"Then what am I to you?"
He didn’t answer immediately, and the silence cut deeper than any words could.
“That’s what I thought." I grabbed my bag from the chair, my heart feeling like lead. "I'm done. I'm tired of pretending this doesn't hurt every single day. I won't exist in the corners of your life anymore."
"Mireya… Wait!” His voice cracked as he called out. "Please don’t go."
I stopped moving, but I could not bring myself to turn around and look at him.
"You're not invisible," he said roughly. "You're the only thing I see. Every morning, every night. You're in every thought I have, and it's killing me."
I turned around slowly, and my breath caught at how wrecked he looked. His hair was messy where he had run his fingers through it, and his eyes were red and raw.
"Three years ago, my fiancée died in a car accident," he began, the words sounding like they were being dragged over broken glass. "A drunk driver ran a red light, and she was gone before the help even arrived."
My throat tightened with a sharp ache for him.
It all made sense now—the distance, the careful routines, the way he always kept one step back even when we were under the same roof. The quiet walls he rebuilt every morning. The way he looked at me like he wanted something he didn’t trust himself to reach for.
"I shut down after the funeral. I stopped feeling anything because it meant remembering exactly what I had lost. I felt like I had failed to protect her." He took a shaky, uneven breath. "I’ve been numb for such a long time that feeling anything at all is overwhelming. And the way I feel about you is more than I can handle."
"Riven—"
"You want to know why I avoid you?" He let out a hollow laugh. "Because when I look at you, I remember what it feels like to be human. And I don't know if I can survive being human again."
Those words gutted me.
"Every morning when you're in the kitchen, I want to stay and sit with you. I want to talk about nothing important and pretend I'm the kind of man who deserves a life like that." His voice dropped even lower. "Every time I hear you laughing withEmma, I want to be part of that joy. I want to stop standing in the shadows of doorways watching my life happen without me."
"Then why don't you just step into the room?"
"Because I’m a coward," he said, his honesty cutting through the air. "Because letting you in means I might lose you. And I’ve already lost every person I’ve ever dared to risk my heart for."
"So you'd rather lose me by pushing me away?"
"At least if I push you away, I can see the end coming."
The logic was heartbreaking. "That’s not how life works, Riven. You don't get to protect yourself from grief by refusing to actually live."
"I know," he whispered.
"You don't get to keep me away and then act surprised when I finally decide to leave."
"I know."
"You don't…" My voice broke. "You don't get to look at me like you're drowning and then refuse to reach for my hand."
He closed his eyes tightly. "I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to reach for someone or how to want something without waiting for it to vanish. I don’t know how to love a person without mapping out all the ways they could be taken from me."
The word "love" vibrated between us.
"I'm so incredibly tired," he continued, leaning his head back. "I'm tired of being careful and protecting myself from something that has already happened. I'm tired of pretending I don't wake up thinking about you every single day. I spend every moment wondering what you're feeling and if you think about me even half as much as I think about you."
Tears spilled over my cheeks. "I do think about you that much."
"Then why are you leaving?"
"Because staying in your house is destroying me." The words tore out. "I can't keep wanting you from a distance. I want everything—your mornings, your nights, your bad moods, your rare smiles, every quiet moment."
