Connor’s hand at my waist. Not gripping. Not pulling. Just there. An anchor.
My eyes stung unexpectedly. I blinked fast.
Amaya’s voice gentled slightly. “Who taught you to want quietly?”
The question slid under my ribs like a blade.
I stared into my wine, watching the surface tremble.
“It was a long time ago,” I said.
“Mm.” Amaya waited. She could wait forever. She had the patience of someone who’d already decided she could handle whatever truth came next.
I swallowed. “I was twenty.”
Her eyes didn’t change.
“He was …” I tried to find the right word. “Brilliant. Charismatic in a way that made everyone want to be close to him. The kind of professor who could say a sentence and people would write it down like it was scripture.”
Amaya’s mouth tightened in the smallest way.
“He noticed me,” I continued, and the simple fact of saying it out loud made my stomach twist. “Not in an obvious way. Not like a man at a bar. It was … subtle. He’d ask what I thought. He’d remember something I’d said weeks earlier. He’d tell me my work had ‘depth’ like it was a secret only he could see.”
I forced a laugh that wasn’t real. “God, I sound pathetic.”
“You sound like a girl being trained,” Amaya corrected.
The word snapped something in me.
Trained.
I had always told myself it was love. Or at least a complicated version of it. That I’d been mature. That I’d chosen.
But when Amaya said trained, my body reacted like it recognized the truth.
“He was married,” I said quietly.
Amaya stared at me, unblinking. “Of course, he was.”
“He never said he would leave her,” I added quickly, as if that made it better. “He never promised anything. That was … part of it. He didn’t have to lie. He just let me fill in the blanks.”
Amaya’s eyes narrowed, not angry at me—angry at the ghost of him.
“He’d email me late at night,” I said. “Not explicitly. Just … questions. A quote. A link to a photograph he thought I’d like. He’d say things like,You have a mind that will ruin men, and I’d read it over and over like it was romantic instead of dangerous.”
My throat tightened. I took a sip of wine too fast and felt it burn.
“He never touched you?” Amaya asked softly.
I hesitated.
He had. Not in ways that left bruises or evidence.
But there were always fingers, hovering.
“You know,” I said, voice thin. “Little things. A hand on my shoulder when he walked behind me. A touch at my lower back guiding me out of a room. The kind of contact that made you feel chosen in public and owned in private.”
Amaya’s jaw clenched.
