You never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs) | part 1
PAIRING: Zayne x Non-MC Reader
SYNOPSIS: An arranged marriage built on silence unravels into a love loud enough to echoâwhere a repressed heart finally claims what was always his.
WORD COUNT: 6.5k
NOTES: so.. this ended up being way too angsty than the original blurb but oh well no regrets. fair warning, prepare some tissues! The tag list for this fic is CLOSED.
MASTERLIST | part 2
The day you chose to deliver the papers was grey. Not rainy. Not stormy. Just⌠grey.
A sky without conviction. Wind without bite. The kind of afternoon that felt as indecisive as you were pretending not to be.
You stood outside his office door for longer than you were proud of. Long enough to memorize the grain of the wood. Long enough to talk yourself into it, and then out of it, and then back in again.
You pushed the door open softly, already shrinking into yourself.
You werenât sure what you expected when you came.
That heâd be behind his desk, maybe. Pen in hand, papers meticulously arranged in little towers like the ones he builds in your mindâprecise, unreachable, always half-tilted toward something youâre not allowed to see.
You thought you might say something rehearsed but kind. A line you practiced in the mirror, gentle but final. You didnât want to hurt him. You just wanted to end the slow bleeding before it became a hemorrhage.
But the office was empty.
The silence hit first.
Not a tranquil silence. Not the kind that invites rest.
This one was clinical. Dry. Like the room had forgotten how to hold a heartbeat.
Zayne wasnât there.
Of course he wasnât. He was rarely anywhere you were. Youâd grown used to missing him like one grows used to an old injuryâlimping out of habit, not pain. Not anymore. Not really.
You stepped inside anyway, shutting the door behind you with a quiet click. The room smelled like himâmint and paper, a trace of cologne sharp as memory. The blinds were half-drawn, the light filtering in like a sigh through cracked ribs.
You walked to his desk and placed the envelope down.
Gently. As if it were made of glass.
As if the act itself might shatter something irreversibly.
Why stay in this marriage when the instigator is already dead? It wasnât a cruel thought. Just⌠practical. Your mother had orchestrated it all, hadnât she? Down to the embroidered napkins and the painfully bright chandelier you never wanted. She'd made you both promises you never consented to, and now she was gone, buried in roses and obligations.
That question had come to you in the silence after her funeral, when the guests were gone and the condolences had dried into something brittle. You werenât looking for liberation. You werenât angry. But there was a kind of clarity that only grief could offerâharsh, clean-edged clarity that cut deeper the more you looked at it.
You stood there, staring at the divorce papers. The ink still smelled fresh. The curve of your own signature stared back at you like a challenge.
You didnât hate Zayne.
God, if you hated him, maybe this would be easier.
But love had never bloomed between you. Not really. It had been all frost and formality, glances across long tables, the occasional brush of his coat sleeve as he passed you in the hallway. You learned his silences. He learned your smiles. But you never learned each other.
And even if Zayne had been mostly absent, even if heâd buried himself in work and left you to wander the quiet halls of your shared home like a ghostâwell.
You werenât completely blameless either.
Youâd withdrawn before he could reject you. Youâd built your own walls, brick by brick. You told yourself you were protecting yourself. But the truth was messier than that.
Maybe youâd been waiting. Hoping.
And when hope dried up, you folded your longing into politeness. Into pleasantries. Into dinner set for one.
Your fingers grazed the edge of the envelope again. Heâll see it when he comes in, you told yourself. Heâll understand.
He was good at understanding, wasnât he?
But the part of you that still achedâthe part that hadnât quite given upâwished you didnât have to do this alone. Wished heâd been here so you could have said something. Anything. So you wouldnât have to walk out with your heart still clenched, still wondering if this was mercy or cowardice.
You turned toward the door slowly, letting your eyes sweep over the room one last time.
His chair was slightly angled toward the window. A mug of coffee sat abandoned on the side table, still half full. A scarf hung on the back of the chair, the one you once bought for him because he never remembered to dress warm in winter. He never wore it in front of you.
Maybe he wore it when he was alone.
Maybe he missed you, in his own quiet, useless way.
Maybe this wasnât what he wanted either.
Maybe it was.
You didnât wait to find out.
You slipped out of his office as softly as you had come. No tears. No dramatics. Just the sound of your heels clicking against the tile, carrying you away from the life you tried to build without being given the tools.
Behind you, the envelope sat motionless on his desk.
It would be the first thing he saw when he returned.
Or the last thing he expected.
Either way, the decision was made.
You just hoped heâd understand that it wasnât born out of resentment.
It was born out of surrender.
And surrender, after all, was the only way youâd ever been allowed to love him.
You go about your day.
Mechanically, precisely. Like if you move fast enough, you wonât feel the weight of what you just did. Like if you keep your hands busy, they wonât remember how they trembled when you left the envelope on his desk.
You have dinner at a high-end restaurant downtown. The kind with mood lighting and cutlery that costs more than your first paycheck. The waiter greets you by name. Youâve been here before. Enough times to build a familiarity that feels almost like comfort.
You order your usual. A glass of wine, a dish too delicate for hunger. You smile when the waiter makes small talk. You nod when he compliments your dress. You even laughâsoft, practiced, hollow.
Around you, couples lean close, forks clinking gently against china, knees brushing under tables. You sip your wine and pretend you donât notice. Pretend youâre above it all. That you chose this. That youâre fine.
You leave a generous tip and walk out alone.
You stop at a shop on the way home.
Thereâs a window display with crystals and tiny gilded mirrors and perfume bottles shaped like hearts. Useless things. Luxuries. Trinkets that mean nothing and say everything. You buy a pair of earrings that youâll never wear, a satin ribbon you donât need, and a music box that plays a lullaby you didnât realize you remembered.
It doesnât help. But it gives your hands something to hold.
By the time you return home, night has long folded itself over the city. You step out of your heels and into the silence, your keys landing with a metallic sigh in the tray by the door.
The house is spotless. Sterile. Like no one lives here. Like no one ever did.
You draw yourself a bath. You pick out the bath salts your mother once gifted youâlavender and sandalwood, soft and laced with memory. The water fogs the mirror, curls against your skin. You sink in, hoping the heat will coax something loose. The ache. The numbness. The way you still listen, stupidly, for the sound of the door opening behind you.
But thereâs nothing. No footsteps. No voice calling your name.
Only the slow drip of a tap and the echo of your own breath.
After, you do your skincare. Layer after layer. Toner. Serum. Cream. A ritual. A mask. You look at your face in the mirror and wonder when you started looking so tired. You wonder if Zayne ever noticed. You wonder if heâd care.
You go to bed.
The sheets are cool, tucked too tightly. You lay there, stiff as porcelain, your eyes wide in the dark. The ceiling offers no answers. The night holds no comfort.
Your fingers find the empty side of the bed.
And stay there.
Still.
Quiet.
You donât cry. You donât let yourself. Because you made this choice, didnât you?
You left the papers.
You left him.
But as sleep evades you and the silence tightens like a noose, you wonder if heâll notice the way your perfume still lingers on the pillow.
And if he doesâ
You wonder if heâll miss you.
Or just the absence.
You wake in the dark, unsure what pulls you from sleep. There is no noise, not exactlyâjust the strange pressure of being watched, the weight of something pressing too hard against your ribs.
Your eyes blink open slowly.
The room is dim, only the amber spill of the hallway light trailing in like a whisper beneath the door. The sheets have tangled around your waist, your body curled in that way it always is when you sleep alone, when there's too much space and too little warmth.
And then you see him.
Zayne.
Kneeling at your bedside.Â
His head is bowed, his hands gripping yours like lifelines, like theyâre the only thing tethering him to the earth. His shoulders are trembling. There are tear tracks on his cheeksâsilent and luminous in the half-light. His palms are cold, clammy, too tight around your fingers, but you donât pull away.
You canât.
Because youâve never seen him like this.
Not composed. Not distant. Not restrained behind the iron wall of manners and duty and that maddening, unreachable calm.
No. This is Zayneâundone.
âPlease donât leave me,â he breathes.
The words are so soft, they barely make it past his lips.
Your breath catches.
You stare at him, heart thudding with a terror you donât understand. Heâs not bleeding. Not wounded. Not dying.
But he looks like he is.
âIâm sorry,â he chokes, voice breaking like something rusted. âIâm soâGod, Iâm so sorry. I didnât know how to be your husband. I didnât even know if you wanted me to be. I thoughtââ His grip tightens, desperate. âI thought you were happier without me. I thought I was giving you space. I thought it was what you wanted.â
You try to sit up, but heâs still holding your hands, head bowed so low you can feel his breath against your skin. He presses his forehead to your knuckles like heâs praying. Or confessing.
âI saw the papers,â he says. âI came back and I saw them andââ A pause. A shudder. âI felt something inside me go still. Like the part of me that hoped youâd someday choose me⌠just stopped breathing.â
You swallow.
Your throat is dry. Your heart is loud. Your hands are still in his, small and warm and useless in the face of this.
Zayneâs never begged for anything. Not when you married. Not when you drifted. Not even when the silences stretched longer than the days.
But heâs begging now.
And it breaks something in you.
âI donât care about the arrangement,â he says, lifting his eyes to yours for the first time, andâGod. Theyâre red-rimmed and wet and unguarded in a way youâve never seen. Not even when his mentor died. Not even when yours forced a ring onto your finger. Because that's exactly what she wasâa mentor before a mother.
âI donât care who started it. I care that I canât sleep knowing you wonât be there. That I wonât see your shoes in the hallway. Your cup in the sink. Your voice in the morning. I know Iâve been goneâI know I made you feel alone. But I never stoppedââ
He cuts himself off, like the words are too big for him to hold.
âDonât leave me,â he says again, hoarse. âPlease. Tell me itâs not too late. Tell me I can try. Tell me I can love you better.â
And then he says it.
âBecause I doââ
Soft. Crushed. Almost drowned in breath.
ââI do love you.â
You sit frozen, trembling with something that isnât shock but griefâbut hopeâbut disbelief.
Because youâd spent months mourning something that had never bloomed.
And now here he was. On his knees. With all his walls gone.
Waiting for you.
His words echo in your chest like footsteps in an empty hall. They donât settle. They donât land. They just⌠circle. Hover. Haunt.
And yetâyour hands stay in his.
You want to pull away. You should pull away. That would be easier, wouldnât it?
But your fingers wonât listen. They're traitors. Trembling, but curled around his like they still remember how to hold on.Â
Zayneâs eyes are still on youâpleading, ruined, impossibly gentle. And you hate him for it. You hate him for coming to you like this now, when your chest is raw and bandaged over with resignation, when your heart has learned to live with its hollow space.
You donât know what to say.
Youâve always known what to say. Youâve always had something ready. A laugh, a line, a quiet deflection. You were raised to survive with poise, to never let the cracks show.
But now?
You donât know how to speak through the knot lodged in your throat.
âIâŚâ Your voice barely comes out. It sounds foreign. Bruised. âZayne, I donâtâI donât know.â
His brows draw together.
âI donât know what you want me to say,â you whisper. âYou didnât want me. You wanted peace. You wanted quiet. I gave you that.â
Youâre breathing faster now, not from panicâbut from all the things youâve never let yourself say aloud.
âYou werenât there,â you murmur, looking somewhere past his shoulder. âNot when I waited for you to come home. Not when I made tea and poured two cups out of habit. Not when I cried so quietly I thought Iâd go mad from the silence.â
Heâs shaking his head, tears falling again.
âI didnât know,â he breathes. âI didnât know you feltââ
âBecause I didnât tell you,â you say sharply. âBecause I thought I didnât have the right to want more. We werenât in love. We were just⌠two people honoring a contract.â
Zayne looks like heâs in pain.
Real pain.
The kind that doesnât bleed, just bruises the soul until everything aches.
âIâm not saying this to punish you,â you whisper. âI justâI need you to understand. I donât know how to believe you now. I donât know how to trust what youâre offering me, when all Iâve ever known is how to be alone in this marriage.â
He closes his eyes like heâs been struck.
âIâm not whole,â you add, voice cracking. âAnd I donât know if I even know how to be loved anymore.â
Thereâs a pause.
A long, trembling pause.
Then, quietlyâsoftlyâZayne presses your hands to his lips.
He kisses your knuckles like heâs asking permission to breathe.
âI donât expect you to believe me right now,â he whispers. âOr tomorrow. Or the day after. I just want you to knowâIâm not leaving. I wonât run from this again. From you. Even if you donât forgive me. Even if you never say those words back.â
You stare at him.
Still unsure. Still aching. Still raw.
But something inside you shifts.
Not healed.
Not certain.
Justâlistening.
And maybe thatâs enough for now.
He stays kneeling for a long time.
Even after your fingers loosen in his grip. Even after your breathing slows and your eyes drop from his face to the twisted bedsheet between you. Even after the tears stop falling from both of you.
He stays. Like a man rooted. Like heâs afraid that if he moves, youâll disappear.
Eventually, you whisper, âGet off the floor.â
It comes out hoarse. Less command, more tired breath. The words of someone too wrung out to carry this moment any further, but too tender to let it close alone.
He looks up at you, cautious. But the moment has passed for confessions. He knows it.
So he rises slowly, joints stiff, fabric creased and damp from where his knees met the floor. You shift aside, just a littleâenough to make room without saying it aloud.
He doesnât assume.
He stands for a beat longer than necessary. Hands fidgeting. Shoulders tense. And then he movesâquiet as snowâand slips beneath the covers, staying on top of them at first, as though unwilling to cross some unseen line.
The bed dips with his weight. You both lie there, backs half-turned, inches away and aching with silence againâbut not the old kind. Not the lonely, echoing kind.
This one is... full. Thick with things unsaid but understood.
His shoulder brushes yours. He doesn't move. Neither do you.
You let your eyes close, but sleep doesnât come.
Your mind is loud in the hush. Not with words. With fragments. Ghosts. That night at the wedding when your mother held your hand too tightly and whispered that love is just a fantasy. The first time you saw Zayne sleeping at his desk, collar loose, lashes brushing his cheek, more beautiful than anything you were allowed to say. The moment your fingers twitched toward him once, and you stopped yourself. Every almost. Every if.
You feel him shift beside you. Just a fraction.
Then his handâa single scarred handâmoves slowly across the space between you. Hovers. Waits.
You donât open your eyes. You donât breathe.
And then, as gently as anything youâve ever known, he rests his fingers on your wrist.
Barely a touch.
Just a presence.
I'm here, it says.
You donât move. You donât speak.
But you let him stay.
The sheets rustle as he slides down slightly, mirroring your position. His forehead brushes your shoulder. His breath warms the back of your arm. His hand stays wrapped around your wrist like an apology without words.
Minutes pass. Maybe hours.
You fall asleep like that.
Not in his arms. Not pressed close. Not healed.
Just⌠not alone.
For the longest time, your mother dictated the weather of your world.
She didnât just control the roomâshe was the room. Her presence seeped into the walls, into the silence, into the decisions you hadnât even made yet. She knew what youâd wear before you opened your closet. She could recite your schedule before you checked your calendar. She didnât raise a daughterâshe built a reflection.
And she expected that reflection to obey.
At first, it was subtle. Childhood rules disguised as safety.Â
âDonât play in the sun, youâll get too dark.â
âKeep your voice down, good girls donât shout.âÂ
âSmile when guests are around, donât embarrass me.â
But over time, the rules turned into walls. And the walls became a prison. You learned to swallow words before they formed. To weigh your tone. To apologize for breathing too loudly.
It didnât matter what you wanted. What mattered was what she thought you should want.
And then Zayne entered the picture.
A calm man. A blank page. A voice with the temperature of winter morningsâcool, crisp, distant. You hadnât even fallen for him. Youâd simply watched as your motherâs attention pivoted from micromanaging your life to orchestrating your marriage.
He was her dream son-in-law. A doctor. Unshakeable. Mannered. From a family she couldnât nitpick.
She didnât ask if you liked him.
She didnât need to.
She assumed you would be grateful.
And in some ways, you were.
Because Zayneâunavailable as he was, emotionally constipated and always at the hospitalâdid one thing your mother never did.
He left you alone.
There was no suffocating presence. No list of expectations folded into every meal. He didnât demand you dress a certain way. Didnât police your volume, your mood, your silences. He didnât ask much of you at all.
And in that eerie vacuum, you found something terrifyingly precious.
Autonomy.
Even if he barely spoke to you, even if he barely saw you, Zayne gave you the one thing you craved more than affection.
Freedom.
At home, your mother would barge into your room with unsolicited opinions. In Zayneâs apartment, you had a key to your own space. At home, your mother would correct you mid-sentence in front of relatives. Zayne would barely notice if you said something silly, let alone make you feel small for it.
He didnât tether you.
And while that coldness carved an ache in your chest during sleepless nights, it also came with a strange sense of safety.
He was distant, yes.
But he was not cruel.
When your mother visited your new house for the first time after your wedding, you saw her try itâtry to step into your space like she still owned it. She scanned your kitchen with sharp eyes, criticizing how you stored the spices. She told you you were putting on weight. That you needed to stop being lazy, that Zayne would leave you if you didnât âkeep up appearances.â
She said it lightly, like a joke.
Zayne was standing by the coffee machine.
He looked up, his gaze ice-cold.
âI didnât marry her for appearances,â he said, voice clipped, face unreadable. âAnd if youâre done insulting my wife, you can go.â
The silence that followed was deafening.
You remembered the way your mother blinked. Like someone had thrown cold water on her. She huffed, lips pursed, and left without another word. She didnât even say goodbye.
And youâŚ
Youâd looked at him like he was a foreign language.
He didnât look at you. Just poured his coffee and left for work without a second glance.
But you had stood there, rooted to the floor, hands shaking.
Because for the first time in your life, someone chose you.Â
Zayne had drawn a line in the sand.
And your mother had been on the wrong side of it.
You hadnât cried then. Not even when the door slammed shut and silence filled the apartment again. But you remembered the tightness in your chest. The way you stared at the floor like you were thirteen again, except this time you werenât helpless.
Because someoneâyour husbandâhad made it clear you were not to be messed with.
You still think about that moment. More than you probably should.
Because Zayne never brought it up again. Never mentioned her. Never asked how it made you feel.
But he didnât apologize for defending you.
He didnât make you feel like you owed him for it either.
And somehow, in his detachment, there was a kind of tenderness your mother had never offered you.
He gave you space.
He gave you a shield.
And somewhere in the folds of that cold, quiet marriage, you started seeing him not just as the stranger you were legally tied toâbut the man who, even in silence, stood between you and the woman who broke your voice.
He might not have held your hand.
But he kept your name safe in a house that was finally your own.
And maybe that didnât look like love in the way you were raised to recognize it.
But it was protection.
And for someone like youâraised to feel like a burdenâthat meant something.
You wake before the sun.
The room is still steeped in the heavy blue of early dawn, where everything looks softer than it really is. Blurred at the edges, like grief.
Thereâs a moment, a breath, where you forget. Where you wake as if from a dream and all is suspended. The air is cold against your cheek. The sheets heavy with the imprint of two. And thereâs warmth behind you. A weight.
Zayne.
Not a memory. Not a phantom. Not another figment of wishful thinking conjured up by your loneliness.
He's still here.
The realization sinks in slowly, like tea bleeding into water. At some point in the night, he mustâve shifted closer. One of his arms is draped around your waist, tentative but real. His chest rises and falls against your back, the rhythm steady, anchoring. And his faceâGod, his face is tucked into your shoulder like itâs the only home heâs ever known.
You donât move.
You just lie there, blinking up at the ceiling, your body stiff with exhaustion and the kind of grief that has no name. You're not sure what it is youâre mourning. Only that itâs something vast. Something invisible. A version of this marriage you never got to live. A thousand versions of yourself you never got to beâwith him, beside him, for him.
Thereâs a heaviness in your chest that isnât pain. Not sharp, not sudden. Just... present. Like fog. Like longing left too long in the cold.
You think about the envelope still sitting on his desk. Signed. Final. As binding as a scar.
You think about how easy it would be to slip out from under his arm. Walk away before the sun catches you both in this quiet trespass. Before the ache turns into expectation. Before kindness gets mistaken for forgiveness.
And yetâyou stay.
Not because anything has been resolved. Not because his whispered apology last night has undone the loneliness you watered for so long it grew roots inside you. But because you're tired. And his breath is warm. And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, youâre not waking up to a silence that only belongs to you.
He shifts slightly, his hand tightening instinctively on your waist. Just a twitch. Just enough to remind you: he feels you there.
The tears come before you can stop them.
Slow. Silent. The kind you donât sob out loud. The kind you let slip into the pillow because youâre too proud to make a sound.
You wish you could hate him.
You wish heâd never said anything at all. That he hadnât come into your room like that. That heâd left the papers on the desk and let the story end quietly.
Because now thereâs a crack.
A crack in the coffin you tried to bury this marriage in.
And through it, something stirs.
Not hope. Not yet.
Just the unbearable truth that heâs still in there, somewhereâbeneath all that absence. That maybe he always was. That maybe, just maybe, he had been mourning it too, all along, but in his own cold, closed, unreadable way.
Zayne breathes in deeply, then exhales with a small, uneven sigh. Still asleep.
You glance down at the hand around your waist. His fingers twitch once, like heâs dreaming of holding you tighter but doesnât quite know how.
It hurts.
Not because heâs touching youâbut because of how long youâve wanted him to. Because of how gentle it is. Because tenderness, after all this time, feels like both a balm and a blade.
You close your eyes again.
You donât move.
You donât wake him.
There is a funeral between your ribs and a heartbeat beside you, and both feel sacred.
And maybeâjust for this morningâthatâs enough.
The eggs are overcooked.
Zayne stares down at the pan like it offended him personally, the browned edges curling up as if mocking the silence thatâs wrapped itself around the kitchen. The yolks arenât runny the way you like them. He used the wrong kind of salt. The tea might be too bitter. Everythingâs a little off today.
Or maybe he is.
Zayne places the plate gently on the table, careful not to make too much noise. Youâre sitting across from him, wrapped in your robe, a thin line between your brows as you butter your toast like itâs a task that requires precision. You havenât spoken much. Not since waking up to find him still there, hovering in the doorway with eyes swollen from a night spent begging the universe to turn back time.
He watches you through the soft steam rising from the tea.
And he aches.
Not with longing, though thatâs part of it.
No, this ache is older. Rooted in something he thought he buried years ago, back on that cursed mountain where blood froze faster than it could pool, and lives ended mid-sentence.
He shouldnât be thinking about that morningânot here, not with you sitting across from himâbut he is.
Because the divorce papers, the ones still waiting on his desk like an open grave, reminded him exactly how it felt to lose something you didnât know how to hold.
That night on Mt. Eternal⌠years have passed since then, but the cold never really left his bones.
He still sees Williamâs face sometimes. In dreams. In the flicker of a hallway light. In the space between one breath and the next, when memory has no mercy.
He hadnât known the man for longâbarely a few months, a blip in the timeline of his tightly folded lifeâbut William had burned bright. Reckless, brilliant, infuriatingly intuitive. He had a way of making people feel seen. A way of cutting through Zayneâs silence with nothing but presence.
And thenâ
Zayne remembers pressing his hand to Williamâs chest, trying to keep the life in. His own blood mixing with his friendâs. He remembers the way the air smelledâlike frost and iron and finality.
He remembers thinking, If I survive this, I will never love anything fragile again.
And then he met you.
He looks up.
Youâre chewing slowly, eyes unfocused. Lost in your own world of unspoken grief.
You hadnât said anything last night after he fell asleep against your shoulder. You hadnât moved away. But you hadnât touched him, either.
Zayne doesnât blame you.
He doesnât know what to make of your silenceâwhether itâs resignation, or fear, or kindness. Whether heâs been forgiven, or whether youâre still too tired to fight.
He wishes he knew how to ask.
He wishes he were the kind of man who could reach across the table and take your hand, just to show you he's still here. That he finally wants to be here. But he isn't that man. Not yet.
And you deserve better than half-formed promises from someone still trying to dig his heart out from beneath layers of protocol and loss.
âIâm sorry,â he says quietly, almost without realizing it. The words come out hushed. Fragile.
You glance up.
Your eyes meet.
Thereâs no anger in them. But thereâs no relief, either. Just tiredness. And something that looks too much like a mirror of his own sorrow.
Zayne swallows.
He wants to tell you everything. About the nightmares. About the way guilt has hardened in his chest like a scar tissue. About how hard it is to come home to a soft, warm bed after you've learned to sleep beside death. About how sometimes, when you smiled at him, he looked away not because he didnât careâbut because it hurt too much to hope.
But he doesnât say any of it.
He takes a sip of tea. Itâs scalding. Bitter. His throat burns.
He watches you spread jam on toast with careful, robotic movements before you casually reach over and add two spoonfuls of sugar into his tea, and thinksâI shouldâve told her sooner. I shouldâve told her everything.
But he didnât. And now, here you both are. Sitting in the ruins. Pretending it's breakfast.
Thereâs no music. No birdsong. Just the soft clink of ceramic and the breathing of two people who donât know how to mourn what never had a name.
He looks at your handsâthose same hands he held last night like a prayerâand wishes he could rewind time.
Just one month. One year. One heartbeat.
But he canât.
So he lifts his fork. Cuts into the eggs. Forces himself to chew.
Because this is what it looks like, sometimes, when you try to make amends:
Burnt breakfast.
Too many silences.
A table full of ghosts.
And youâstill here.
Not forgiving.
Not forgetting.
But here.
And for Zayneâfor a man whoâs only ever learned to grieve in privateâthat is a beginning worth mourning, too.
His phone vibrates against the table.
He flinchesâguilt, maybe, or just the startle of being dragged out of a thought you didnât want to leave.
You don't look up, still quietly chewing, lost in that dreamless place where sorrow goes to sleep in you like a second skin. But Zayne reaches for the phone, thumb swiping across the screen, half-expecting some emergency at the hospital. A late case. A consult. Another impossible situation to fix so he doesnât have to fix himself.
But itâs a text from Greyson.
"You still coming to the charity gala? Need someone to block Dr. Malik from hijacking the auction with his ugly vintage duck paintings again."
He exhalesâone short breath, barely a sound. The message is simple. Banter, really. Nothing urgent. Nothing pressing.Â
He hasnât replied to Greyson in weeks.
He hasn't thought about the gala either. Usually an excuse for donors to parade their goodwill in overpriced suits, for surgeons to trade horror stories over cocktails, for the hospital to raise enough funds to keep the rural outreach programs going another year.
Zayneâs gaze flickers upward.
Youâre sipping your tea now. Still quiet. Still careful. But youâre here. Still in this kitchen. Still in his orbit.
Zayne lets a thought settle in his chestâtentative, unsteady, like a flame in high wind:
Perhaps not all is lost.
Maybe not everything has calcified into endings. Maybe not every door has shut. Maybe there's still a sliver of future that hasnât collapsed beneath the weight of what went unsaid. You hadnât kicked him out last night. You hadn't pulled your hand away when he clutched it like a lifeline in the dark.
And now, this. A small, ridiculous gala. The softest suggestion of routine, of life continuing.
He looks back at the message, thumb hovering over the reply field.
Maybe⌠maybe he could take you.
The thought startles him with its tenderness.
Would you even want to go? Would it feel like a poor excuse to make up for everything? A bandage over a bullet wound? Would you dress up just to stand beside a man who once vanished when you needed him most?
Zayneâs thumb lowers.
He doesnât reply.Â
Instead, he watches you butter another piece of toast with slow, mechanical grace. He memorizes the way your lashes cast shadows down your cheeks. The way your hand trembles just slightly, like youâre barely holding yourself together.
You were so strong, always. And heâhe let himself believe you didnât need him. That your strength meant he could keep hiding inside his cold logic and call it love.
He knows better now.
Maybe it's too late to be the man you needed back then. But maybe⌠maybe he can still learn to be someone you don't have to heal from.
He slips the phone screen-down on the table.
Then, with hesitant hands, he reaches across the table and nudges the jar of jam closer to you. A quiet offering.
You glance at it.
He meets your eyes again.
And in that fleeting glance, something moves. The first light in a room long sealed shut.
The moment passes too quickly.
Your eyes lower again, lashes shuttering the fragile connection. You spread the jam he offered, slow and deliberate, as if trying not to let your hands betray you. Zayne watches the knife tremble ever so slightly in your grip. Not enough for someone else to notice. But he does. Of course he does.
Heâs used to studying tremors for a livingâon monitors, in pupils, in dying pulses beneath his palm.
And now, you.
You, trembling under all that quiet.
He clears his throat.
Itâs not a loud sound, but it slices through the morning hush with a clean, surgical precision. You blink up at him, guarded again. As if waiting for him to say something devastating, or worseâdismissive.
Zayne presses his palms against the edge of the table. He doesnât lean forward, doesnât crowd you. He keeps his voice level. Gentle. Low.
âI, ahâŚâ he starts, and immediately hates how uncertain he sounds.
You set your knife down.
Zayne exhales softly through his nose, schooling himself into coherence. He can do this. He speaks to grieving families, for Godâs sake. Tells them about cardiac arrests and brain deaths and the final moments of their loved ones. He can string a sentence together.
But thisâthis is harder.
âThe hospital is hosting its annual charity gala this weekend,â he finally says. âGreyson asked if I was coming.â
You tilt your head. Neutral. You say nothing, but he thinks youâre waiting. Letting him go on.
Zayne looks down at his mug, watching the swirl of steam curl like a vanishing thought.
âI was thinking,â he says carefully, âmaybe you'd like to come with me.â
There.
He doesnât look up immediately. He canât. He doesnât want to see your hesitation, your polite refusal, the way youâll swallow your discomfort and say maybe next time when you know there wonât be one.
But thenâ
âWhy?âÂ
Your voice is not sharp. Not cruel. Just⌠tired.
Zayne looks up.
Youâre watching him now, one brow faintly raised, lips parted slightlyânot in expectation, but confusion. Sincere confusion. And something deeper beneath itâwariness, perhaps. The kind that comes from being wounded too many times in the same place.
He leans back in his chair. Not retreating. Just trying not to suffocate you with the closeness of his yearning.
âBecauseâŚâ he begins, but the rest of the sentence gets tangled somewhere in his chest.
Because I want to be seen with you.Because I want to try again.Because I miss being beside you even when we werenât really together.Because I canât bear the thought of showing up alone and being reminded of what I let die between us.Because I want to be yours.
Instead, what comes out is softer. Smaller.
âBecause Iâd like you to be there.â
You donât answer.
Instead, your eyes move over himâlike youâre taking stock of the man across from you. Not the doctor. Not the public figure. Not the version of Zayne that the world sees. But him.
You study the way his hands are folded, the way his jaw is clenched not with arrogance but restraint. The hair still damp from his morning shower. The sleeves of his dress shirt slightly creased because he didnât take the time to iron them.
Heâs not posturing. Not performing.
Heâs just⌠here. Holding out a hand through the quiet wreckage.
And finallyâfinallyâyour lips part.
âIs it black tie?â you ask, like youâre still testing the water, still waiting to see if this is real.
Zayne blinks.
Then breathes.
âYes,â he says. âFull formal.â
You nod. Just once. A small thing. A quiet gesture that still manages to bloom something in his chest that almost feels like hope.
âThen Iâll need a new dress,â you murmur.
And Zayne doesnât smile. Not fully. But something in his expression softens, loosens. The beginning of light behind stormclouds.
He knows itâs not forgiveness. But maybe, maybeâitâs the start of returning home.
Zayne finishes his tea in silence.
And as he stands to leave, brushing past your chair to take the dishes to the sink, he lets the faintest hope settle into the hollowness of his ribs.
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