I look up at him, and our eyes meet.
I don't speak. I just stare.
People here are like this. Please don't pay attention to them.
The same words he said the first time I came to his apartment.
The same quiet protectiveness.
His eyes hold mine, dark and unreadable, and I feel myself falling into them—into the quiet certainty of his stare, into the memory of who he used to be, into the ghost of who I used to be when I was with him.
We stay like this, suspended in the fragile space between heartbeats.
The world has dissolved around us—the murmur of the lobby, the shuffle of footsteps, the distant hum of the city filtering through the glass doors. All of it is swallowed by the gravity of his gaze.
There is only him.
Only me.
Then the elevator doors slide open with a soft, mechanical sigh.
I blink.
The spell fractures.
