Sad.
Broken.
My heart clenched painfully at the sight.
For a moment, I considered retreating silently, pretending I had never seen this. But something about that image made leaving impossible.
I took a deep breath and gently pushed the door open, announcing my presence with the faintest sound.
Enrico looked up quickly, startled.
His eyes met mine, and the wet, wounded shine in them tightened my chest even more.
“Are you okay?” I asked hesitantly as I stepped inside.
He stayed still for a few seconds, as if weighing his response, before finally exhaling and gesturing lightly toward the boxes around him.
“I was organizing some old things. Photos. Documents. Memories.”
His voice was low. Rough.
I walked over and sat beside him on the floor.
As I looked through the boxes, it became clear that they held pieces of his past—things he had probably spent years avoiding. Newspaper clippings. Old articles. Photographs I recognized as his parents’.
But there was also us.
My gaze landed immediately on a photo resting on top of the pile, and my heart ached.
It was a picture of us, taken years ago, on a day I remembered with painful clarity.
We were wrapped in each other’s arms, carefree and happy, standing by the ocean during a short trip to the coast. My hair was blowing wildly in the wind, and Enrico’s smile—open, pure—belonged to a life that felt impossibly distant now.
Beside the photo sat a small red velvet box, open.
Inside, a pair of gold wedding bands gleamed softly under the lamp’s light—rings he had secretly bought, planning to surprise me before everything collapsed.
They shone like silent keepers of a promise that had never been fulfilled.
I carefully touched another photograph, older and black-and-white, showing me asleep against his chest while he looked down at me with unmistakable tenderness, completely unaware of the world around us.
The expression in his eyes in that picture made me shiver.
It reminded me of how safe I had once felt in his arms.
My hands trembled as I held those physical remnants of moments that now felt like they belonged to someone else—like a dream that had turned into a nightmare.
Why…
Why had he kept all of this?
A sharp pain spread through my chest as I sifted through more items. Small keepsakes. Notes we had exchanged at the beginning of our relationship. A paper napkin with a silly drawing he had made one night while we waited for food at a restaurant.
Each object carried fragments of the man I had once loved with everything I had—fragments I was sure had been lost forever, yet here they were, preserved like sacred relics.
Tears gathered in my eyes, my throat tightening around a knot that was nearly impossible to swallow.
All of it was silent, undeniable proof of how deeply I had believed in him.
