My pajamas are on the hook behind the door, and I don’t put them on.
Instead, I cross to his side of the closet, find one of his T-shirts, and pull it over my head.
It falls to mid-thigh.
It smells like him.
I pull in a slow breath.
Then walk back out.
He is already in bed, sitting up against the headboard, and he looks up when I come out of the bathroom, and his eyes move over me, the T-shirt,his T-shirt,falling loose around my shoulders, and something shifts in his expression that he doesn’t try to contain.
He smiles.
But it is different from last night’s smile—the smile of a man who is storing something.
I look at him for a moment, at the green eyes, his jaw, and his tattoos. This man, who has shown up every single day and kept every promise, is leaving in two days for something I am terrified of. I feel something move through me that is too large, complicated, and real to look at directly.
So I cross to the bed.
And get in beside him.
He reaches for me in the dark.
Not urgently, the way the first night was. That was a desperate release of two people finally giving in to something they’d been fighting for months. This is different. Slower. More deliberate. Like he is paying attention in a way that goes beyond the moment.
His hands move over me with a careful, unhurried intention, learning and memorizing, the focus of a man who is storing something he is afraid of losing—every curve, breath, and small, involuntary sound that can’t be controlled and stops being tried to.
I pull him closer.
Not because I need him to hurry, but because I need him close. As close as two people can be. Close enough that two days feels farther away than it actually is.
I close my eyes and feel everything, including the warmth of his mouth, the heat of his skin against mine, and the way he says my name, quietly and roughly, like it means something specific in his mouth that it doesn’t mean anywhere else.
It does.
I know it does.
It builds slowly.
Neither of us is in a hurry. That is the difference from the first night, the urgency replaced by something slower and more deliberate, the care of two people who understand that this moment is borrowed time and are choosing to spend every second of it fully. His hands and mouth say everything he hasn’t put into words… that this matters, that I matter. That whatever has grown between us in this house over these months is real, has roots, and isn’t going anywhere.
The farewell underneath the tenderness.
Thejust in casesitting quietly in everything he does.
Letting myself feel all of it, the fear, the love, and the desperate wanting and grief of something beautiful existing right next to the possibility of losing it, because he deserves that. He deserves me to be completely present, and his on the night before he rides toward something I can’t follow him into.
When I finally come apart, it is with his name on my lips. A tear rolls down my face that hadn’t been planned and can’t be stopped.
He feels it before he sees it. His thumb finds my cheek in the dark, gentle, certain, and catches it. Just that. No words. No explanation, apology, or reassurance. Just his thumb against my cheek and his eyes finding mine in the dark.
And something in his expression says everything words would have cheapened.
“Come back to me, Tate,” I say quietly.
He looks at me.
