Something in his face went hard. “Don’t use that word around me.”
I looked away.
“You’re injured,” he said. “That’s not the same thing as being a burden.”
“You don’t know what this feels like.”
“I do,” he said, and his voice dropped. “I know exactly what it feels like when people decide your body makes your life an inconvenience.”
He was right, and it hit me like a slap. For years I’d stood up for Eli every time some stranger underestimated him. The second my own body changed, I’d started measuring my own worth by how little help I needed to survive. He’d seen the hypocrisy before I let myself.
Chapter 4 – Falling For My Best Friend
The day I finally walked across the rehab center’s floor without support, Eli was waiting at the far end.
My physical therapist stood beside me. “Slow steps. Don’t rush it.”
Twenty feet. It felt like twenty miles.
I moved one foot, then the other. My left leg shook. Sweat ran down my spine. Halfway across, my knees threatened to buckle, and Eli lifted both hands — not to catch me, just to cheer me on, silently urging me the rest of the way.
When I reached him, he was crying and trying to hide it by fixing his glasses.
“You’re terrible at pretending,” I said.
“So are you.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, the edges gone soft with age. Purple crayon, faded but unmistakable.
I stared at it. “No.”
“For twenty-three years,” he said, unfolding our kindergarten marriage pact.
I laughed so hard I started crying again. Our crooked six-year-old signatures still sat next to two terribly drawn rings at the bottom of the page.
Then Eli’s expression shifted into something I’d never seen on him before — nervous, unguarded, completely exposed.
“I need to say something,” he said.
My pulse jumped.
“I don’t want you choosing me because Derek left,” he said. “I don’t want gratitude mistaken for love. And I sure as hell don’t want a promise two six-year-olds made turned into a debt you have to pay off.”
“Eli—”
