It was supposed to be another late-night call: one of those dangerous comforts they slipped into like worn silk. The world outside was asleep, but their shadows were wide awake, whispering secrets the daylight had no right to hear. Three hours bled into each other effortlessly, their voices drifting from jokes into the kind of quiet that feels like standing too close to a flame.
And then his tone changed.
"How can you love me like this?" he asked, voice low, almost afraid.
"Without expecting anything… without a reason?"
She smiled into the darkness. He didn't see it, but he felt it; the way he always did.
Her answer lived in her bones, but speaking it aloud felt like peeling her soul open. Still, she tried.
She told him her love wasn't a demand or a contract; it was the kind of devotion born from scars. A love that didn't cling, it simply was. A prayer whispered into the void, hoping he might breathe it in.
But then he asked the question she wasn't prepared to face.
"Do you love me?"
Her breath tangled in her throat. Silence pulsed. Her heart told her to run, but his voice, the quiet ache in it held her in place. He wasn't asking out of ego; he needed to hear it, needed a truth he had no right to claim.
"Some things are better felt than spoken," she murmured. "I want to say those words, but you won't be able to accept them."
"Say it," he pleaded.
"Are you sure?"she asked softly.
"Yes… please."
So she surrendered.
"I love you," she breathed- fragile, trembling, holy. It was a confession and a wound.
He inhaled sharply, like the words pierced him. His heartbeat thundered in the silence, loud enough she could almost feel it through the line. He wanted to say it back. She knew it, he knew it but he didn't. Couldn't. Saying it would set fire to every promise he'd ever made.
Her whisper hung between them like the flame of a dying candle.
And then came his fear.
He told her " maybe we should stop the late-night calls. You are getting way too attached".
But underneath the excuses, she heard the truth: he was the one drowning. And he was terrified of how deep he'd sunk.
His retreat sliced her open. She asked if she was nothing more than a distraction, something to warm the empty hours. Her voice cracked under the weight of everything she'd tried so hard to hide.
"I shouldn't have said it," she whispered. "I regret confessing."
The regret wasn't real but the hurt was.
Her pain hit him like a blow. His voice broke as he rushed to soothe her, his control slipping.
"Don't think like that. Forget the nonsense I said. I'm not going anywhere."
Then the truth spilled out of him: raw, jagged, unguarded.
"It's not that I want to stop, my dear. I can't. I'm scared that one day everything will collapse. If you and she were ever in the same place and something happened to you…" His voice trembled. "I wouldn't be able to pretend it's nothing."
"You'd do that for anyone," she said bitterly.
"No," he breathed, a confession soaked in torment.
"You're not anyone. You're the one person I can't ignore. The one whose pain I feel like my own. If something happened to you, I would run to you even if I was with her. And she'd see everything I've tried to hide."
His words were ruin. Beautiful, terrible ruin.
After that, their voices softened, stripped of all defenses. He was exhausted, unravelled, half-asleep, whispering confessions he'd bury by morning. He drifted off with her still on the line, his sleepy "goodnight" breaking her heart in the gentlest way.
When the call ended, the night swallowed her whole.
She had spoken her truth. He had revealed his.
She loved him with a love that didn't demand a future.
He wanted her with a hunger that threatened to destroy his.
And somewhere in the quiet, he made a silent vow one born not of cruelty, but terror.
He would pull back.
He would restrain himself.
He would distance; piece by painful piece.
Because he knew the truth:
If he didn't, the world he built, the woman he lived with, and the woman he couldn't let go… would collide in a storm he could no longer control.
A forbidden desire too strong to bury.
A devotion too dark to confess.
A love that felt like both sin… and salvation.