“You care,” he whispers, lips brushing just behind my ear, voice lowered with meaning. “You care too much. That’s why it’s going to hurt.”
I freeze with the spatula mid-air.
“You always this poetic before pancakes?”
He doesn’t answer.
Just holds me tighter — not possessive, not yet, but desperate in a quiet, unspoken way. Like maybe if he holds on hard enough, time will slow down, and the goodbye waiting for us both won’t get any closer.
I pretend not to notice.
Pretend not to hear the truth threaded through his words.
Pretend not to feel my heart cracking with every second of silence.
I flip the pancake and pretend that this is normal. That we are normal. That two people who broke and burned and bled in each other’s arms can stand in a kitchen and joke about breakfast.
But we aren’t a couple.
And the countdown ticks louder every time I look at him.
Thirty days.
No — twenty-six.
Twenty-six mornings left.
If that.
“You okay?” he murmurs, voice soft enough it almost breaks me.
I nod. Then lie. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t call me on it.
Just presses a slow kiss to my neck, lingering, inhaling, like he’s trying to memorise me in case memory is all he gets to keep.
I hate that it makes me want to be memorised.
I slide the pancakes onto a plate with a hand that shakes more than I want to admit.
“Eat,” I say too brightly. Too falsely. Too everything.
He studies me, but sits.
He devours the first bite like he’s starving — like it’s the first real thing he’s tasted in days, like he hasn’t already consumed every part of me that mattered.
“You should open a café,” he says, mouth full. “Call it Butterfly Bakes.”
I snort. “Pretty sure trauma doesn’t make great branding.”
His smile falters. Softens.
“I’d eat there every day.”
My hand freezes mid-pour.
“What?”
