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“Why?”

There are questions that invite self-defense.

That one did not.

Instead, I said the only thing that would matter.

“Because it was the best frame I’ve taken in three years, and I let that matter more than consent for too long.”

The room went very still again.

The rest came anyway.

“And because I knew that,” I said. “I knew exactly what it was the second I saw it, and I still couldn’t delete it.”

He did not say anything.

I kept going because stopping now would have turned honesty into choreography, and I was already too far in to make the lie prettier.

“It was real and too much of you, and I knew it,” I said. “And some part of me wanted it anyway. Not for the team. For me. For what it meant.”

I laughed once under my breath.

It sounded terrible.

“Amazing, right? Really elegant moral collapse on my part.”

That finally made him look back at me.

Not softened.

Just present.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m trying not to throw up.”

That almost did something to the corner of his mouth.

Almost.

Then it was gone again.

“Did you show anyone?”

“No.”

“Would you have?”

That one landed.

His volume did not change.

Because he did not.

Because that was the actual wound.

I closed my eyes for one second.