But the words never came out right. Or never came at all.
My mind was flooded with memories of the things he used to say to me.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I answered.
“You know you can tell me anything, right? No matter what, I love you.”
And I didn’t give him a response.
Whenever we visited my parents, which I tried to limit to a dinner every two months, I always left feeling worse than when I arrived. It was never just a meal. It was a string of loaded questions and quiet disapproval, a constant reminder that I wasn’t enough.
They wanted me to be like them, top doctors with accolades and private practices, not someone working long hours in a public hospital, barely making enough to cover her student debt.
It became routine that when we arrived home, I would pour myself a glass of red wine and sit at the window seat, looking outside and trying to quiet my mind. All I wanted was to drown out the voices of my parents in my head. How could I speak about it when he asked?
Eventually, he’d retreat to our bedroom, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Hours later, I’d slip in, trying not to wake him, though I always did. He’d open his tired eyes, reach for me, gently brush his fingers across my cheek, and whisper, “I’m here, baby. Whenever and wherever you need me.”
He said it every time. With patience, with love.
Until one night, he didn’t say it anymore.
Regardless of everything—the silence, the distance, the words left unsaid—when we made love, it was with raw intensity neither of us could fake. Sometimes it was slow and aching, other times laced with anger, frustration, or the need to feel something, anything, other than the space growing between us. But it was always passionate. Always consuming. As if, for those brief moments, our bodies knew how to speak the things our mouths couldn’t. As if, in the rhythm of moans and sighs and breaths, we could still find each other.
And I knew it was because of him.
Because he never stopped reaching for me, never lost that quiet, stubborn hope that one day I’d open the door and let him all the way in.
Then one night, he asked me, while he was still inside me, his body pressed to mine, our mouths still tasting each other, our skin slick with sweat and breathless from the rush of it all.
He whispered against my neck, his voice rough and broken. His arms tightened around me.
“Tell me you love me, Sloane.”
I kissed his cheek, his jaw, his lips. I whispered his name like it held everything I couldn’t say.
“Please,” he breathed again.
I do love him. I loved him with all my heart. With every fractured part that still remembered how.
But at that moment, the words... they curled inside my chest and refused to come out.
Because even after such intimacy, the silence still lingered between us.
What we hadn’t said still hung in the air.
The fights that broke us both still echoed.
We never truly let go of it.
It was still quietly eating away at our hearts.
Because his plea came from that pain.
My silence was born from that hurt.
Then he pulled away, leaving a sharp cold in the space between us. His voice was raw, rough, and desperate, worn down to its bones.
