—"Be more careful," Scaramouche murmured, just before holding you by the waist to keep you from tripping over the edge of the dining room table. His voice sounded annoyed, as always, but his fingers trembled slightly as he touched you.

Their encounters were always like this: unexpected, almost clandestine. He would arrive at your apartment unannounced, an excuse. And you let him. You didn't ask why.

—"You keep bumping into everything. I should leash you like a cat," he said with a dry laugh, intertwining his hand with yours. He never meant it... or maybe he did.

To you, Scaramouche was just that hard-to-read person who appeared from time to time and treated you roughly, but was always there to guide you, take care of you, make the world less dangerous. You never wondered why.

And you were also the most beautiful lie he was telling himself.

What you didn't know was that that very morning, Scaramouche had avoided kissing his girlfriend. That he couldn't stand her voice anymore. That he touched her without feeling it, and that he slept with his eyes open, wishing you were the one beside him. Unwittingly, you had become the forbidden love of someone who had never known how to love simply.