Outside, the world waited—broken, hungry, and patient.
But in here, in the dark, with her heartbeat pressed against mine and her breath warm on my skin—this existed.
This small, impossible thing between us.
And I held onto it the same way she held onto me, like letting go wasn’t something either of us planned to do.
Twenty Seven
Nothing Personal -Libby
“What about you?” I asked softly, tilting my head to see his face. “Have you always been the dashing soldier who sweeps older women off their feet?”
My voice was light, teasing—a deliberate push against the gravity pulling at everything around us.
But the second the words left my lips, his body stiffened, a quick, involuntary reaction. I’d struck a nerve. He recovered fast, exhaling, deliberately loosening his muscles. It was the way someone trained to manage their reactions might act when they haven’t quite mastered managing them around you.
“Yeah… no,” he said, his words measured and low. A faint huff of breath escaped him—not quite a laugh, not quite a dismissal, but something caught between the two.
“I’ve got no clue about that, Libby.”
He paused.
I could track the hesitation in real time: the slight tension returning to his forearm, his tongue moving along the inside of his cheek—a tell I’d started cataloging without meaning to.
“I’ll be honest,” he finally said. “I’ve never been with anyone older. And I’ve always kept things… simple.”
I watched him carefully.
“Simple how?”
He didn’t look at me right away. His eyes stayed fixed on the unseen in the dark room, tracking something that wasn’t there.
“One-night stands,” he said, each word flat and plain. “Tinder hookups. In and out. No names, if I could help it.”
I pushed myself up slightly, shifting in his lap, bringing myself close enough to study his face properly, leaving him nowhere else to look.
There it is.
Not pride behind those words. Not indifference, nor the cocky detachment of someone who’d enjoyed the game and wanted credit for playing it well. Not the swagger of a man recounting a history he was secretly pleased with.
Shame.
Quiet and lived-in, settled into the corners of his expression, present, whether he acknowledged it or not.
“Why?” I asked, softer now, making it a question with no wrong answer.
His eyes flicked to mine, as if surprised by the gentleness. He seemed to have expected judgment, already bracing for the careful re-evaluation playing out behind someone’s eyes while their expression remained politely neutral. Disgust, perhaps. Or simply a quiet retreat, as if knowing this much was already too much.
I didn’t move.
I waited, my hand still resting against his chest, still and steady.
“Because then I never get attached,” he said, his voice low and even, stripped of emotion. “It stays easy. Nobody expects anything from you going in, so nobody gets disappointed whenit’s over. Nobody looks at you like you owe them something you were never going to be able to give.”
His jaw worked slightly, a small motion he probably didn’t know he was making.
“My sister and other siblings are my only attachment. My parents have been gone for almost four years. That’s it. That’s the entire list.”
