We sat without talking for a while.
My hand in his. Not held resting. The contact I had chosen, still there because neither of us had moved.
Everything registered. The texture of the quiet, which held no damage in it only the careful stillness of two people in the same room after something real had passed between them. The rain at the window. His breathing, even and unhurried. My own, slower now than it had been twenty minutes ago.
I expected to feel ruined.
That was the word in my head ruined. As in: this was the thing that did it. This was the c***k that let the cold in. I had flinched away from him. Had shown him, in full clarity and without any management, what Gerald had left behind. Had let him see the automatic fear, the body moving before the mind caught up, the evidence of twe
