My heart slams, chest too tight for all the things I want to feel at once.Fear, gratitude, and disbelief, mixed with fierce, aching affection.
“You don’t scare me,” my ex spits.
“I don’t care if I do,” Darren replies.“But you need to understand something.She’s not alone anymore.You don’t get her fear.You don’t get her time.You sure as hell don’t get her body to target practice your cruelty on.”
He leans forward slightly, like the distance between him and the phone matters.
“And if you come near her again,” he finishes, low and lethal, “you and I will have a conversation you won’t enjoy.”
My ex laughs again, but it’s thinner now.“Cute speech,” he says.“You rehearse that in the mirror?”
The bravado in his voice can’t hide the thread of uncertainty I know so well.He hates not understanding the new variable.Hates not being the biggest thing in the room.
“I don’t repeat myself,” Darren says simply, and ends the call.
Just ends it.No shouting.No insults.
Just ...click.
The silence afterward roars.
I realize only then that I’m shaking.Not delicate trembling.Full-body tremors, adrenaline crashing through my system like a storm breaking.
Darren sets the phone down on the nightstand with careful precision, then turns back to me.His face softens instantly.
“Hey,” he murmurs.“Eyes on me.”
I do what he says, focusing on his face.Because my body has apparently decided that’s a safe place to land.
“You did so good,” he says, brushing messy hair back from my cheek with the backs of his fingers.“You didn’t fold.You didn’t apologize.You said the truth out loud.”
A choked laugh escapes me.“I also almost threw up.”
“Totally valid reaction,” he says solemnly.“I almost threw up listening to him.”
A wet sound slips out of me that might be a laugh, might be a sob.Maybe both.My hands tangle in his hoodie before I know what they’re doing, pulling him closer like gravity has opinions now.
He goes willingly.
His arms come around me, strong and sure, but not caging.Never caging.He leaves space where I need it and closes it when I lean in.I bury my face in his chest and breathe him in -—soap, coffee, smoke, something purely him that makes my ribs feel less like a trap and more like a home.
“It’s not over,” I whisper into fabric.
“I know,” he says.“But neither are you.”
The words crack me open.Tears spill, hot and unchecked, soaking into the fabric that separates us.Ugly crying.The kind that leaves your face blotchy and your nose running and your dignity somewhere under the bed collecting dust bunnies.
And he just holds me through it.No shushing.No “calm down” or “you’re okay” lies.Just steady, quiet presence and the occasional rough kiss to the top of my head like he can’t help himself.
When the sobs finally taper into hiccupped breaths, I’m exhausted in that bone-deep way grief leaves you.He shifts just enough to look down at me, thumb tracing my cheek gently.
“Water?”he asks.
I nod, because my throat feels like sandpaper and regret.
He presses a glass into my hand like he conjured it.I sip.My hands still shake even if it’s less now.He notices, but then again, it seems like he always notices.He cups the back of my neck, thumb moving in slow circles until the tremor eases.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, because old habits die hard and mine are cockroaches too.
