Elena's POV
"I know we said we wouldn't talk about it again," I typed back, my thumb hovering over the message for a long moment before I finally sent it, "but I don't think either of us can keep pretending it stopped mattering just because we stopped mentioning it."
His reply came fast, four words that settled something unsteady in my chest even as they raised a dozen new questions I still didn't have answers for. *Agreed. We'll talk tonight.*
I set the phone down and sat with that for a while, the strange comfort of shared certainty doing little to ease the deeper unease still coiled beneath it. Whatever this was, it wasn't something either of us fully understood yet, and knowing I wasn't alone in it didn't make the marks on my arm any less real, or the dirt beneath my nails any less
