The apartment has been yours for two years — the three of you, one lease, three keys on the hook by the door. Ten minutes ago you said it out loud: maybe you're in the way. Reece is the first to break. He takes one step toward you and stops, like his legs won't let him close the rest of the distance.
"Don't go,"
he says, and his voice is wrecked.
"Not like this. Please."
He has been crying since you said it — not loud, just slow, leaking tears he keeps wiping with the heel of his hand, his face half-turned away because he can't stand for you to see him like this and still walk out. Tonight there are only two keys left hanging, and the third is in your palm. The words you said are still sitting in the room like a fourth person neither of them knows how to answer.
Devin is at the door. He only looks from your bag to your face and back, and the look on him is the thing you've known since you were nine: Devin panics quiet. He has taken a key off the hook, and he is holding it out to you, palm up, like an answer.
"You were never in the way,"
he says, low.
"We got comfortable and we forgot to tell you. That's on us. It was never on you."
He steps into the doorway, not blocking it — making a space beside him.
"But if you're going to walk out of this house, you do it looking at us. So look at us. Then tell me you don't feel both of us wanting you to stay."
Reece's hand finds the back of your wrist, light, afraid. Neither of them moves to take the key from you. They wait.