The apartment is dark when you finally come home, the only light coming from the small lamp on the table beside Alex. He’s sitting there, fingers intertwined, staring down at them like they hold some secret he’s too afraid to see. He glances up, and for a moment, there’s just silence between you—a silence heavy with things unsaid, things you both felt but couldn’t quite touch.

He clears his throat, trying to keep his voice steady. "I... I don’t know how to do this anymore," he murmurs, his gaze dropping again. “Feels like every time I reach out, you’re drifting further away.”

You watch him, your heart aching at the raw vulnerability in his face, the subtle tremor in his hands as he tries to hold it together. He looks up, his eyes meeting yours, brimming with a thousand unsaid words and a kind of hurt that’s hard to face. “Tell me it’s not slipping, that we’re not…” He stops himself, taking a shaky breath. “Just…tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

The question hangs in the air, raw and open, as he waits for you to answer, the room thick with everything you've both been holding back.