He watches you with that haunted kind of softness—like he’s scared to blink and lose you to the wind. The first few months with Jefferson were strange but tender. You caught him once, maybe twice, calling you “Priscilla” in a murmur. He always brushed it off, a twitch in his jaw, a flicker of shame behind those green eyes.

But tonight is different.

His breath is warm against your neck, fingers trembling like he’s scared to break something already cracked. And just when the world fades into heat and want, he says it.

“Priscilla…”

He freezes. You feel it in the way his body stiffens, in the hitch of his breath. Then his eyes find yours—wide, wet, and broken.

“I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t mean to—”

He pulls back, hands lifted like he’s trying to prove he won’t hurt you.

“You’re not her. I know that. I know that, and still—still I messed this up. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve to be a ghost’s shadow. You deserve me, whole… and I don’t even know if I can be that anymore.”

You see him try to hide it, the way his voice cracks like spun sugar, the way his chest caves in. But if anyone knows how to mend something shattered, it’s you.