The Only Exception

✦ Chapter Eleven: Little by Little

"You're different lately," Demi said, not looking up from her phone.

Zei didn't answer right away. Just stretched out on her side of the dorm room couch, scrolling mindlessly, waiting for her thoughts to stop running in circles.

"Different how?"

"You're softer. Less... sharp around the edges."

Zei raised an eyebrow. "Thanks, I think."

"It's a compliment." Demi smiled, finally meeting her gaze. "You look... like you're holding onto something good."

Zei thought of Kael's hand, steady on hers. The silence between them that didn't ask for explanations. The quiet way he showed up without expecting her to be ready for anything more than this.

"I don't know what it is yet," Zei said honestly. "But yeah. Maybe I am."

Demi's smile tilted into something knowing, something almost gentle. "Good. You deserve it."

⸻

Kael picked her up again that Friday.

No warning. No plans. Just I'm outside and Noir waiting beneath the pale spill of streetlight like it belonged there. Like he belonged there.

"You're getting predictable," she teased as she slid into the passenger seat.

"You're still getting in."

"You're still picking me up."

"You're still letting me."

Their banter was quieter now. Less defensive. Less about deflection and more about rhythm - the kind people build when they've stopped pretending not to care.

Kael drove them nowhere in particular. Through streets half-remembered and neighborhoods stitched together by years he'd lived without her. Past convenience stores still half-lit. Past closed shops with peeling signs. Past places where nothing urgent was expected of them.

Zei leaned her head against the window and let herself wonder if this was how trust started: not with grand gestures or declarations, but with shared silences and someone remembering to show up.

"You know," Kael said eventually, "you never really talk about what happened. Before me."

Zei's breath caught. "Because it's not important anymore."

"That's not true."

She watched the world blur past outside. "It's just... hard. To explain. Harder to admit I let someone make me feel small."

Kael didn't speak at first. He didn't push. He just drove, quiet and steady.

"You're not small," he said finally. "Not with me."

Zei let those words sink into her skin like warmth after too long in the cold.

"I know."

⸻

Later, they parked somewhere overlooking a row of empty shops, neon signs humming quietly into the night.

Kael didn't reach for her hand this time. He just let his arm brush hers, let the space between them narrow without needing to cross it fully.

"You ever wonder how people know?" Zei asked after a long stretch of quiet.

"Know what?"

"That they're safe. That someone won't leave. That this... whatever this is... is real."

Kael's answer was soft. Certain in a way she couldn't argue with.

"They don't."

Zei huffed a tired, humorless laugh. "Comforting."

"But they can believe it. Little by little."

She thought of how he never pushed. Never asked for more than she could give. Never made her feel like she owed him anything just to keep him here.

Little by little.

"You're good at this," she said after a moment.

Kael's mouth twitched, faint and tired. "Not really."

"You are with me."

That earned her a glance, something softer flickering beneath his usual restraint. "You're easy to want to be good to."

Zei didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know how to hold words like that without dropping them.

So she didn't say anything.

She just let herself lean a little closer. Let herself press her shoulder to his. Let herself believe - for once - that this small thing between them wasn't something she had to protect herself from.

⸻

"Do you think you'll miss it?" she asked, quietly. "Your uni. This version of life."

Kael considered. "Parts of it. People. Places. But not all of it."

"You're ready for the next thing."

"Mostly."

"And what about us?" The words slipped out before she could catch them. "What happens when you're... gone?"

Kael turned to her, serious now. "I'm not leaving."

"You're graduating. You'll be busy. Work. Life. Your apartment-"

"I'm not leaving."

Her breath caught. "You can't promise that."

"I can promise I don't walk away just because things change."

She let that settle in the silence between them. Let herself wonder if maybe, just maybe, this was the first time someone had said those words and meant them.

⸻

When he drove her home, he waited - as always - until she was halfway to the dorm before he said it.

"Zei."

She turned back, her hand already on the door.

Kael's window was down, his voice soft in the night air.

"I'm still here."

Her heart ached in a way she didn't know how to name.

"I know."

And maybe, for tonight, that was enough to believe in.