I almost collapsed to the floor right then.I’m back.
That statement held too much of my current predicament. It clawed at the door I’d been trying to keep shut.
I forced myself forward. Square shoulders. Neutral expression.
Dropped the duffle beside the couch and sat down like I didn’t feel like a stranger in my own past.
Grabbed the coffee closest to me. Took a sip. And nearly spat it out.
Exactlyhow I used to take it. Dark roast. Cream. No sugar.
The bastard remembered.
“I take sugar now,” I lied.
He blinked. Surprise, maybe even disappointment, flitting through his face. But if it stung, he buried it deep.
We didn’t talk much after that.
I slipped into the guest bedroom. Stayed invisible except when I had to check his dressings, help him in and out of T-shirts—which, by the way, is its own form of hell.
Not because he was shirtless.
No. Because he looked...weaker.
Still fit. Still muscular. But the kind of muscle that comes secondhand now. Less maintained, more endured. The body of a man who used to fight for himself. Who maybestopped.
And then there’s the tattoo.
First time I saw it, I pretended I didn’t.
Second time, I couldn’t help it.
‘Greesha’
Etched in elegant script across the left side of his chest.
Not massive. But impossible to miss. Right over the heart I thought I walked away from.
I’ve never asked about it. When he got it. He’s never offered.
And now, a week later... he still looks at me with that quiet, unapologetic love that makes me want to scream and cry and curl into the carpet all at once.
Every time I’m in the kitchen heating up what we’ve ordered, he finds a reason to hover.
Leaning on counters like I might pass him something warm. As if I was the one who cooked.
Like Iusedto.
Like Ineverleft.
Fucking hell.
We sit across from each other in silence.
He’s eating with his good hand, focused, quiet. That’s our usual.
The kind of silence that balances on a thread. Sometimes it’s blissful—comforting even. Other times, like tonight, it’s claustrophobic. Like I’m being suffocated from the inside out.
