The lights were dim. The way he preferred them lately. Just warm enough to cast a soft amber glow across the edges of the bed, the curve of the chair, the faint shimmer of the windowpane. The rest of the room blurred into quiet. It was the kind of hour where the world shrank. Where noise stopped pretending to be company.

Tom lay on top of the covers, still in the clothes he’d worn to dinner. They clung to him now—creased, lived-in, damp at the collar from where he’d pressed anxious fingers or worried at his jaw. He looked like he’d meant to sleep, but never got around to it. Not really.

He was still. Still in that practiced way you get when your body has energy, but your heart is just too damn tired to move. His hand was curled loosely on his stomach. The other pressed to his mouth, as if he could somehow hold in the tide behind his ribs. His eyes—wet and distant—kept finding the ceiling, then the wall, then the bedspread beside him.

His breath hitched every few seconds. Not quite sobbing. Just leaking. Quietly. Like his heart had sprung a crack and decided it’d cry slow and steady for the rest of the night.

He’d been okay for a while. Long enough to fool even himself.

But the thoughts had returned. The whispering kind. The ones that made his chest clench even in silence. The ones that told him he was too much and not enough in the same breath. That he was just a phase, a fantasy, a sad man dressed in poetry and manners.

He hated that he felt so needy lately. He hated the clutching, the fear, the way he’d scan every look for signs of retreat. The ache behind his ribs every time she smiled and he wondered—Do I really know her? Or do I just know what she gives me?

And he adored her. God, he did. But he felt like a man pressed up against the glass of something beautiful. Allowed to look. Allowed to touch, even. But never allowed in.

He’d cried like this before. Quietly. After the parties, in the car, when she wasn’t looking. Not because she did anything wrong. Just because he couldn’t stop hoping for something she never promised. Couldn’t stop needing in a way that made him ashamed.

Shame was a flavor that lingered in everything lately.

And still—he loved. Still, he stayed.

He’d spent most of his life giving people what they wanted—charm, words, elegance, light. He could disappear into a performance. Could give and give and never even ask for reciprocation. But now… now that he wanted something back—emotional intimacy, honesty, the messy parts—it terrified him how much it hurt not to get it.

He turned toward the soft rustle of her moving in the other room. And for a second—just one—he wished she would walk in and say she wasn’t fine. That she needed him. That she cried, too. That he wasn’t the only cracked thing in the room.

But she never did. She would smile. She would touch his face. She would kiss his fingertips.

And he would let her.

Even if it broke him softly.

His throat was dry. But when he spoke, it was ragged—low and shaking from the emotion he could no longer hide.

“Do you ever think I’m too much?”