Page 47 of About to Fall

“Are you going to say something or just ignore me?”

“What do you want me to say, Adrian?”

“What's the deal with you guys?”

He was lying on his back, arms behind his head, watching me with those sharp dark eyes. It was not a simple question. I hated how easily he got under my skin. A reasonable teammate would have read the room. A reasonable teammate would have seen me carefully hanging costumes in silence and understood that the silence was intentional. But Adrian had never been a reasonable anything.

“I didn't know you were such a gossip.” I didn't look at him. Kept my hands busy with a hanger. “Did you read all about us on Reddit or The Spill?”

“Please. I have eyes and a dick. The math works out.” He said it so casually, like he was commenting on the weather. “So did you break up before or after he moved to Chicago?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“That's fine.” He stretched, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I'm kind of jetlagged anyway. Maybe I should skip dinner and go straight to bed.”

I turned around. He was looking at the ceiling with a bored expression that didn't fool me for a second. He knew exactly what he was doing—dangling the threat of me sitting through dinner with Théo and Sabrina alone, without even Adrian's abrasive presence as a buffer.

“You're such a manipulative little shit.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I've been called worse.”

I sighed. “Before Chicago.”

“How long were you together?”

“Three years. On and off.”

I don’t know why I was telling Adrian of all people. Three weeks of avoiding this man—of timing my water breaks and eating lunch in my car and pretending he didn't exist—and it had taken him approximately two minutes in a shared hotel room to crack me open. I didn't understand it. We had barely spoken since Québec. And yet here I was, spilling the details of my most painful relationship to the last person who should hear them.

Maybe that was exactly why. Adrian didn't handle me. Didn't tiptoe. Didn't ask with that careful, loaded concern that made me feel like a patient instead of a person. He just asked.

“Ah.” Something shifted in his voice. “So you loved him.”

I didn't respond. Turned back to the closet and adjusted a hanger that didn't need adjusting.

“Still love him?”

“As a friend.” I couldn't seem to stop now. It was like he'd pulled a thread and the whole thing was unravelling whether I wanted it to or not. “Théo was going through a lot leading up to his move and we couldn't be there for each other the way we should've been able to. It got toxic. We hurt each other. If we'd stayed together, it would've been… mutually assured destruction.” I swallowed. “He's doing better now. I think.”

The room went quiet. The heater hummed. Out in the hallway, suitcase wheels rattled by, someone laughed—life carrying on like we weren't cracking something open in here.

“Is he the reason you had to take a break?”

“I really don't want to talk about that.”

“Fuck,” Adrian said softly.

I turned. He was looking at me now and the expression on his face stopped me cold. The cockiness had slipped clean off. No smirk. No sarcasm. He was looking at me like I was a person who was hurting and he gave a shit.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Just—three years is a long time to love someone who's falling apart. That's a lot to carry. Especially when you're the type of person who'd rather carry everyone else's shit than put your own bag down for five minutes.”

Something tilted inside me. The dizzying realization of being seen by the last person you expected to be paying attention.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means you took care of me when I was hammered. You took care of Théo for three years. You take care of Sabrina, your uncle, everyone in this program.” He said it plainly, without judgment. “Who takes care of you, Nicky?”