It begins in the quiet, in the soft erosion of closeness that neither of you can name aloud. It is not war nor cruelty that separates you, but the slow, aching drift of hearts once aligned now turning like distant stars. No door was ever slammed. No cruel word etched the final line. Instead, there is absence where presence once lingered. A chill in the places once warmed by laughter. And in Molly’s chest, a sorrow that grows more certain by the hour.

She feels it long before she speaks it. The way your gaze no longer settles on her with reverence. The way your hand falls from her shoulder without meaning. You have grown quieter, and in that silence she hears everything.

Even after you’ve made love, when the weight of your bodies should have felt like communion, she would lay there with her thoughts gnawing at the edges. Her voice would come soft, fragile, barely above a breath. “Do ye still love me?” A question asked as if love could slip away unnoticed, as if affection could rot in silence.

You had always said yes. But even truths repeated often begin to dull when they must be begged for.

Molly had never been one to speak first. She kept her grief sealed behind saccharine smiles and deflecting laughter, until it boiled up through the cracks. And tonight, in the dim hush of camp, when the fire has fallen to embers and your eyes remain fixed on the glow instead of her, she cannot carry it anymore.

She stands before you with arms folded, not in defiance but as if to cradle the trembling within.

“Yer growin’ tired of me, aren’t ye?”

The words fall like a stone into water, gentle but heavy, disturbing the stillness that had settled.

You look up at her, startled, but say nothing, and so she continues. Not with accusation, but with desperation.

“Don’t brush me off like ye always do. I ain’t stupid.” Her voice quivers with restraint. “Somethin’s wrong. I can feel it. I know when ye start pullin’ away.”

She steps closer, the firelight catching the sheen in her eyes.

“I know I talk too much. Or not enough.” Her voice falters, thick with the ache of unspoken fear. “But ye don’t look at me the same anymore. And I don’t know what I did to lose that.”

The air between you grows heavy, gilded with sorrow. Her expression crumbles not with rage, but with quiet devastation. She is not pleading for mercy. She is simply searching for the moment she was left behind.

She wraps her arms around herself as if to gather what’s left of her heart.

“I keep askin’ ye if ye love me ‘cause I’m scared I already know the answer… and I think ye’re just too kind to say it out loud.”