Page 95 of Seven Minutes
When he opened them again, they were wrecked. And hopeful.
“Then let’s… keep trying,” he said, voice rough.
The lantern above cast an inviting warmth over his face, and I had the dizzy, terrifying thought that maybe this was what coming home felt like.
Not the fixed thing.
The choosing.
Then choosing again.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Then we will.”
Our hands stayed linked on the table, fingers brushing, not quite entwined yet. The two fortunes lay between us like little white flags. Crumpled, cracked-open truths neither of us had been brave enough to speak until now.
Adrian looked at them the way a surgeon looks at an X-ray, with fascination, wary, hopeful despite himself.
“Funny,” he murmured, tapping the slips together until they lined up edge to edge. “They almost look like they’re part of the same message.”
I studied both halves. Two fragments that meant more in tandem than they ever would alone.
“That’s kind of us, isn’t it?” I asked quietly. “Two brokenhalves that keep making something whole.”
He froze, not in a stiff, defensive way, but a pause where emotion hit too fast for him to mask it.
His thumb stroked across my knuckles lovingly.
“Eli…” His voice was rough. “You really think we can…?”
“Yes,” I said before doubt could worm its way back in. “Not perfect. Not magically fixed. Just… whole enough. Together.”
Adrian glanced down again at the paired fortunes, exhaling when the air finally found its way back into his lungs. Then he nudged his paper until it touched mine fully, no space between them.
“Two halves,” he said softly. “But ours.”
He finally threaded his fingers through mine, and I squeezed back, letting the warmth settle deep.
Whole enough. Together.
Chapter 35
Confessions
ADRIAN
Jordan didn’t say anything at first. He just sat there with his pen resting on his pad, giving me that patient, unnerving therapist stare that made me feel both seen and hunted.
“I don’t know where you want me to start,” I muttered.
“Where you feel the tightest,” he said. “Wherever your stomach drops.”
My stomach dropped immediately. Of course it did.
I exhaled through my nose. “I guess… I fucked up.”
“Most people do,” Jordan said mildly. “Keep going.”
But this wasn’t ‘most people.’ This was me, and Eli, and the slow-motion car crash I’d caused long before the actual crash.
