I chose a city far enough away that the old streets no longer whispered his name.
The light here behaves differently. Morning arrives sharp and clean. Evening softens everything until edges dissolve. Sometimes the roofs across the street look like unfinished paintings waiting for someone to decide where the shadows belong.
I rented a small place high up. Windows that open onto chimneys and rusted gutters and, if the weather is generous, a narrow sliver of water that flashes silver between the buildings.
I paint most days.
Not figures anymore. Not bodies. Colour meeting colour. Shapes leaning into one another until they forget where they began. It keeps the hands occupied. The mind too tired to return to certain rooms.
I woke before the sun. The kind of early where the world is undecided. The curtains look silver instead of white. My head feels woolly. Not hungover, just heavy. Like my thoughts all gained weight overnight.
I lie there and try not to move, because stillness is the only thing that makes this bed feel less empty. But my body wakes up without asking me first. Hard. Eager. Stupid. I roll my eyes at myself.
Pathetic, I whisper in my own head.
Of all the things that should have stayed asleep, desire should have been first on that list. But no. My chest is tight with longing and my body is convinced it remembers happiness. The kind that used to sleep right beside me.
I drag my hand across my chest, over the place Bryn used to rest his palm. He always fell asleep touching me. Nothing dramatic. Just connected. Grounded in a way that made me believe I was someone worth holding onto. My fingers trace that same spot now and the memory hits like a bruise I forgot to protect.
I tell myself to think about anything else.
But my mind is a traitor.
Suddenly I can feel the morning light from that day when he fell asleep in my arms. Just once. One night that rearranged everything. He was half on his stomach, hair a mess, breathing slow. My arm was under him and it had gone numb but I didn’t dare move. I watched him dream. I let myself believe it meant something.
I hate that my body misses him more honestly than my mind ever could. It remembers his warmth, his weight, his scent. It remembers the way he sighed into my neck when he wasn’t quite ready to wake up.
I feel myself start to react without permission. My breath shortens. My hips shift. Shame crawls up the back of my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut, because what else is there to do. I could pretend it is stress relief. I could pretend I am not imagining Bryn’s fingers lacing with mine.
But I am. I absolutely am.
There is no pleasure in it. Just need. Just the ache of something unfinished.
The release comes quickly. Too quickly. I bury my face in the pillow because the sound I make is not pleasure. It is grief disguised as breath.
When it is over, I feel smaller. Not relieved. Not better. Just… emptier.
There is a wet patch cooling on my stomach and a familiar sting behind my eyes. I wipe myself clean with the corner of the sheet and think, even my orgasms betray me now.
I lie there a long time, staring at the pillow beside me. It’s emptiness reminds me of a time when I thought wanting someone was supposed to be a hopeful thing.
A tear escapes before I can stop it. It stings on the way down. I let it fall. One tear. Then another. Not crying exactly. More like leaking pain.
I should get up. I should shower and and pretend I am fine. But I do not want to move. If I move I might feel the shape of the world again and I am not ready for that.
Without thinking too much, I reach for the book on the nightstand. The one Bryn gave me. An art book full of coastal buildings and soft edges. He bought it because I once said I loved the quiet confidence of old architecture. He listened. He really listened. That is what hurts the most.
I hold the book to my chest and breathe around the ache. I hate that something so small can feel like a wound reopening.
I close my eyes.
I remember him saying my name like he meant it. I remember how easily I fell. I did not even try to resist. It felt like the first time in years that loving someone might not destroy me.
Then he destroyed me.
Or maybe he simply showed me that I was not special after all.
I try anger on just to see if it fits. It flares up sharp and bright. He did this. He let me believe in a version of us he knew he could not choose. He let me touch a dream he was never going to let me keep.
But anger is a cheap coat. It warms nothing. It falls apart when you pull at the seams.
The truth underneath is softer and more dangerous.
I loved him.
I still do.
There. I said it. Alone in a room at dawn, holding a book that smells faintly like dust and him. I wish I could tear the feeling out of my chest. I wish desire listened to reason. I wish my hands did not remember his skin.
I wish loving him did not feel like betrayal of my own survival.
He broke something open that I was managing just fine locked away. He woke me up. He woke my heart up. And then I had to walk away.
Now I lie here with the proof that my heart is still beating and all I can think is: I wish he had never kissed me like he meant it.
Because if he had not, I would not be here in a foreign city learning how to be alone again.
I put the book back on the nightstand and roll onto my back. One hand covers my face. I breathe into my palm, long slow breaths, waiting for the shaking in my chest to settle.
After a few minutes, I lower my hand and stare at the ceiling like it might have answers stored in the plaster.
“I am still here,” I whisper into the dim room. It feels strange to say it out loud. Like a promise. Like a challenge. Like the start of a day I did not want to have.
I am still here.
And it has to be enough.
The coffee shop found me without asking.
Cappucino. Two sugars. Even here, in this new city, the barista quickly learnt my order. I choose the corner table where I can watch the room without being watched back. Every time.
Routine is a gentle liar. It promises distance. Then it delivers echoes.
This morning the place is almost empty. Rain tapping the glass with the quiet patience of someone who intends to stay.
I open my sketchbook. Let the pencil wander without committing to anything. I’m deep in thought about this residency that came my way when I really needed to get away from Bryn when the door opens.
A breath of wet stone enters with it. Cedar. Clean cotton.
For a moment the scent stands in the room alone, like a memory that has lost its owner.
Then the owner follows.
Bryn.
He shakes rain from his hair, jacket slung over one arm. Something about him altered. Leaner perhaps. Or simply less defended.
No ring where the gold band used to sit. No stroller waiting outside. No Marianne laughter drifting in his wake.
He scans the room the way he always did. Architect eyes measuring space. Calculating sight lines.
Then his gaze lands on me.
Everything stops.
The barista breaks the moment.
“Bryn. Espresso. No sugar.”
Hearing his name spoken here, in this unfamiliar place, feels like someone knocking on a door I thought I had bricked closed.
He walks over slowly. Careful with each step.
Like approaching a painting he once ruined and now hopes might forgive him.
“Bruno.”
My name in his mouth still feels slightly illegal.
I nod.
“Did not think the universe had such a poor sense of direction.”
The corner of his mouth moves. Almost a smile.
“I moved here a few months ago. New project by the river.” He gestures toward the window. “Thought distance might settle things.”
“Same.”
Neither of us explains what things are.
The silence already knows.
He pulls out the chair across from me and sits.
His knee brushes mine beneath the table.
At first accidental.
Then not.
The same quiet electricity from that first morning years ago. The body remembers faster than the mind gives permission.
“You look good,” he says softly.
His eyes travel across my face like someone reading a language they used to speak fluently.
“Calmer.”
“Breathing again.”
“You too.”
The polish is still there but thinner now. Like varnish that has weathered a few storms.
We drink in silence while the rain thickens outside.
“I still think about the waterfall,” he says finally.
Low. Only meant for me.
“Every day”
My body reacts before my thoughts can intervene.
Cold water. Hot skin. The roar swallowing every sound except his.
I shift in the chair.
“Do not.”
“Why not?”
His gaze holds mine without blinking.
“Because it hurts?” he asks.
“Or because it still feels right?”
Both answers wait behind my teeth.
Neither escapes.
The rain grows louder. Coffee cooling between us.
His fingers find my wrist across the table.
Light.
Testing.
“Come back to my place.”
The words arrive without arrogance. Just need.
“We can talk,” he says. “Or we don’t. But I cannot sit here pretending I do not want to touch you again.”
I look at his hand on my skin.
The same hand that bought Adam and Steve.
Held a baby.
Built a life.
Destroyed one.
Now trembling just enough to show the man hiding beneath the architect.
I stand.
“Show me the way.”
The rain follows us across the city like an old habit neither of us can shake. It drums against the tall windows of Bryn's rental, steady and unhurried, the kind of sound that fills silence without demanding anything from it. We stand just inside the door, water pooling at our feet, coats dripping onto the hardwood. Neither of us moves to turn on more lights. The dim glow from the streetlamps outside is enough. Enough to catch the wet sheen on his cheekbones, the faint tremor in the line of his jaw.
I watch him drop his coat and peel off his soaked shirt first, the fabric clinging before it releases with a soft, reluctant sound. His skin looks paler than I remember, almost luminous against the dark walls. There is fluidity to him now, almost as if life has carved something new into him. Not softness exactly, but a careful stillness, like a canvas scraped back to gesso before the next layer. He drops the shirt into a careless heap and meets my eyes without flinching.
"You didn't have to come," he says. Voice low. No bravado left in it.
"I know."
He steps closer, barefoot now, the floor cool under us both. The air between our bodies feels charged, not with the old reckless heat, but with something heavier. Recognition, maybe. Regret that has finally learned to breathe.
His fingers find my wrist, thumb brushing the pulse point there. Slow. Deliberate. Like he is relearning the rhythm of my blood. I don't pull away. Instead I lift my other hand and let it rest against the side of his neck, feeling the heat of his skin, the faint throb beneath it. We stay like that a long moment, foreheads almost touching, breaths mingling in the narrow space.
"I fucked up," he whispers. Not an apology. Just fact. "Not just with you. With everything before you, too. Kane... the way I ran from what happened to him. I kept running until I ran right into hurting you the same way."
I let my thumb trace the edge of his jaw. "I know about running."
He exhales, shaky. "I don't want to do it again."
The rain taps harder against the glass. Somewhere in the room a clock ticks once, twice. Then silence swallows it.
I lean in until our foreheads meet for real. Cool skin against warm, damp hair mingling. His hands slide up my arms, under the wet collar of my shirt, palms flat against my shoulder blades. He doesn't rush. Neither do I. We simply stand there, letting the proximity do the talking. The rise and fall of chests syncing, the slow thaw of months apart melting into something warmer, more honest.
When he finally kisses me it is careful, almost questioning. Lips brushing mine once, then again, testing the boundary we both drew in absence. I answer by parting my mouth, inviting him deeper without words. His tongue touches mine, tentative at first, then sure, tasting of rain and coffee and the salt of everything we carry.
My coat hits the floor next. His fingers work the buttons of my shirt with quiet focus, peeling fabric away layer by layer until my chest is bare to the cool air and his gaze. He traces along my ribs with the pad of his thumb, then bends to press his mouth there. Soft. Intent. Like he is apologising to the skin itself.
I thread my fingers through his wet hair, guiding him back up. "Bedroom," I say. Not a command. An offer.
He nods once.
We move through the dim space together, shedding the rest as we go. Belts, pants, underwear left in a wet trail like breadcrumbs back to the door. By the time we reach the bed the rain has softened to a murmur. He pulls back the covers and we slide beneath them, skin meeting skin in a slow collision that feels inevitable.
No frantic grabbing. No rush to claim. Just hands exploring remembered planes and new hesitations. I map the changes in him. The slight hollow below his ribs, the tension that lingers in his shoulders until I kiss it away. He learns me again too. Fingers circling my nipples until they peak, palm sliding down my stomach to curl around my cock with gentle pressure.
When I roll him beneath me he goes willingly, legs parting to cradle my hips. Our cocks brush together, slick already with pre-cum and the lingering damp of rain. He gasps softly into my mouth. I swallow the sound.
I reach for the nightstand drawer on instinct and find lube, condoms. He watches me with steady eyes as I slick my fingers. When I press one inside him he arches, breath catching, then relaxes around me with a low moan. One finger becomes two, curling to find the place that makes his thighs tremble.
"Bryn," I murmur against his throat.
"Yeah." His voice cracks. "Please."
I roll the condom on, slick myself, then line up. The first push is careful, watching his face for any flicker of pain. There is none. Only openness. He pulls me deeper with hands on my ass, heels digging into the small of my back.
We move together in long, measured strokes. Not fucking. Something closer to remembering. Each thrust draws a quiet sound from him. Half sigh, half plea. I kiss his collarbone, his jaw, the corner of his eye where a tear slips free without him noticing.
When his hand wraps around his own cock I match the rhythm, driving deeper as he strokes faster. His other arm hooks around my neck, holding me close.
"Come with me," he breathes.
I nod, forehead pressed to his again.
The build is slow, inevitable. Heat coiling low, spreading outward until every nerve sings with it. When he comes it is with my name on his lips. Soft, broken, real. The pulse of him around me tips me over. I bury my face in his neck and spill inside him, body shuddering through the aftershocks.
We stay locked together a long time after. Breathing. Listening to the rain wind down to nothing. His fingers trace idle patterns on my back.
Eventually I ease out, dispose of the condom, clean us both with a towel from the floor. When I slide back under the covers he curls into me without hesitation. Head on my chest, leg thrown over mine.
"I missed this," he says into my skin.
I kiss the crown of his head. "Me too."
Outside, the city hums on, indifferent. Inside, the quiet feels earned. Not perfect. Not fixed. But possible. I almost believe this time it will be different.
For the first time in months, sleep comes easy.
