“Sure. Any time,” I said and plastered a smile on my face.
We stood there. Two feet apart. In utter silence. A whole ocean between us. I could feel him watching me. Not obviously. Not with his eyes. With his attention. It felt like pressure. Like warmth. Like standing too close to a fire without being able to step toward it.
It crawled across my skin.
It made me hyperaware of my own movements. The way I shifted my weight. The way I held my mug. The way myshoulders stayed a fraction too tight. I felt like I was being witnessed. Not in a judging way. In a…waitingway.
As if he was watching to see what I would do. To see if I would reach. To see if I would come closer.
I didn’t. I hated myself for that.
“How’s your arm?” I asked instead.
There it was. The professional tone. The careful distance. TheI’m here but I won’t touch youvoice. The one I used when I was pretending this was enough.
He blinked once. “Fine.” He shrugged too quickly. “Doesn’t hurt.”
My mouth twitched despite myself. A lie. Not a dramatic one. Just the kind meant to smooth things over, to keep the conversation shallow and survivable. I knew better. I’d seen the bloody bandages in the bin. The way he favored one sleeve. The careful way he moved, like pain was something to negotiate with instead of acknowledge.
But asking was part of the role I’d assigned myself. Concern without closeness. Care without comfort. And it would have been negligent—not just cowardly—not to try.
He took a sip of his coffee and winced. Then pulled out his phone and kept his eyes fixed on that instead of me. It made my skin itch not to be the center of his attention.
I watched him over the rim of my mug and felt something in my chest fold in on itself. Made it hard to breathe. This is what I’d done. Done to us. Not protected him. Not steadied him. I had taught him how to be alone in front of me. I had taught him how not to reach for me.
The realization hurt in a way that had nothing to do with desire. It was another form of suffocating grief. That was a language we were both well versed in.
“I’m going to head out for a bit,” I said. Too quickly. “I’ve got some errands.” That was a lie too. But a kinder one.
He nodded. “Okay.”
When he didn’t respond I grabbed my keys. My jacket. Slipped into my boots and paused at the door. I waited to see if he’d ask for anything. But he stayed focused on his phone.
Without a backward glance, I turned and headed for the door. He was watching me now. When he thought I wasn’t aware of him. Not openly. Just… quiet surreptitious glances. Like someone watching a train leave a station they aren’t chasing.
Something in my chest cracked. “Elliot.”
He lifted his eyes fully then. A spark flared in them. It gutted me. “Yes?”
I almost saidI’m sorry.I almost saidcome here.I almost saidplease don’t stop wanting me.I almost said a lot of things that would’ve been selfish. I said none of them.
“Nothing,” I said instead.
Then I left. The door closed behind me with a sound that felt final in a way I didn’t have words for yet. And the whole time I walked to the truck, all I could think was:I am not protecting him. I am teaching him how to survive without me.
I left the house like I was running from a fire I’d started myself. Not because he’d touched me. Not because he’d asked.
But because I had seen the wanting on his face before he had time to hide it and I had wanted it back.
That was the part I couldn’t forgive.
The part that made me feel unclean.
I drove without knowing where I was going, hands locked around the steering wheel so tight my knuckles burned. My chest felt too full, like something was pressing outward from the inside and there was no place for it to go. I kept replaying the moment I’d pulled away—the way his mouth had parted, the way his breath had caught, the way his eyes had searched my face like I might hand him an answer if he just looked hard enough.
I hadn’t given him one. I had left him with the space instead. I told myself it was restraint. I told myself it was protection. But the truth sat heavier.
It felt like cowardice dressed up as virtue.
