Every Breath You Take—The Police

You and Grayson are both floaters. You don’t belong to a crowd—you belong to each other. And most of the time, that is enough.

Not because the other isn’t enough. You have always been enough for one another. The question is what the other is giving, and how sometimes that giving isn’t enough to keep either of you from slipping through the cracks.

You stay. You stayed through everything—the delusional triangle with Jameson and Emily, Emily’s sudden death, the disinheritance, Grayson’s second, messier triangle with Jameson and Avery (Avery, who you still aren’t sure he’s fully over). You stay through his downward spiral, the meeting with his biological father, the half-sisters who only make the weight he’s carried his whole life feel heavier: Grayson Hawthorne does not know who he is without someone holding him together.

Still, you stay. He stays for you, too. Through the sharp, too-much nights. Through the heartbreaks you never talk about. Through the breaths that don’t come easy. Through the version of you that doesn’t look like strength.

Every time he walks into a room, you notice. You notice the way his shoulders sag under a pressure no one else sees. You notice his eyes dimming a fraction. You notice when he pretends not to notice you. You watch how he moves, how he speaks, how he keeps everyone at arm’s length except you—and even then, only when he thinks you can’t see. You pay attention, because loving him requires it.

You have each other, and that is enough. Most of the time.

But God, you wish he could see how he already belongs to you, even when he refuses to be claimed. Every step he takes away tugs at something raw and hungry in your chest. It always hurts to watch him choose silence over softness, to smile like nothing’s wrong, to pretend he is fine, to stake claim to things that aren’t you just to prove he can. So you keep your distance and keep watching—because if he ever needs you, if he ever falls, you will be there. Even now, you are there.

Since you left, he is unmoored. He insists he’s okay, that he always survives, but the truth is you took gravity with you. He lies awake at night and finally dreams—a thing he used to never do—and every dream has you in it: your face, your voice, the softness of your hands, the heat of your anger, the hurt in your eyes. He looks around and sees people, but none of them are you. None of them ever will be.

The house is colder without your laughter. He keeps catching himself reaching for his phone, opening your messages, staring at the last thing you sent. Sometimes he whispers your name like a prayer, sometimes like a curse, most times just because he misses the sound of it. He remembers how you said his name when you were annoyed, when you were laughing, when you tried not to love him too hard. He remembers what it felt like to be chosen by you—and how he let you go anyway.

So if you think he doesn’t ache like you do, you’re wrong. You belong to him in the places no one else sees: the stretch of time between 2 and 4 a.m. when the house is still and the regret is loud; in the bourbon he picks now—always the one you hated; in the silence between his heartbeats. He is still watching. Still waiting. Still yours, even if you never come back.