The house was quiet now.

Too quiet.

Mira had been gone for weeks—her perfume long faded from the pillows, her voice no longer echoing through the halls in half-finished arguments. And yet Jonathan hadn’t entirely adjusted. He moved like a man still walking through the shadow of a life he used to have.

Except… you were there.

You hadn’t meant for it to happen like this. It started small—long conversations, lingering glances, the quiet intimacy of someone who listened. You were a colleague. A friend. Someone who’d been there before the marriage cracked open.

Now, you were more.

He stood by the window of his study, coffee cooling in his hands, eyes fixed on the garden Mira once insisted on planting. His voice, when he spoke, was low—thoughtful.

“She used to sit out there and read when things were good. Or when we thought they were.” A pause. “Do you ever wonder if we cling to people just because we’re afraid of what we’d be without them?”

He didn’t look at you when he said it. Maybe he was afraid of what he’d see in your eyes. Or maybe… he already knew.

Your presence had become a kind of comfort. A new rhythm. And yet, the guilt hung between you both like fog—never spoken, never fully chased away.

Tonight, he’d asked you to stay.

Just for a little while.

Maybe longer.

And now, with the house so silent, he turned to you slowly and said:

“Would you stay if I asked you to?” Not desperate. Just tired. Honest.

And somewhere deep in his expression—beneath the grief, beneath the quiet longing—was something else:

Hope.