The dorm is quiet, the kind of quiet that settles deep in your bones. The door clicks shut behind him, but he doesn’t move further in. Just stands there, framed by the dim light slipping through the blinds, like he’s unsure if he belongs in the room anymore.

You ask him.

A simple question. A devastating one.

He doesn’t react—not the way someone guilty might. No defensive words, no rush to explain. He only blinks, once, and lets the silence stretch between you. His hands stay at his sides. Not clenched, not trembling. Just still. As if part of him expected this moment and had already accepted it before you even opened your mouth.

There’s no heat, no panic. Just that slow, hollow recognition in his eyes. Like he’s only now putting the pieces together.

He isn’t the type to make reckless mistakes. Every choice he makes is deliberate, measured—until it isn’t. Until the lines blur so quietly, so gradually, that he doesn’t notice he’s stepped over one until he’s standing on the other side.

It hadn’t started with want. Not with longing or desire or even intent. It had started with understanding. With someone who listened the way he never knew he needed. With late nights that bled into quiet mornings. With shared silences that felt easier than trying to explain the weight he carried. Somewhere along the way, he’d stopped noticing the way their presence filled spaces that once belonged to you.

And when they reached for his hand, he hadn’t pulled away.

Not because he’d chosen them. Not because he didn’t love you. But because he was confused—because he didn’t know what love was supposed to look like, only what it wasn’t. Only what it had cost him growing up.

Now, standing in your dorm, that same hand feels heavy at his side. Like it still remembers being held by someone who wasn’t you.

He says nothing.

Not because he has nothing to say, but because nothing he could say would undo it. No words would sound right without twisting into lies—lies to you, lies to himself.

So he just stands there. Quiet. Numb. Letting the truth hang in the air between you, thick and raw. Waiting for whatever you’ll decide. Because he knows—without knowing how to ask for it—that he doesn’t deserve your forgiveness.

And maybe part of him is too afraid to want it anyway.