His eyes studied me carefully. “And every time I saw that loneliness in your posture...”
His voice lowered. “...I wanted to pull out a chair.”
“I wanted to sit beside you. Share a meal. Make you laugh until your eyes stopped looking like they were bracing for impact.”
His jaw clenched. “But I couldn’t. It felt like betrayal. Like I was dishonoring Amy.”
“Like I was spitting on the memory of my late wife, our unborn baby... and my late sister.”
He exhaled slowly.
“The guilt of wanting you conflicted with the obligation to avenge them.”
His gaze locked onto mine. “That war inside me defined every interaction we had.”
“Distance wasn’t hatred. It was survival.”
Silence stretched between us again.
This time heavier than before. I understood something clearly now —
His cruelty toward me wasn’t born purely from malice. It was born from unresolved grief mixed with projection.
He saw my sister’s face when he looked at me.
He saw his trauma reflected in my existence.
And instead of separating the two —
He fused them.
I held his gaze.
He swallowed again.
For the first time since I’d walked through that door, the mask he wore — the ruthless confidence, the untouchable authority — cracked under the pressure of his own grief.
“When you came home from those clubs,” he said quietly, voice rough around the edges, “reeking of whiskey and smoke... when you’d force that small hopeful smile like nothing had changed...”
His throat tightened. “I wasn’t ignoring you out of spite.”
His eyes lifted to mine — raw now, stripped bare.
“God, no. Every instinct in me wanted to cross that room, pull you into my arms, hold you so tightly you couldn’t breathe, and tell you never to leave again.”
His jaw flexed.
“I wanted to promise I’d be your anchor. Your companion. The one person who wouldn’t abandon you.”
His gaze dropped briefly.
“But I couldn’t.”
The words came out like an admission of guilt.
“The trauma chained me. The images of them — Amy... my wife... the way they died — those memories refused to let me touch anything soft again.”
He inhaled slowly.
