His sleeves were rolled. Shirt crisp. Collar open like he’d been dressed for hours. He looked like he’d stepped out of a boardroom, not the bedroom I used to sleep in.
The shirt he wore—navy, tailored, expensive—was one I picked out once. Casually.I like you in darker blues,I’d said. He’d bought five variations the next week.
He didn’t seem to remember.
Or maybe he did—and just didn’t care.
Now I watched his hand flex around the edge of the phone. Smooth, measured. Like everything in him had been trained to operate at a level below emotional.
He didn’t look at me.
Not once.
Some part of me wanted him to yell.
To throw the glass. To growl. To crack open so I couldseethat something under all that silence still burned for me.
But he didn’t give me that. He just sat there. Unmoved. Unreachable. Untouched.
I wanted to ask?—
What are you thinking?
Do you hate me?
Do you still want me?
If I reached for you, would you recoil?
Or worse… would you let me?
But I didn’t ask. Because if I opened my mouth, I was afraid the wrong thing would spill out. So I stayed still and stared at the man who used to command me with a whisper.
Now he didn’t need to say anything at all. He didn’t react. Didn’t glance. Just kept scrolling.
The screen’s glow flickered over his knuckles. I folded my hands in my lap. My pulse was too loud. I wanted to ask something.Anythingreally. But I couldn’t find a question that didn’t feel stupid. So I settled for the only thing that felt safe.
“Thank you… for letting me stay.”
That was the moment he looked up. Just his eyes. Cold. Sharp. Final.
“I didn’t.”
One sentence.
Flat.
Like it didn’t matter to him whether I heard it or not.
I swallowed hard. “Then why?—”
He set the phone down.
Slow.
Precise.
Looked at me like I was something under glass.
