“Adrian, I was… You were never home. You left. It’s obvious what I was feeling.”
I stared down at the placemat, tracing the outline of my zodiac animal. “Do we have to do this here?”
“I need you to say it.” His tone was quiet but firm. “Out loud. Look at me and tell me how I made you feel.”
I dragged my gaze upward. Lantern light spilled across his face, catching in the lines of exhaustion and love and stubbornness etched deep enough to mark him forever. The heat under my skin spread lower, twisting tight in my chest because he lookedso damn breakablein that moment.
“I don’t want to ruin tonight,” I muttered.
“Eli,” he pressed, “tell me.”
His hand stilled on the table, nothing more than a shift of fingers, but I felt the magnetic pull. If he reached another inch, he’d touch me, and my whole body would lean in without permission.
So I spoke.
“I felt abandoned,” I whispered. “Like I didn’t matter anymore. You’d decided your work was the part of your life worth saving, and everything else—me included—was just… noise you were done dealing with.”
Adrian froze. Just a breath. Just long enough to prove he’d heard every word.
I swallowed, eyes fixed on the way my thumb moved overthe condensation gathered on my glass. “I felt stupid for wanting more from you,” I murmured, letting the confession bleed across the small space between us. “Stupid for thinking I had a place in your life that wasn’t temporary. Stupid for believing you’d choose me instead of whatever crisis needed solving that day.”
My voice went lower, softer, afraid of scaring the truth away now that it had finally stepped into the light.
“You made me feel like loving you was unreasonable. Expecting anything back was me asking for too much.” I lifted my gaze, meeting his fully. “And the worst part?” I added, a quiet, humorless huff slipping out. “I still wanted you anyway.”
Adrian sucked in a breath, sharp and quiet, not meant to be heard but unmistakable.
“The day I got those papers in the mail,” I admitted in a torn voice, “I cried the entire day.”
Something in Adrian split wide open; I could see it on his face. It was subtle, devastating, a fault line shifting under the weight of all the things he’d tried not to feel. But the change was unmistakable.
“Eli…” he breathed. It was barely a sound, more like my name fractured on the way out of him. But he didn’t do what he always does. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t pivot. Didn’t start stitching solutions together with that brilliant, infuriating mind of his.
He just listened, every inch of him tuned to me. Finally, he said, “You want to know why I threw myself into work?”
The muscles in his hand flexed hard, anchoring the words to something solid so they wouldn’t slip away.
“It wasn’t duty,” he said quietly. “Or guilt. Or arrogance. I know you’ve thought it, but I’m not trying to play God.”
His gaze dipped, brushing my mouth for a fraction of a second before he dragged it back up to my eyes. It was the barest flicker—accidental, honest—but it carried enough heat to warm me from across the table.
“It was fear,” he confessed. “A kind I didn’t have a name for. Fear of being powerless when the people I love get hurt. Fear that if I slow down long enough to actually be present with someone, be known by someone, I’ll break it. Or they’ll see how much space I take up and run.”
He shook his head, breath catching.
“And underneath all of that?” His voice wobbled a little. “I was terrified of becoming him.”
He exhaled shakily. The room felt small, quiet, and dangerous, the moment before a confession detonates.
“My father spent his life saving strangers,” he said, jaw tightening. “And somehow he couldn’t show up for us. I’ve spent years trying to out-heal him, outrun him, outdo him… anything to make sure I never repeat him.”
A shudder worked through him, barely contained.
“But somewhere in all of that chasing, I poured everything I had into work until there was nothing left for you. And I didn’t even notice I was disappearing until you were gone.” He swallowed hard. “I wasn’t choosing work over you, Eli.” He reached across the table, his thumb brushing my jaw. “I was choosing the only version of myself I wasn’t afraid of. And it cost me the one thing I didn’t want to lose.”
My throat tightened. “You being gone,” I said, “felt like erasure. I didn’t exist anywhere in your world.”
Adrian’s gaze dipped again, another flicker to my mouth, before lifting with something raw and unguarded shining through.
