The room was quiet in the way spaces are when they belong to someone who doesn’t waste energy. The bed was made precisely, the lines clean. No clutter. No excess.
But it wasn’t empty.
A jacket lay folded over the back of a chair. A watch rested on the dresser beside a small stack of books. Nothing decorative. Everything intentional.
I moved slowly, like I might disturb something fragile if I went too fast.
On the desk sat a single photograph in a plain frame.
I stopped. I hadn’t noticed it when I was here before.
Last night, I’d been too immersed in Connor—too lost in the gravity of him, in the way his body had eclipsed everything else. The room had been nothing but background then, a blur of walls and shadows and heat. I’d been aware only of skinand breath and the feeling of being held in something relentless and consuming. I’d moved through the space like someone underwater, sensing but not seeing, taking nothing in because there had been no room for anything else.
Part of me wished—achefully—that I could return to that version of myself. The woman who noticed nothing but the man in front of her. The woman for whom the world narrowed so completely that even memory loosened its grip. But standing here now, alone and sharp-edged again, I understood why I hadn’t seen the room before.
Last night had been about surrender.
Today was about reckoning.
The framed photograph wasn’t a portrait. It wasn’t a place I recognized. Just an image of water at dusk—dark, almost black, the faintest sliver of light at the horizon. The composition was spare. Controlled. And deeply lonely.
My breath caught.
He hadn’t chosen something obvious. He hadn’t chosen comfort. He’d chosen stillness. A moment right before night fully claimed the day.
The almost.
I lifted my camera without thinking and framed the room—not to take the shot yet, just to see. Through the lens, details sharpened.
The crease in the pillow where his head rested. The scuff on the floor near the door, evidence of pacing. The faint indentation on the edge of the desk where someone had leaned there too often.
Connor existed in restraint.
In preparation.
In moments that never fully resolved.
I lowered the camera and sat on the edge of the bed.
This was who he was when no one was watching. Not the man who guarded me in the street or held me with devastating control. This was the version of him that lingered between things—between violence and peace, between isolation and connection.
Between past and future.
It made my chest ache.
I traced the seam of the blanket absently, my thoughts drifting—not toward fear, but backward. Toward something older. Quieter. Heavier.
My mother.
The thought arrived without warning, like it had been waiting for a crack to slip through.
Growing up, I’d learned to read rooms early. Learned how to tell, by the way my mother moved through the house, what kind of day it was going to be. Whether the curtains would stay drawn. Whether dinner would be silent. Whether I’d need to make myself smaller, lighter, easier.
She wasn’t cruel. She was absent in a way that felt lonelier than anger ever could.
Depression wasn’t something we named back then. It was just “one of her days.” Or “one of her stretches.” It moved through our house like weather—unpredictable, uncontrollable, something you prepared for but never stopped.
I became good at almosts.
