• • •
All this extra time I have without Cassian leaves me restless.
Like something’s building under my skin with nowhere to go.
I can’t sit still.
I can’t focus.
Everything feels too loud.
Too much.
And somehow — it all leads back to him.
• • •
So I lay back in bed.
Unzip my shorts.
And let myself have him.
His laugh first. Always his laugh.
Then his voice — the low version, the one he only uses at night when it’s just us and he doesn’t have to perform anything for anyone.
The way he looked on the roof with his head tipped back and the stars reflected in his eyes.
The weight of his hand sliding between my fingers like it belonged there.
The I need you so much that he said to the dark like a secret he couldn’t keep anymore.
I let myself have all of it.
Every image I usually keep at a careful distance.
His mouth.
The way he’d looked at mine.
Our noses brushing and the whole world going still.
I know exactly what this means.
I stopped pretending otherwise two years ago.
I just don’t say it out loud.
Not even to myself.
Not in words.
I let myself get lost in it — in him — until everything else goes quiet.
Until it’s just this.
Just him.
