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“I couldn't type it.”
“I know.”
“You stayed anyway.”
“You asked me not to leave.”
“I did?”
“You wrote, ‘Just stay.’”
My eyes burn.
I remember.
Not the exact words.
The feeling.
Sitting on the floor of Papa’s empty apartment in France with a laptop balanced against my knees because getting into bed meant accepting he would never come home.
Ghost's green indicator stayed lit all night.
No questions.
No speeches.
Just:
Still here.
I swallow.
“You kept writing that.”
Xavier’s thumb brushes my cheek.
“Because you kept checking.”
I close my eyes.
There.
That's why this hurts.
Not Blackwell.
Not the kidnapping.
Not even Papa.
Because the man I thought existed only in that impossible private space has been real all along.
And now I know how his hand feels against my face.
I lean into it before I can stop myself.
His breathing changes.
