He just holds me tighter.
And in a voice so low it almost disappears into my hair, he says, “I know, baby girl. But it could’ve been me. Should’ve been us. When he was going around breaking your heart—you were slicing mine.”
I cry harder.
Because no one has ever held my heartbreak like this before while being honest about theirs.
No fixing.
No speeches.
No rush to silver lining.
Just a warm, massive body around mine and rough hands in my hair and on my back, patient enough to let me bleed all over the night.
Eventually the worst of the sobbing burns down into shivering breaths and hiccupping silence.
I stay curled against him anyway.
Too tired to move.
Too emptied out.
Too selfish to wonder how he’s feeling in all this.
Drew shifts only enough to pull a thick knit blanket from the back of the couch and wrap it around us both without dislodging me.
The fire keeps cracking.
Rain keeps falling.
His thumb keeps moving slowly just under my shoulder blade.
I don’t know how long we sit like that.
Long enough for the cold to leave my skin.
Long enough for the ache in my chest to stop feeling like active violence and start feeling like aftermath.
Long enough that I can hear his heart under my ear, slow and heavy and real.
When I finally speak again, my voice is wrecked.
“You were right.”
The words taste awful.
His hand pauses in my hair.
Then, very gently:
“Yeah.”
No gloating.
No victory.
Somehow that makes it worse and better at the same time.
