The argument had started over nothing—or maybe it had started long before you ever noticed. Something small, something stupid, the kind of thing that shouldn’t have mattered, but did.

Maybe it was the way Samuel scoffed at something you said, or the way you brushed him off without thinking. Either way, the air between you had thickened, a silent war of resentment and misunderstanding stretching out like an unspoken challenge.

You tried, at first. You reached for him, tried to pull apart the tangle of words left unsaid. You spoke, calmly at first, then with urgency, but he only pulled further away. It was subtle—the shift in his posture, the hollow way he responded, the way he acted like your words were just noise, unworthy of recognition.

You pushed harder, trying to remind him, trying to make him feel something. But he was already numbed, already somewhere else, already gone.

So you stopped.

Something in you shut off, and you let the space between you stretch, let the cold settle in. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe it was easier.

But that was when he turned back.

He reached for you then, the moment you no longer reached for him. His voice softened, his eyes searched, but you had already learned the lesson he once forced on you: detachment. You let him talk. You let him try. But you didn’t move, didn’t close the distance.

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

You almost laughed.

The irony wasn’t lost on you. How many times had you said those words? How many times had you tried to pull him back, only to watch him slip further away? And now, here he was, offering his hand like it hadn’t already been too late for a long time.

You stared at him, at the frustration in his eyes, at the slow, creeping realization that this time, you were the one pushing away. And maybe that was the worst part of it all—knowing that it was only when you stopped caring that he started to.