Megan had always been careful with Kyle.
Careful not to push. Careful not to ask questions he wasn't ready to answer.
She had learned early that his silences weren't emptiness — they were boundaries. The way he carried everything inward instead of letting it out.
As the person closest to Kyle — often the only one he had — she paid attention. More than she would admit.
Especially after that evening.
The change wasn't dramatic. It never was with Kyle. It showed in small things.
In the way his gaze lingered when Darren spoke. In the way he listened — fully, openly — as if nothing else in the room mattered. And in the way something in him seemed to lift when Darren appeared.
For someone like Kyle — quiet, withdrawn, painfully aware of his own limitations — Darren must have felt unreal.
Too confident. Too effortless. Too complete.
An ideal.
And that was exactly what frightened Megan.
The last thing she wanted was for Kyle to burn himself on something unguarded. Especially now. Especially when this was his first time feeling something like this.
She had spent years helping him rebuild, stabilizing what had once been broken. Watching him learn how to exist without falling apart.
She wanted him to be happy. She just wasn't sure Darren could be the one to give him that.
Megan knew this wasn't her choice to make. Kyle had to understand his own feelings, decide for himself what he wanted — and what he was willing to risk.
Still, she was worried. Perhaps more than Kyle was.
Kyle, meanwhile, understood exactly what was happening to him. He knew how he felt about his new friend.
He knew what Darren's deep voice did to him. What those fleeting, unreadable glances stirred in his chest. How a simple, accidental brush of hands left him restless, unable to focus.
And yet — he said nothing.
Confessing would mean risking what they already had. And Kyle wasn't brave enough for that.
No, he would never dare to say it.
So he hid it. Carefully.
Even from Megan — which hurt more than he let himself acknowledge. She was the one person he'd always trusted with his thoughts, his fears, his half-formed truths.
But this felt different. Too fragile to name.
Megan didn't know how Darren felt either.
Was it interest? Affection? Or just kindness — the easy kind Darren seemed to offer everyone?
What if he stayed because he felt sorry for Kyle? What if this was nothing more than friendliness misread?
Those questions returned every time Megan found the two of them together — talking quietly, laughing over nothing, sharing space as if it belonged to both of them now.
Sometimes she caught Darren watching Kyle when he thought no one noticed.
Not openly. Not insistently. Just long enough to mean something — the kind that lingered even when nothing was being said.
That, more than anything else, unsettled her.
She needed to know. If only to protect her brother.
And eventually,
she decided to ask Darren directly.