“She was pregnant.”
“You were building a future for them.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I failed them.”
The certainty in that statement was devastating.
I reached up and pressed my forehead to his.
“You loved them,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“And you love fiercely.”
His hand tightened around me. “I do not know how to love halfway,” he said.
“I don’t want halfway.”
The words slipped out before I could measure them.
He stilled. The weight of what we were both admitting settled between us.
He lived in guilt. I lived in fear of instability. Somehow, we found each other in the middle of that.
He pulled me closer, burying his face in my hair.
And for the first time since I opened those doors, I understood. Not the grief fully, but the man, and the storm he’d been holding inside all these years.
He rested his forehead against mine, his breath still uneven but steadier now.
“You know everything,” he said quietly. “There is nothing left hidden.” The words were not dramatic. They were almost clinical in their precision. “I am an open book.”
I studied him in the low light. The man who had built walls so thick that even he forgot what was behind them. The man who sealed rooms and locked songs away. The man who roared when the past slipped its leash.
“An open book?” I murmured.
“Yes.” There was no defensiveness in him now. No sharp edges. Just exhaustion and vulnerability.
“I did not tell you because I did not know how,” he continued. “Not because I intended to deceive you.”
I traced my thumb along his jaw, over the place that tightens when he’s holding too much in.
“I wasn’t trying to invade something sacred,” I said.
“I know.”
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, forcing himself to stay present.
“I have lived in preservation,” he admitted. “Not healing.”
The honesty in that sentence felt heavier than anything else he’s said.
“You deserved context,” he continued. “You deserved a warning. Instead, I gave you anger.”
“You gave me grief,” I corrected gently.
He exhaled slowly.
