Page 223 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

His throat worked. The word wouldn’t come. It was there, I could see it, pressing against his lips, catching in his chest. He wanted to say it. He wanted to give me that.

“I know.” I nodded, my thumb stroking his cheekbone. “I know, Cassian. It’s fine. You don’t have to say it.”

He looked at me, frustrated at himself. “But I want to say it. I want you to hear it.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his voice breaking. “Please. Just give me some time. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard.”

I stroked his face, feeling the warmth of his skin, the slight tremor in his jaw. “Okay. Take your time. Take all the time you need.”

He took a shaky breath. Opened his mouth. Closed it. His jaw tightened, then relaxed, then tightened again.

“I—” He swallowed. The word scraped out of him. “I l—”

His face crumpled, and I saw it—the frustration, the disappointment, the years of this word being trapped behind a wall he didn’t know how to break down.

“Why is this so hard?” His voice cracked. “It shouldn’t be this hard.”

My hand went to his chest, pressing flat against his heart. I could feel it hammering beneath my palm. Racing. Desperate. I rubbed slow circles there, over his shirt, over his ribs, over the place where all his words got stuck.

He let out a breath, long and slow, his eyes closing.

“Two more words, Cassian.” My voice was soft, barely a whisper. “Say it.”

He leaned closer. His lips brushed my cheek, hovered near my ear. “I lo—you.”

My chest tightened. The words were broken, the middle missing, but I heard them. I heard everything he was trying to give me.

“Almost there.” I was barely breathing now.

He kissed my cheek. My jaw. The corner of my mouth. The spot just below my ear. His head dropped to my neck, his forehead pressing against my pulse. He was breathing so heavily, his whole body trembling against mine. I wrapped my arms around him, one hand rubbing slow circles on his back, the other tangled in his hair.

“I don’t know why I struggle,” His voice was muffled against my neck, frustrated, exhausted. “Saying that word. In between the other two. I don’t know why it’s so hard.”

I closed my eyes. I hated it. I hated that those words brought him pain, that something so simple for everyone else was a war for him. I didn’t want him to say it if it hurt this much. I didn’t need him to fight himself like this.

But he wanted to say it. I could feel it in the way his hands gripped my back, the way his breath hitched against my skin. He wanted to give me these words more than he had ever wanted anything.

And I couldn’t take that from him.

He straightened. His eyes were wet, but determination had replaced the frustration in them. Like a man who had been running from something his whole life and had finally decided to stop.

He started slow. Almost whispering. The words were fragments, air shaped into sounds, sounds shaped into meaning. He said them over and over, each time a little louder, each time a little clearer, like he was learning a language he’d been taught to forget.

“I… I…” A breath. “I… you.”

Again. “I… you.”

Again. “I—” A pause. “—you.”

Over and over, the space between the words shrinking, the shape of them becoming clearer. His voice was raw, scraped clean of anything but determination.

“I love you.”

He said it so low I almost missed it. A breath. A whisper. A door opening.

He didn’t seem to notice. He kept saying it again and again, the shape of it becoming clearer, the sound becoming real, until he finally heard himself.

His eyes widened. He looked at me, shocked, like he couldn’t believe what had just come out of his mouth. Like he was waiting for me to tell him it wasn’t real, that he hadn’t really said it, that he was still trapped in the silence he’d been carrying his whole life.

I nodded. Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t stop them.