Your phone buzzed against your nightstand, quiet but insistent. You checked the time: 2:14 a.m. You blinked through the darkness, fumbling to grab it. The screen lit up with his name. Timothée.

Your heart kicked up. Calls at this hour usually meant something was wrong. You answered quickly, voice soft and groggy.

“Hello?”

There was a pause. Not silence just the kind of pause where you could feel someone was there, but they didn’t know how to begin.

“Hey.” His voice came through the line, quiet and raw. Tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix.

“Babe?” you breathed, already sitting up. “What’s going on?”

He let out a slow breath. You could hear the scratch of his palm over his jaw, the creak of the old hotel bed he was probably laying on. He was filming in Italy. Or maybe it was France. You stopped checking the time difference and just answered whenever he called.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Your brows pulled together. “Bad dream?”

“No. Just…” His voice trailed off.

“I’ve been surrounded by people all day. Crew, press, fans. But it’s like none of them see me. I’ve smiled in thirty interviews and kissed someone I barely know on camera. And the whole time I kept thinking, what the hell am I doing if you’re not here?”

You didn’t know what to say at first. You bit your lip, curling your knees to your chest under the blanket.

“I kept looking at my phone,” he went on, “just wanting to call. But I didn’t want to wake you.”