When I woke, he was gone.
No arms around me.No whispered words against my skin.Just the cold echo of his absence in the space where he should have been.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of last night crush down on me.
How easy it had been to forget.How easy it had been to sink into him, to believe the lies whispered against my mouth.
A fool's dream.
I dragged myself out of bed, wrapping a sheet around my body as if it could shield me from the storm looming inside.
I told myself it was better this way.He could leave without seeing the regret in my eyes.I could pretend it hadn't meant anything.
Except... it had.
It meant too much.
The day passed in a haze.
I wandered the apartment like a ghost, the walls closing in around me.Everywhere I looked, there was us.
Photographs on the shelves, smiles that now felt like strangers.A half-empty wine glass from a dinner that had ended in laughter once, long ago.The jacket he had thrown carelessly over a chair, smelling faintly of him — clean soap and something deeper, something uniquely him.
I should have burned it all.I should have set fire to every memory and watched it turn to ash.
But instead, I sank onto the couch, his jacket clutched in my fists, and let the ache inside me bleed out.
Silent.Bitter.Endless.
He returned after dark.
The sound of his key turning in the lock made my entire body tense.I didn't move.Didn't breathe.
The door opened, and then there he was — framed by the glow of the hallway light, looking exhausted and ruined and so goddamn beautiful it made my chest ache.
He saw me immediately.Saw the way I curled into the corner of the couch like I could disappear.
And something in him seem to break.
Without a word, he crossed the room.Dropped to his knees in front of me.
"Don't shut me out," he said , his voice wrecked. "Please."
I stared at him, willing myself to stay cold.To stay angry.
But he reached for me — so gently, like he thought I might shatter — and the dam inside me cracked wide open.
I didn't remember moving.
One second I was staring at him, and the next I was in his arms, clinging to him like a drowning woman.He buried his face in my hair, his breath shaking against my skin.
"I can't lose you," he whispered, over and over, like a prayer.Like a confession.Like a confession to a sin.
I wanted to scream.Wanted to shove him away and spit venom cause the anger built up in me into his face.
But all that came out was a broken, desperate sound as I pulled him closer.
His mouth found mine — bruising, pleading, real. Nothing careful.Nothing gentle.
Just pure, aching need.
He kissed me like he was trying to erase the past.Like he could stitch me back together with his hands and mouth and body.
And I let him.
Because for one devastating moment, I needed to believe it too.
We fell into bed with the clumsiness of two people trying to hold on to something already slipping through their fingers.Clothes discarded.Barriers dismantled.He touched me like he was memorizing every inch of me.Like he was terrified I'd vanish if he looked away.
"You're mine," he breathed against my skin, his voice shaking.
I arched into him, hating how much I wanted to believe it.Hating how much I felt it.
I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him down, letting him sink into me — body, mind, soul.There was no revenge in that moment.No plan.No lies.
Only the raw, broken truth of two people who had destroyed each other and didn't know how to stop wanting what hurt them most.
Later, when he was asleep beside me, his hand tangled in mine even in dreams, I lay awake staring at the ceiling.
There were tears on my cheeks I didn't remember shedding.
And in the silence, I realized the most dangerous part of this war wasn't that I might destroy him.
It was that somewhere along the way...I might destroy myself too.