I clench my jaw, fists curling at my sides, because that’s not what I meant, but fuck, maybe it is. Maybe I need to hear him say it. I need to know what the hell is going on inside his head before this whole thing spirals even more out of control.

“Then tell me,” I demand, my voice firmer more fucking desperate. “Because I know how I feel about her. I know what this means to me. But you—” I shake my head, narrowing my eyes. “I don’t trust you not to fuck this up, even if you don’t want to.”

Tate doesn’t say anything for a long time, and I let the silence stretch, let the weight of everything press down on him, let him sit with it, let him figure out if he’s actually ready to say it out loud. Then he exhales sharply, drags a hand through his already messy hair, and mutters, “Yeah. I fucking like her too.”

I stare at him, waiting for the deflection, for the usual Tate bullshit, the joke, the sarcastic remark, the way he always twists things to make them not feel real. But it doesn’t come, instead, he looks at me, there’s something raw there that isn’t just about sex or control or winning some fucked-up game.

“I don’t want to fuck this up,” he says, voice lower now, “But I will. If we don’t figure all this shit out, I will.”

I exhale slowly, letting that sink in. He’s right. If we don’t figure this out, it’ll all fall apart before it even has a chance to be something real. I sit down on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on my knees as I force myself to say the next part. “Then we have to decide what to do, how to figure this all out and make it work.”

Tate lets out another breath, rubbing his face before nodding once. “Yeah.” He leans back in his chair again, rubbing a hand over his jaw, exhaling slow, heavy, like he already knows this isn’t going to be easy, like he already knows we’re both in way too deep to turn back now.

I run a hand through my hair, trying to shake off the lingering tension, trying to figure out how the hell we do this without completely ruining everything. “So?” I finally say, glancing at him. “How do we make this work without fucking her up in the process?”

Tate snorts, shaking his head. “No idea, it’s all kinda fucked regardless” he says, but then his expression sobers, his fingers tapping against his knee, his gaze aiming toward the door like he’s already thinking about Haven, already calculating. “But I know she doesn’t want to choose between me or you.”