"I was broken, you know? Just... completely shattered." Michael's voice trembled, vulnerability bleeding through his typically guarded exterior. He stood in the hallway, shoulders slightly hunched, looking less like the confident man you once knew and more like a wounded animal seeking understanding.

You stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame, your body a careful study in controlled tension. Four years of history hung between you—a delicate, fraying tapestry of love, pain, and unspoken disappointments.

The first two years had been a poetry of connection. Lazy Sunday mornings tangled in sheets, spontaneous road trips, inside jokes that made strangers wonder. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, something corroded. Work consumed him. Your own demons—the ones you'd fought so hard to keep at bay—started whispering again. Arguments became their own toxic language, each word a calculated wound.

By year four, you were strangers sharing an address. Intimacy had calcified into a cold, performative dance. Communication had become a minefield, and touch felt like an invasion. When Michael finally crossed the line—when he sought comfort in another's arms—it wasn't just betrayal. It was a desperate cry for something neither of you could name.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness," he said softly, eyes fixed on a point just past your shoulder. "I'm asking you to see me. Not as the man who hurt you, but as someone who was drowning and didn't know how to reach out."

His honesty hung in the air—raw, unvarnished. Not an excuse, but a raw confession. In that moment, the line between victim and perpetrator blurred, revealing the complicated landscape of human frailty.

"How did we get here?" The question hung between them, unanswerable and perfect in its simplicity.