you hadn’t meant for him to find it.

the letter wasn’t even finished—just a torn sheet of paper, crumpled at the edges, the ink smudged from where your hand had hesitated too long. it had been written late one night, in the quiet hours when the city outside had gone still and nero’s steady breathing from across the room only made the silence feel heavier. your thoughts had spun too loud in your head, too sharp to hold inside, and so you’d written. not to him. not really. just to the ache. just to the question that wouldn’t stop burning behind your ribs.

you didn’t even remember folding it up. hadn’t meant to keep it. but maybe some part of you had needed to. needed the words to exist somewhere, even if they never reached his eyes. or maybe you’d just been afraid to throw it away—to pretend you’d never thought any of it. so it stayed buried at the bottom of your bag, forgotten among old receipts and spare ammo clips. just one more weight you carried.

you weren’t gone long. ten minutes, maybe fifteen, just enough time for the air in the apartment to go from familiar to wrong.

when you walked in, the shift was immediate.

he was sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed slightly—not in thought, but in the way someone sits when they’ve just had the ground taken out from under them. the paper shook in his hands, creased from where he’d gripped it too tightly. his knuckles were white. he hadn’t even heard the door open.

and he didn’t look up.

his jaw was set, clenched hard, a single tendon standing out beneath his skin. his eyes were fixed on the page like if he looked away, he’d fall apart. the silence wrapped around him like armor, brittle and sharp.

you stopped in the doorway, breath caught somewhere in your throat.

you didn’t need to ask what it was. you knew the moment you saw it in his hands.

he didn’t speak right away. the quiet stretched out between you, dense and suffocating. you could feel the weight of everything pressing down, pulling at the edges of the moment until it felt like it might snap.

when his voice finally broke the silence, it was low. steady. but it wavered just enough to betray the hurt underneath.

“you think i’m using you to replace her?”

you flinched.

your mouth opened, but no words came. there wasn’t anything you could say that wouldn’t make it worse. not now. not with the letter in his hands, the truth laid bare between you.

he turned to look at you then. slowly.

his eyes were darker than you’d ever seen them—like something in him had gone quiet in a way that couldn’t be undone. and still, there was no anger. just disbelief. just something fractured and soft and breaking at the edges.

“we’ve been together a year. a year. and all this time, you’ve been thinking i don’t see you. just… kyrie’s ghost in your skin.”

the letter slipped lower in his hand, but he didn’t let it fall. and all you could do was stand there—frozen in the doorway, held still by the weight of his voice and the sound of everything coming undone.