Gian

The silence stretches between us like a chasm, growing wider with each passing second.

“Say something,” I whisper, my voice barely audible in the stillness of our bedroom.

But he doesn’t. He just sits there on the edge of the bed, staring at some fixed point beyond my shoulder, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin.

I watch him get up from the bed with mechanical precision, every movement deliberate, controlled—like he’s afraid that if he lets himself feel anything, he might shatter.

This isn’t my Gavin.

Not the man who used to touch me like I was something sacred. Not the one who couldn’t go a night without pulling me against his chest, even in his sleep. Not the one who laughed with his whole body, who kissed me like he never wanted to stop.

This... this is someone else.

Someone distant. Guarded.

Someone already halfway gone.

And the worst part? That shift—the quiet, unbearable transformation of the man I love fading into someone I barely recognize—it’s because of me.

Because of what I did.

Because of what I didn’t say in time.

Because of the way I broke us, even if I didn’t mean to.

He walks to the chair where he’d carelessly thrown his robe earlier, back when we were still happy, still whole, still believing in forever. I watch him pick it up with the same mechanical precision, shaking it out and sliding his arms through the sleeves. The dark silk falls around him like armor, covering the skin I’d been kissing just an hour ago.

The way he ties the belt—precise, measured, final—feels like watching him dress for his own funeral. Or maybe for mine.

“Where are you going?” I ask, pulling his shirt tighter around myself like it can somehow keep him from leaving.

“The veranda,” he says without looking at me, his voice flat and emotionless. “I need air.”

“Love, we should talk about this—”

“Should we?” He finally turns to look at me, and the expression in his eyes makes my stomach drop. It’s like looking at a stranger. “What exactly should we talk about, Gianna? How long you’ve been lying to me? How you’ve been planning your escape since before we even began?”

My name—Gianna—usually falls from his lips like it belongs there. Like a soft secret only he’s allowed to say.

But now?

Now it sounds like a wound.

Like he’s using it to remind himself of the distance between us.

And it cuts deeper than any insult ever could.

“That’s not what this is—”

“Isn’t it?” He’s already moving toward the door, the silk of his robe rustling softly with each step. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve had one foot out the door since day one.”

I scramble off the bed, the oversized shirt falling to my thighs as I follow him.

He’s already through the bedroom door, moving through our house with purpose. I can hear his bare feet against the hardwood floors, can see the way his shoulders are set with that terrible determination.

“Baby, please!” I call after him, my own feet silent on the cold floor. “Just wait—”

But he doesn’t wait. He slides open the glass door to the veranda and steps outside, the evening air immediately lifting the edges of his robe. The fairy lights cast everything in soft, romantic light that feels like mockery now.

I hesitate in the doorway, watching him walk to the far edge of the veranda. He grips the railing with both hands, his knuckles white against the dark stone, his shoulders rigid beneath the silk.

The space between us feels like an ocean.

This was supposed to be our sanctuary, our private paradise where we could be ourselves without the weight of family expectations or public scrutiny.

Now it feels like a crime scene.

I step outside, the cool evening air hitting my bare legs, and close the door behind me with a soft click. The sound seems to echo in the silence between us.

When he finally speaks, his voice comes out so quiet I almost miss it.

“When did you get the acceptance?”

The question hits me like ice water. Because I know what he’s really asking. He’s asking how long I’ve been lying to him. How long I’ve been sitting on this secret while he built his entire future around me.

“A month before Taiwan,” I whisper.

The words hang in the air like a confession that changes everything. Like the moment when everything we thought we knew gets rewritten in the worst possible way.

He goes completely still. The silence stretches so long I wonder if he heard me, if maybe the words got lost somewhere between my lips and his ears. But then I see his shoulders tense even more, see the way his grip on the railing tightens until I’m afraid he might crack the stone.

His breathing changes. Becomes more controlled, more measured, like he’s actively working to keep himself together. The silk of his robe shifts with each careful breath, and I can see him processing this information, cataloging it, figuring out exactly what it means for everything we’ve shared.

“A month before Taiwan,” he repeats slowly, like he’s trying to process what that means. Each word is measured, careful, like he’s testing them for poison.

“Love—”

“When we were practicing how to hold hands without it being awkward,” his voice gets quieter, more controlled, and somehow that’s worse than if he’d shouted.

I watch the silk of his robe shift with each measured breath he takes. His composure is somehow worse than if he were screaming. This controlled version of Gavin terrifies me because I don’t know how to reach him through all that careful distance.

There’s something terrifying about watching someone you love shut down in real time. Like watching a house go dark room by room until there’s nothing left but an empty shell that looks like home but doesn’t feel like it anymore.

And the truth settles over me like a weight I can’t shake:

I’m afraid. I’m scared.

Scared of losing him.

Scared that I already have.

Scared that no matter what I say now, it won’t be enough to undo the damage.

Scared that the version of him standing in front of me—the distant, composed one—is the only version I’ll ever get from now on.

“You already knew you had a way out,” he says, and there’s something eerily calm in his voice that makes my skin crawl. “Before Taiwan. Before everything changed between us. Before I...”

He trails off, but I know what he was going to say. Before he fell in love with me. Before we both fell so deep we forgot this was supposed to be pretend. Before three months in a foreign country rewrote everything we thought we knew about ourselves and each other.

The memory of those early days hits me like a physical blow.

“I thought this would stay fake,” I say desperately, and even as the words leave my mouth, I know how hollow they sound.

“But it didn’t stay fake.” He turns to look at me, and the emptiness in his eyes makes my stomach drop. “And when it started becoming real, when we started becoming real—you kept this secret.”

He pauses, and I watch him process something that makes his jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.

“We were supposed to be married in January,” he says quietly, and the words fall between us like stones. “Few weeks from now. We were supposed to be husband and wife in few weeks if it hadn’t been postponed.”

“Three weeks,” he continues, his voice so controlled it’s frightening.

“You know what’s really fucked up?” His voice takes on that clinical tone that terrifies me. “Part of me was relieved when your parents postponed the wedding. I thought it meant we’d have more time together, more time to plan, more time to just be happy without the pressure of a deadline.”

He lets out a bitter laugh that has no humor in it.

“I actually thought the postponement was a blessing. I thought it meant we could slow down, enjoy being engaged, really savor this time before we became husband and wife.” His hands tighten on the railing. “I had no idea you were sitting on a secret that made all that extra time meaningless.”

The irony is devastating. I want to tell him he's wrong, that I wanted those extra months just as much as he did, that I treasured every additional day we had together. But how can I say that when I spent those same months carrying a secret that could destroy us? How can I claim I wanted more time with him when I was using that time to avoid telling him the truth?

The words stick in my throat because even though they're true—even though I did want more time, even though I was grateful for every extra moment—they sound hollow in the face of what I've done. How do you tell someone you wanted more time with them while admitting you spent that time lying to them?

“Please,” he says, and his voice breaks on the word—not just cracks, but completely shatters, like something inside him has finally given way. “Please make me understand.”

The plea hits me like a physical blow, but it's not just the words. It's everything else.

“Because right now, knowing what I know…” He runs a hand through his hair, and the gesture is so familiar, so heartbreakingly normal, that it makes my chest ache. “It's killing me to realize that I was never really part of your plans.”

His voice gets quieter, more broken, each word coming out like it's costing him something precious. I can see the way his throat works as he swallows hard, the way he has to pause between sentences to steady himself. The man who's always been so articulate, so sure of his words, is struggling to speak without falling apart completely.

“I need you to help me understand,” he continues, and there's something desperate in his voice now—not the controlled desperation of someone trying to solve a problem, but the raw desperation of someone who's drowning and doesn't know which way is up. His hands fall to his sides, and I can see them trembling slightly, like his body is betraying the composure he's trying so hard to maintain.

“Because I'm sitting here trying to figure out when I became someone you felt you had to hide from.” His voice cracks on the word 'hide,' and I watch him press his lips together for a moment, fighting for control. “When I became someone you couldn't trust with the truth about what you wanted.”

He looks at me with such genuine confusion, such hurt, that I want to reach for him. Want to close the space between us and touch his face the way I used to when he was struggling with something.

“I thought we were partners,” he says, and his voice is so quiet now I have to strain to hear him. “I thought whatever thoughts or doubts or dreams you had, we'd work through them together. But you didn't even give me that chance.”

He takes a small step back, and the movement is so subtle I almost miss it. But it's there—this unconscious need to put distance between himself and the person who's been lying to him for months. The person he thought he knew better than anyone in the world.

“Gavin, that’s not true—”

“Isn’t it?” He looks at me again, and the emptiness in his eyes is devastating. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’ve been preparing to leave me since before you even knew you loved me.”

The accuracy of that statement takes my breath away because there’s too much truth in it.

His voice breaks completely when he says the next words.

“Why?” he asks, and the word comes out so broken, so small. “What did I do that made you think I wouldn't fight for your dreams with you?”

The question breaks something inside my chest because the answer is: nothing. He did nothing wrong. He loved me exactly the way every woman dreams of being loved—completely, protectively, with absolute certainty. But that certainty was so precious, so rare, that I couldn't bear the thought of being the one to shatter it.

“You didn’t do anything,” I whisper, and the words feel inadequate even as I say them.

“Then why?” His voice is so gentle, so genuinely confused, that it makes everything worse. “If I didn’t do anything wrong, why couldn’t you trust me with this? Why couldn’t you see me as part of your dreams instead of separate from them?”

I watch his face in the fairy light, see the way he’s genuinely trying to understand. There’s no anger there, just this heartbreaking need to make sense of something that probably makes no sense to him at all.

“I wish,” he whispers, and his voice is so broken it barely sounds like him anymore. “I wish you had trusted me enough to let me try to be part of your dreams instead of an obstacle to them.”

I wish. Like he’s already grieving something that’s already dead.

“I wish I had made you feel loved enough,” he continues, and each word feels like a knife to my chest, “that you would have wanted to take me with you instead of planning to leave me behind.”

No, I want to scream. No, that's not what this is. He loved me perfectly. He loved me so completely, so beautifully, that I was terrified of asking him to love me differently. To love me enough to let me go and trust I'd come back.

How can he think this is about him not being enough when he was everything?

“I wish I had been the kind of man you dreamed about,” he whispers, and his voice breaks completely now. “Instead of someone you needed to escape from.”

“I—” I start, then stop, because even that single word feels like a lie when I don’t know what should follow it.

“When I picture my future,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper, “you’re in every single scene. When you picture yours... where am I, Gianna? Where do I fit in the life you actually want?”

The question hangs in the air between us like a challenge I can’t meet. Because the honest answer is: nowhere. In my vision of Paris, I am just alone—he’s nowhere to be found.

“I...” I try again, but the words stick in my throat because how do I admit that?

“You don’t know, do you?” he says, and there’s no accusation in his voice. Just this terrible, gentle certainty. “You’ve never actually pictured me in your ideal life. You’ve never imagined what it would look like to have both—me and your dreams.”

“That’s what I thought,” he says when my silence stretches too long, and there’s something final in his voice that makes my chest ache. “I’m not in your dreams at all, am I? I’m just... someone you love in spite of your dreams, not someone you love enough to include in them.”

But it’s not that.

I didn’t keep it secret because I don’t love him enough to include him. I kept it secret because I love him so much that I couldn’t bear the thought of watching our happiness crumble under the weight of an impossible decision.

But how do I explain that to him now? How do I tell him that my silence wasn’t about not trusting him or not including him, but about being so desperate to preserve what we had that I was willing to lie by omission for months?

“It’s not that,” I whisper, but the words come out so quietly I’m not sure he hears them.

“Then what is it?” he asks, and there’s something almost hopeful in his voice, like he’s giving me one last chance to explain myself in a way that might make sense of this mess.

But I can’t find the words. Because how do you explain that you lied to someone for months not because you don’t trust them, but because you were so afraid of losing them that you chose deception over honesty? How do you make someone understand that your silence came from love, not from a lack of it?

It sounded selfish, because I am. I've always been selfish—choosing my own comfort over difficult conversations, my own peace over his right to know the truth. But standing here now, watching him blame himself for my choices, I realize I can't even be selfish properly anymore. Not with him.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” I finally whisper, because it’s the truth and it’s all I have left.

“That is an answer,” he says quietly, and there’s something devastating in his resignation.

The words hit me like a verdict.

“Bab—” I start, but he’s already turning away, already rebuilding those walls I watched him construct all evening.

“It’s okay,” he says, and the gentle understanding in his voice is somehow worse than anger would be. “I think I understand now. And maybe... maybe that’s what we both needed to know.”

The finality in his voice makes my chest ache because I can hear him letting go in real time. Not with anger or bitterness, but with this terrible, gentle acceptance that we’re just fundamentally different in how we love, how we dream, how we see the future.

And maybe he’s right. Maybe this is what we needed to know—that I love him like someone I might lose, while he loves me like someone he planned to keep forever. That he dreams in partnership while I dream in solitude. That we want different things from love itself.

But knowing it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“I think,” he says slowly, his voice so controlled it sounds hollow, “I should sleep in the guest room tonight.” The words don't just slice through me—they tear something vital inside my chest. My breath catches, actually catches, like my body is rejecting what he just said.

”What?” The word comes out as barely a whisper.

He won't look at me. ”I just... I need space to think.”

Space.

“Gavin, please—” My voice cracks completely. “Don't do this. Don't leave me alone tonight.”

“I'm not leaving,” he says, but there's no conviction in it. “I'm just... sleeping down the hall.”

Just sleeping down the hall. Like it's nothing.

The thought of lying in that bed alone tonight, of waking up tomorrow to empty sheets where he should be, makes me feel like I'm drowning.

“I can't—” I start, then stop, because what right do I have to ask him to stay? What right do I have to ask for comfort from the person I've been lying to for months?

He's already moving toward the door, and each step feels like he's walking further away from me than just down the hall. Like he's walking away from us completely.

”Baby, please.” The word breaks as it leaves my mouth.

He stops, his hand on the door handle, and for a moment I think he might turn around. Might come back to me. Might choose us over the space he thinks he needs.

For a second I think he'll just go. Clean, simple, devastating. Walk away and let this crushing conversation be the last thing we say to each other tonight. Part of me almost wants him to, because I don't think I can handle any more of his terrible kindness.

But then he stops. His hand freezes on the door handle, and something in his posture changes. Not quite vulnerability, but something close to it. Like there's one more thing burning inside him that he needs to know before he can walk away completely.

“Gi?”

My nickname falls from his lips like a prayer, like goodbye. For a moment, his composure slips, and I see the man I once loved—the one who traced patterns on my skin and whispered my name like it meant everything.

He's silent so long I start to wonder if he’s changed his mind. His jaw tightens, his free hand flexing like he’s reaching for the courage to say what’s on his mind.

“Can I ask you one last question?”

The way he says 'last' makes my stomach drop. Like he's already decided this is the end of us talking, the end of us trying, the end of us.

I nod, even though I'm terrified.

He takes a breath that sounds like it's cutting him in half, and when he speaks, his voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear him.

“Everything between us—the love, the promises, the way you'd look at me sometimes like I was your whole world—” His voice breaks, actually breaks, and he has to stop, swallow hard, try again. “Was it real?”

The question doesn't just hit me—it destroys me.

“Or was part of you always just... going through the motions until you could leave?” The words come out smaller now, more fragile. “Was I just... was I just a way to get away from your family?”

I can see it in his eyes now—the terror that every moment we shared was performance on my part.

The thought that I could have made him feel that way, that I could have reduced what we have to something so cheap and calculated, makes me physically sick.

“No—” The word bursts out of me, desperate and raw. “Gavin, no, that’s not—”

“Don’t.” He holds up his hand, and the movement is sharp, almost violent, like he’s physically pushing away words he can’t bear to hear. “Don’t answer that.”

His voice completely shatters on those three words, and I watch as the last piece of his composure crumbles. His shoulders start to shake, and he turns away from me like he can’t stand to look at me for another second.

“I can’t... I can’t hear the answer right now. Whatever it is.”

And then he’s moving again, walking out without a glance back, and I’m left standing there, the truth dying on my lips—that it was all real. Every second, every kiss, every promise. He was never a tool or a means to an end—just the man I loved so completely, I forgot how to admit I wanted more.

The door closes behind him with a soft click that echoes like a gunshot.

I don’t collapse gracefully onto the sectional. I fall. Actually fall, my legs giving out completely as the weight of everything crashes down on me. The tears come then—ugly, wrenching sobs that tear through my chest and leave me gasping for air.

I’ve destroyed him. I’ve destroyed us. And the one thing that might have given him peace—the truth that every moment between us was real, that I loved him so completely it terrified me—is the one thing he’s too broken to hear.

But it's worse than that. It's so much worse.

Because even if he had let me answer, even if he had been brave enough to hear the truth, would it have mattered?

I'm still a coward. Someone who loves people but leaves them anyway. Someone who says forever but plans escape routes. Someone who promises partnership but makes every important decision alone.

The truth wouldn’t have saved him.

Wouldn’t have softened the blow.

Because the truth is this:

I loved him.

And I still hurt him.

I loved him.

And I still left him out.

I loved him.

And it still wasn’t enough.