Almost happy. Almost invisible. Almost enough to keep the darkness at bay.
I learned that love could be quiet to the point of disappearance. That needing too much was dangerous. That desire—especially loud desire—risked tipping the balance.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized how deeply that lesson had etched itself into my body.
How I’d gravitated toward men who were unavailable. Emotionally distant lovers. A married professor. People who offered attention in fragments, who never asked me to want loudly or fully.
Because I knew how to live in the margins.
In Connor’s room, that truth landed differently.
He was dangerous, yes. Complicated. But he was also present in a way that felt startling. When he looked at me, there was no almost. No half-measure.
And that terrified me more than absence ever had.
Tears came suddenly, sharp and uninvited. I pressed my palm to my mouth, trying to keep the sound in, but my chest tightened, the pressure too much to hold.
I cried quietly at first. Then less so.
I cried for the apartment that no longer felt safe. For the photographs that had been torn. For the man who’d been taken from my sight before I could ask the questions that had started to bloom.
But beneath all of that, I cried for the girl I’d been. The one who learned to disappear so others could survive. The one who learned to want in silence.
The sobs wracked me harder than I expected, my shoulders curling inward, my camera clutched to my chest like a lifeline.
A gentle knock sounded at the door.
“Ms. Zee?” Ellsworth’s voice, careful. “May I come in?”
I scrubbed at my face and inhaled shakily. “Yes.”
He entered quietly, taking in the scene with a single glance—my posture, my red eyes, the way grief had folded me inward.
He didn’t comment on it.
He simply pulled a chair closer and sat, giving me space without distance.
“You’ve been very brave today,” he said after a moment.
I laughed weakly. “I don’t feel brave.”
“Few people do when they are,” he replied.
I stared at the floor. “I think I’ve been running from myself for a long time.”
Ellsworth nodded. “Most people do. The fortunate ones eventually stop.”
I swallowed. “Connor … he makes it hard to hide.”
“That is not a flaw,” Ellsworth said. “Though it can be inconvenient.”
That earned a real smile from me, small but genuine.
“May I ask you something?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Do you ever get tired of protecting men like him?”
