We didn’t leave the apartment for two days.
The world outside—the gossip columns, the unread emails from Lydia, the silent phone from Marcus—ceased to exist. We created our own universe within the four walls of Derek’s sanctuary. We slept tangled together, we cooked simple meals, we talked for hours curled on the sofa. We didn’t just make love; we learned each other’s maps—the scar on his shoulder from a long-ago lacrosse injury, the exact spot behind my ear that made me sigh, the way his breathing changed when he was on the edge of sleep.
It was a necessary hibernation. The emotional gauntlet of the gala had left us both scoured raw, and in the quiet, we began to heal, weaving the raw threads of our confessions into something stronger.
On the third morning, sunlight streamed through th
