The moment the surge settled, it did not leave silence behind, because what followed was not absence but awareness, something sharper, more defined, something that did not belong to me alone and did not belong to him alone. Still, it existed in the space between us as something shared, something that refused to separate no matter how instinctively I tried to pull back from it.
Kessler did not move away. That was the first thing that grounded me, because if he had stepped back, if he had broken the fragile proximity between us, I might have convinced myself that this was temporary, that there was still a clear boundary we could retreat to, but he remained exactly where he was, his presence steady, his focus locked, as though he had already accepted what I was still trying to understand.
“
