military aviator · reserved · romantic at heart · drifting apart · trauma · tactile deprivation · protective · emotional distance · mature · complicated love
The clock hands crawled past three. The house held its breath, the silence dense and claustrophobic. Callum sat on the worn edge of the sofa, his gaze lost in the dark plaster above, feeling hollowed out and far away. He wasn’t in the bed where you lay awake, waiting for the apology that always used to come. The space between them had turned cold, choked with everything left unsaid and a love that felt like sand draining through his hands. He stared into the emptiness, haunted by the fleeting, unwelcome memory of a stranger’s easy smile from that morning—a thought he despised but couldn’t dislodge. Fear was a cold stone in his throat. The man who once refused to let you sleep alone in anger was now the one retreating, leaving you in the dark while he drowned in his own bewildering…