He sees it and curses softly under his breath, as if hurting me with the truth offends him even while he keeps doing it.
“But knowing it isn’t the same as…” He breaks off, jaw tightening. “I need time with it. I need time to understand what it means for us now. I need time to come to terms with the fact that the only man I ever…” He stops again, breathing hard, then forces it out differently. “I need time.”
The heartbreak is so immediate and familiar it almost makes me laugh.
Of course.
Of course, losing him again would be this. Not memory wiped clean and hatred in his eyes this time, but honesty. A request. A boundary drawn by the same man whose mouth still tastes like he’s mine.
I look at him for a long moment, at the strain around his eyes, at the control it’s costing him to say this instead of something easier or crueler, and all the fight in me goes strangely quiet.
Because he’s right. I know what it cost him to come this far. To dig through files and watch himself loving me on screensand paper. To kiss me and still choose sense where we’ve always chosen fire.
And the awful thing is, part of me is proud of him for it even while it feels like something in my chest is being broken open all over again.
“So, you want me to stay away,” I say.
His mouth flattens. “For now.”
“For now,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
The word is careful. Brutal because it is careful.
I nod once. “Fine,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I’ll stay away.”
His eyes close briefly, as if relief hurts. When they open again, they’re darker. Softer too, though he’d probably rather bite his own tongue than admit it.
“Vincenzo—”
I shake my head. “No. Don’t.”
I know what comes next if I let him keep talking. Some apology he doesn’t owe me, or reassurance that makes it worse, not better. I can’t be handed hope like that and be expected to survive it politely.
I push him away and step back; he doesn’t reach for me. That’s the final mercy, and also the cruelest.
I smooth my shirt for a second time just to have something to do with my hands, then I open the door and stop, but I don’t turn back fully.
“Take all the time you need, Nikolaj,” I say. “But I can’t hold onto hope for another eight years. I won’t.”
I leave before the rest of my heart catches up and begs him not to make me do this twice.
Only when I get back to my car do I let my face slip. Only then do I let myself feel the clean, familiar agony of obeying him whenevery inch of me wanted to stay and force him to kiss me again until he forgot why he asked for distance in the first place.
But that would’ve been for me, not for him. And for all the monstrous things I’ve become, I still know the difference.
Stay away, he said.
So I will.
thirteen
Nikolaj
Fivemonthsisalong time to be haunted by a man who obeyed you.
It is also long enough to learn exactly how badly a promise can rot you from the inside. Especially when the promise is one you made to the only person who has ever had the power to ruin your peace with a look.
