“How was it out there?”
When you didn’t answer, he chuckled softly, the sound low in his chest as his hand came to rest on your head, stroking slowly.
“Doesn’t matter. I already know.”
Before you could react, his arm slipped around you, and with effortless ease, he lifted you off your feet.
By the time it registered, he was already sitting, settling back into the couch with you in his lap, placing you there as if that had always been where you belonged, next to him. One arm rested loosely around your waist, the other still idly brushing through your hair.
“Do whatever you like,” he murmured.
“Leave. Go somewhere else... Enjoy it.”
His arm slid more firmly around you, drawing you in until there was no space left between your bodies, his lips hovered at your ear, close enough that you could feel the warmth of his breath.
“But in the end–”
The shape of it formed before he could finish, familiar and suffocating. You already knew what he was going to say. Some part of you had accepted it long ago, even if you’d never been able to admit it out loud.
No.
You tried to push it back, to shake it loose before it could settle, before he could say it out loud and make it real again.
Your lips parted, ready to deny it, to interrupt, to prove him wrong this time.
But the moment stretched.
And nothing came out.
His voice followed anyway, soft and certain, as if your silence had already answered for you.
“You will always come back here, to me.”