That’s when I feel it.
Not a touch. Just... awareness. The air shifts, the space around me suddenly thick with tension.
I straighten up, slowly turning toward the voice I haven’t heard in months.
“Enjoying the show?”
I barely hear it above the music, but I’d know that voice anywhere.
I freeze. My breath catches in my throat.
And then I see him.
Theo.
Standing there in the dim bar light, looking exactly the same and somehow completely different. His curls are a little longer. He’s grown out his scruff, more of a full beard now. But it’s his eyes that hit me hardest. Those eyes I used to know better than my own reflection.
I’m already on my feet before I know what I’m doing. And then I’m moving. Fast.
I crash into him, arms wrapping tight around his neck, and he catches me in his arms, lifting me into the air and hugging me tight to his chest.
I don’t cry right away. At first, I’m just breathing him in.Taking in the scent of his skin, the press of his hands on my back, the quiet sound he makes when he exhales. The safety I still feel in his arms, even to this day.
And then I break open.
I start sobbing, loud and ugly, my fists bunching in the back of his shirt.
“You left,” I say into his chest, voice cracking down the middle. “You fucking left.”
I step away from him then.
“I know,” His voice breaks too. “And I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You didn’t even say goodbye. You just… vanished.”
His eyes are glassy now, too. “Because I didn’t trust myself. If I saw you again, I wouldn’t have been able to walk away. And I thought I had to.”
“You don’t get to decide what I can survive, Theo.” I say it quieter this time, but I mean every word.
“I know,” he says again. “I was wrong. I was scared. I thought staying would destroy your future. But being away from you didn’t fix anything. It just hurt.”
I’m shaking now, but I force myself to look him in the eye.
“I needed you.”
He nods once. “I needed you, too. That’s why I came back.”
The crowd blurs behind us, the bar a whirl of background color and noise. All I see is him.
“I didn’t come here to ask for anything,” he says. “I just wanted to see you. To say it out loud.”
“What?”
“That I love you. That I never stopped. That I’ve been working every day to become someone worthy of being in your life. But if you’ve moved on, if you’re okay without me, I’ll go. I’ll respect that. But just know, you will always be everything to me.”
I study his face, the way his hands are still tucked deep in his pockets like he’s afraid to reach for me again.
I don’t know when it happened exactly, maybe somewhere in the middle of all those long nights without him, but I became someone who doesn’t need saving.
