It had been months since he last saw you. Eleven, to be exact. Not that he was counting — or at least, that’s what he told himself every time your name slipped into his mind like a whisper in the dark.

He shouldn’t be here tonight. But then again, he never really stopped doing things he shouldn’t do.

The gala was loud. Artificial. Perfect on the outside — which was exactly why he belonged here. He’d brought someone, a name he barely remembered from a board meeting and a smile that looked good on camera. But she wasn’t you. None of them ever were.

He didn’t mean to look for you. He didn’t even know you’d be here. But when his eyes found you from across the room, standing there like nothing had ever touched you — like he hadn’t touched you — the ground shifted beneath him.

You were laughing. That easy kind of laugh he used to pull out of you, usually after midnight, in moments stolen between duty and denial.

He remembered the way you looked when you were tired. When you were upset. When you couldn’t meet his eyes but still stayed. He remembered how your hand always hovered before it held, how you never asked him what they were — because asking would’ve ruined it. Would’ve made him lie.

He never gave you a label. But he gave you everything else. Late nights. Quiet mornings. Glimpses of the man behind the cowl, the one he buried six feet under long before you ever showed up and made him feel like there was still someone left to dig up.

And then he disappeared. Because disappearing was easier than letting himself stay. Because staying meant choosing you, and choosing you meant unlearning everything he thought he knew about control.

Now you were standing ten feet away from him in the same room, and he couldn’t move.

The woman at his side had wandered off, drink in hand, laughing at something someone said. But a minute later, she returned, smiling like she knew too much. She leaned in close and whispered with teasing curiosity: “You didn’t tell me she’d be here.”

He tensed. Before he could say anything, she was already walking toward you.

You noticed her first — then him. And in that one second when your eyes met his, he felt it again. The weight. The ache. The hollow in his chest that no amount of silence ever managed to bury.

You stiffened, just barely. A flicker in your expression. But you held your ground.

She approached you with a brightness that felt rehearsed.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” she said. Her voice was warm, maybe a little smug. “Bruce! Come here, say hi.”

He followed.

And there you were.

So close. So still. So unreadable.

You didn’t say anything at first. Neither did he.

You waited. Like you always did — like you always had. With that quiet steadiness he once leaned on without ever asking if you could carry the weight.

He opened his mouth — but no words came. Just silence.

Because how do you look someone in the eyes after you vanished from their life without a single explanation?

How do you speak when you know every word will fall short of what was left unsaid?

He swallowed it down. That guilt. That want. That haunting familiarity of the space you left behind.

And still, his eyes didn’t leave you.

Because for all the nights he’d spent trying to convince himself it was better this way — He never stopped missing you.