The business conversation is brief: resources deployed, intel incoming. Then: "What's happening with the girl?"
"She's a principal under protection."
"Nico." Patient in the way that means he won't ask again. "What's happening."
The silence answers for me.
"Don't do what I think you're doing."
"The tactical situation…"
"She isn't Sofia," Marco says, cutting through my excuse. "She's turning into a woman in crisis who's coping the only way she can. That's not the same thing. And if you pull away becauseyou're scared, you're not protecting her. You're confirming every fear she has. You're wrong about this."
He hangs up. Marco's never wrong about people. But knowing and doing are different wars, and I'm losing both.
I go back inside and double down on the distance anyway.
By evening, the tension between us has become a physical weight pressing on everything.
My skin feels too tight, like withdrawal from a drug. Days of having her against me every night, and now the empty space beside me has weight, presence, accusation.
She's been working all day. Hasn't broken character once. The tactical operator persona holds steady. But I catch moments: the way she glances at our bedroom door, the way she makes two cups of coffee out of habit then stares at the second one like she's forgotten why.
She closes the laptop. Stands. Walks to where I'm positioned by the window, always by the window now, sight lines clear, tactical positioning I don't need but maintain because it's easier than being close to her.
The dying light catches in her hair, turns it to spun gold. The same hair I buried my face in while she came around my cock. The memory makes my jaw clench.
"I need to understand something."
I wait.
"Three days ago you held me while I fell apart. You made me eggs and touched me like I was already part of you." Her voice is steady, controlled. "Now you can barely look at me. And the only thing that changed is I stopped crying and started fighting."
She's right. The unfairness of it is staggering.
"So which version do you want? The disaster who needs you? Or the woman who doesn't?"
I should explain about Sofia, about ballet, about the corrosive effect of proximity. Instead:
"I think some space would be beneficial. For both of us."
The mask drops.
What's underneath isn't rage or tears. It's recognition: the look of someone who's heard this before and always knew she'd hear it again.
"Space." She tests the word like it's bitter.
"The situation is…"
"Don't say tactical. Don't use your soldier words to make leaving sound like strategy." She laughs. Short, broken, nothing funny in it. "I actually believed you. 'Whatever it is, we face it together.' Remember?"
I remember. The promise I meant when I made it. I nod.
"I told you things I've never told anyone. Gave you every broken piece of me." Her voice cracks once, pushes through. "And the moment I stopped being broken, the MOMENT I tried to be strong, you decided you were done."
"That's not…"
"I knew you'd leave." Quiet. Final. Bone-deep certainty. "Everyone does."
