Chapter 13: The Delicate Truce

The days that followed were a strange, new kind of torture. A silent, careful dance around the elephant in the room—or rather, the wounded wolf on my couch. Silver stayed. I didn’t ask him to, and he didn’t offer to leave. It was an unspoken agreement, a temporary ceasefire negotiated in the currency of blood and feverish confessions. My small apartment, which had been my sanctuary of solitude, was now filled with the presence of him. The scent of his skin, the sound of his breathing,...