Just… holding.
Her cheek presses over my heart. Her tears soak through cotton into my skin.
She is crying for him. For me. For the boy I was and the man I became.
I cannot cry with her. I don’t know how.
But I can let her feel for me what I cannot feel for myself.
Her hand finds mine again, gripping tight. I lower my cheek to the top of her head and close my eyes.
We stay like that as the dusk settles around us, two wounded things learning the shape of trust in silence.
For the first time, I do not feel like a story I must protect.
I feel… held.
And I hold her back.
Sophia stays pressed to my chest long after her tears quiet. Not clinging. Not collapsing. Just… there. Breathing. Matching me without trying to.
Her fingers loosen in my shirt, but she doesn’t let go completely. And Goddess, I don’t want her to.
The cicadas hum their strange evening song. The air shifts cooler. Her cheek is still damp where it rests against my sternum.
“You’re cold,” I murmur.
She shakes her head, small and stubborn. “Just tired.”
Tired isn’t the right word. She is wrung out. So am I.
I run my hand up her back—slow, steady. “Come inside,” I say. “We sleep.”
She lifts her face, eyes red around the edges but steady. “Are you sure?”
No one has ever asked me that before—ifIwas sure. IfIwanted to share space.
“Yes,” I say. “Come.”
We stand together, a little unsteady. I keep a hand at her back, not guiding—just anchoring. She doesn’t pull away.
Inside her cabin, the dim lamplight softens everything. Her notes are stacked neatly on the desk. Her blanket is rumpled from the night before. It smells like tea and lavender and the faint warmth that is hers alone.
She hesitates beside the bed.
I don’t touch her. I don’t reach. I just step close enough that she feels I’m still here.
“We sleep,” I say again, quieter. “Nothing more.”
She exhales—one long, shaking breath that sounds like release.
We move without speaking.
In the bathroom, she changes into soft cotton shorts and an oversized T-shirt, hands slightly unsteady. I don’t remove my clothes, wanting to honor her, wanting to hold tight to the boundary we set.
The bed dips when we both sit.
I lie back first, giving her space to choose.
