A caretaker for his daughter.
Nothing more. Nothing deeper.
But then—
Memory interrupted fear.
The way he had held me that day.
Firm, unshakable arms around me as if the world outside them didn’t matter.
The steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek.
And his voice.
Saying things like they were truths instead of suggestions.
I exhaled slowly, forcing myself not to retreat inward.
I had taken a step out of my darkness tonight.
Now it was his turn to decide whether he would meet me there.
The scent of Jamón Ibérico still lingered in the air—rich, smoky, carefully prepared, a meal that had once felt like hope and now felt like something dangerously close to regret.
The longer he said nothing, the more the food seemed to mock me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked finally, my voice thinner than I intended. “Did you change your mind? Don’t you like the food?”
I immediately regretted how small it sounded.
When his voice finally came, it wasn’t what I expected.
“This was Zara’s favorite to prepare for me.”
My heart didn’t just drop.
Itfell.
Like something inside me had lost its footing and couldn’t recover.
Zara.
The name landed between us like something fragile breaking.
“She would make sure I ate it every Saturday morning,” he continued. “The only thing this dish does... is remind me of her.”
My throat tightened painfully.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
I hadn’t expected this. Not at all.
My mind had been so focused on connection, on ritual, on the fragile idea ofus, that I hadn’t stopped to consider that he was still a man held captive by the death of his late wife, unable—or unwilling—to move beyond it.
Humiliation crawled up my neck and spread into my cheeks and ears, heat rising in a way I could feel even without seeing it.
My hands, resting near the plate, suddenly felt foreign—like they belonged to someone else entirely.
