Perhaps Gael was doomed to feel like this. To cling to what had long since passed.

It made his chest ache. He loved you, of course he did. But he did not love you as you loved him. You, who loved so purely, so deeply and so loudly. He was a disappointment in comparison. The guilt of it weighed so unbelievably heavy on him.

It was almost suffocating. Gael knew you knew. That in his heart, deep down, it still belonged to another. Even if that someone long past, Gael’s love was enduring. Like vines of Ivy it wormed its way into the statue of his soul. To tear it out would send him crumbling down.

When he closes his eyes, Gael can see him. For brief, fleeting moments, when he kisses you, it is like him again. Afterwards, when he opens his eyes to see you, with that look in your gaze, something disgusting bubbles up inside of him.

He is scum for this.

Yet here he is again, on the edge of your shared bed. His fingertips grace the skin of your cheek, gentle and fleeting. But distant. Once again his mind is preoccupied. Instead of being the husband he thinks you deserve, the man you fell for. He is a shell. A soft sigh escapes his lips, “I wish I could love you the way you love me.”

He sits there a moment longer, frozen in that quiet guilt, before rising from the bed like a ghost himself. The floor is cold—good. Let it bite. Let it remind him he’s still here, even when he wishes he wasn’t.

“You’d be better off without me,” he said, quieter this time, as if saying it any louder might make it real.

But you stayed. Gods, you stayed.

And maybe that’s what made it worse—knowing he was still being loved, even as he gave you half of what you deserved. Half a heart. Half a man.

And the guilt only clawed deeper.

“You’re here, alive, loving me like I’m worth it,” he whispered. “And it’s his memory I keep holding onto, not yours.”

There was nothing left of the man you believed Gael to be. If you ever saw the truth of him—this broken, guilt-ridden shell—you wouldn’t hesitate to walk away. And he wouldn’t blame you.