He wanted to go alone.
Told me this was something he needed to face by himself. Said it gently, with a hand on my chest and that stubborn set to his jaw. So I let him. I waited. I’ve been waiting—for the knock, the call, the anything that would tell me how it went.
Instead, I get silence.
For hours.
And then—finally—the door creaks open.
And the man I’ve been in love with for most of my life walks in.
He doesn’t say a word.
Doesn’t need to.
He looks like defeat made flesh—like a ruin barely held together by bone and breath. His shoulders are slumped, his eyes glassy, the weight of everything he’s carried etched into every slow, heavy step.
I’m already standing. The glass hits the table without care. I meet him halfway.
I take his face in both hands. His skin is cold.
“Grant,” I whisper, but that’s all I get out before I’m kissing him.
I mean for it to be soft. A welcome. A balm.
But he gasps into my mouth and clutches at me—fingers knotting in the back of my shirt, arms winding around my neck like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
He rises onto the balls of his feet, chasing the kiss, deepening it, pouring all the agony and ash and fury of today into me. And I take it. I drink it. I let him taste something other than grief, if only for a minute.
I pull him into me so there’s no space left. No air. No past. Just heat and pressure and the ache of finally being needed this way.
I can feel him—every shiver, every unspoken plea pressed against me. We’re both already hard. Already moving without direction, just instinct. His hips grind against mine like he’s trying to forget his own name.
And maybe he is.
Maybe that’s what this is.
He doesn’t need comfort. Not now.
He needs to be burned down to nothing and built again from ash.
I can do that.
I will do that.
My hand tangles in his hair, the other sliding down his back to grip his waist, grounding him as he ruts against me like hecan’t stand not being skin-to-skin. I walk us backward, guiding him toward the bedroom, kissing him like a man who finally has permission to worship.
Because I will worship him. Every inch. Every scar.
Tonight, I’ll strip him bare—not just his clothes but the haunted version of himself he brought back through that door.
And when he looks in the mirror tomorrow, he’ll see something new.
Something clean.
Something loved.
Tonight, I’ll give him exactly what he needs.
