetlight beside a laundromat and a closed-up panadería. The kind of spot that smells like grease, cilantro, and nostalgia. “Order,” I tell him, nodding toward the handwritten menu. “Anything you want.”
He squints up at the board, the neon from the open sign painting his face red. “Al pastor. Three. And a quesabirria. And… horchata.”
“Atta boy.” I order twice what he does, because I’ve seen him decide halfway through one taco that he’s “not really hungry anymore” and then pick off my plate like a raccoon. We sit at the plastic picnic table under the truck’s awning, the night breeze cutting through the sizzle of the grill and murmur of Spanish from inside. The food comes out fast—foil-wrapped, onion-slick, and with lime wedges glistening.
Caleb eats in silence for a few minutes, head bent, hair falling into his eyes. He always chews like he’s thinking too hard, jaw tight, even when the food is good.
“You okay?” I ask quietly once he’s halfway through a taco and hasn’t bolted yet.
He shrugs one shoulder. “I am right now.”
Right now.
I’ll take it.
I bite into my own taco, but I barely taste it. My brain is still back in the lobby, replaying Dad’s face, his voice, and the way the words “distraction” and “soft” came out of his mouth.
He loves Caleb. But he keeps trying to love him like a project instead of a person, and it makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
You’re tethering yourself to him like a lifeline.
He’s not wrong.
He doesn’t understand that sometimes the lifeline is the only thing keeping someone from going under.
“Stop thinking so loud,” Caleb mutters suddenly, eyes on his food. “I can hear it.”
I blink, dragged out of my spiral. “Yeah?”
Caleb nods, takes a sip of horchata. “You get this like… vein in your forehead when you’re pissed off.” He reaches out and taps just above my eyebrow with his finger. “Right here.”
I catch his wrist and kiss the inside of it before I let go. “Your dad pisses me off.”
“I know.” He pokes at his quesabirria, tearing off a corner of tortilla. “You were right to say what you did.”
I snort. “He doesn’t think so.”
“He’ll get over it,” Caleb says, voice soft but sure. “He always does. You just… gave him something to think about. Even if he spends the next year pretending you didn’t.”
The fact that he’s defending me to myself almost makes me laugh.
“I’m not sorry I said it,” I admit. “I just… hate that you were standing in the middle of it. I know you didn’t need that on top of everything else.”
He looks up, eyes finding mine across the table. There’s exhaustion there, yeah. But there’s something steadier, too. “I needed someone to say it,” he says quietly. “I just couldn’t be the one.”
Fuck.
I swallow hard and look away before my own eyes start burning. “Anytime,” I say. “I’ll say it as many times as you need.”
Then he smiles, small and sad and sweet. “I know.”
