He frowns.
“He chose me,” I say. “He stayed. In the background. In the quiet. He didn’t demand. He didn’t disappear. He held space when I couldn’t even hold myself.”
Blake looks down.
“He waited,” I add. “Years. Walked in the shadows. Never once asked me to be anything other than what I was surviving.”
My voice softens despite myself.
“When you left, you took the ground with you. Dane didn’t try to fix me. He just stood there until I remembered how to stand on my own.”
Blake nods slowly, like each word weighs a ton.
“And I never had to pretend with him.”
That’s the cut.
I reach into my bag and place the article on the table.
“This explains the rest,” I say. “Read it.”
The café noise dulls around us. Cups clinking. Steam hissing. Someone laughing too loudly near the counter. Music low and tinny through old speakers. A song about love playing at exactly the wrong moment.
I watch his hands first. Always the hands. The way they shake now when they never did before. He reads.
I don’t rush him.
At first, his face closes. Defensive. Guarded. Then the cracks start to show.
His jaw tightens at the opening lines. His breath catches at the reveal. His fingers tremble when he reaches the part where I findhim. When I swipe right. When I become the ghost he confesses to.
By the time he reachesSo I did too, his throat works like he might choke.
He clears it. Coughs. Presses his fingers to his mouth.
Tears spill anyway.
He looks at me once. Quickly. Like staying would hurt too much.
By the end, his hands are shaking so badly he has to set the pages down.
“I thought I could leave you effortlessly,” he says hoarsely. “I really did.”
I don’t reach for him. I don’t save him.
“It was me who ripped hearts out,” he continues. “And now mine’s the one bleeding.”
His voice breaks completely.
“The walls were indestructible,” he whispers. “Before you.”
I let the silence answer him. Dane is across the street. I can feel him the way you feel weather before it breaks. A presence. A tether.
He hasn’t followed me in. He promised he wouldn’t. But he’s there, leaning against brick, arms crossed, jaw locked, watching through the glass like a man guarding a sacred threshold.
He reaches—
At least, that’s what I used to think — before I became the catfish.
