But I could feel him.
Like gravity. Like heat.
Like my whole body was aware of his.
Kat chatted effortlessly with one of the quadruplets, her fingers dancing through the air as she explained something about a training drill gone wrong. I tried to listen, but my attention kept slipping sideways, to the man whose breathing had gone shallow.
He hadn’t spoken.
He hadn’t looked away.
Not once.
I lifted my gaze slowly, and when our eyes met, everything in me stilled.
There was so much in that look.
Pain. Hope. A kind of aching fear I didn’t understand.
And guilt.
A mountain of it.
But underneath it, buried deep—
There was something tender. Like awe.
And it hurt.
Because I didn’t know if I could give that back.
By the time the awkward, silent, painful dinner ended, I wasn’t sure w
