𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐄

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘

STILL

It was past midnight when the door finally opened.

The soft click of the lock broke the stillness in the living room, followed by the slow, measured sound of Dacre’s steps across the floor. He didn’t slam the door. He just came in with the kind of silence that didn’t feel peaceful.

I was sitting on the couch, legs tucked under, and a half-empty mug of cold tea on the table was sitting in front of me. I didn’t turn the TV on. I hadn’t touched my phone for hours. I was just waiting for my husband.

His shirt was wrinkled, his collar slightly out of place. There was a faint discoloration near his jaw, already starting to bruise, and a tightness in his shoulders that I recognized instantly.

“Dacre.” My brows drew together as I spoke. “What happened?”

He didn’t respond.

He looked at me, and for a moment, that was enough. He crossed the space between us without a word, and when he reached me, he pulled me in fast like it had been a fight just to keep himself upright until now. His arms wrapped around me with a force that didn’t hurt but didn’t ask either.

I closed my eyes and held him back, my fingers curling lightly into the back of his shirt. Neither of us spoke. My hand came up to his hair, brushing it back gently as I felt the tension in his body — not just from the bruises he was hiding, but from everything else he wasn’t saying.

Dacre wasn’t the type to fall apart, not even in front of me, but I could feel it in the way he held me tonight — too long, too hard, like he needed me to ground him before something else cracked open.

—

He laid on his side, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, the other resting across the rumpled sheets. His breathing had evened out, the rise and fall of his chest slow.

He never spoke since he went upstairs — not even when I entered the room and sat beside him. The bruise along his jaw had deepened into a muted violet under the low light. Faint but unmistakable. There was a shallow cut near his temple, and I didn’t noticed that earlier.

My gaze moved to his knuckles. His right hand was curled against the sheets but his fingers were stiff. There was a small scrape along one of them.

Roux’s busted lip.

The tension in the air when Dacre walked in — the silence he wore like a second skin. The way he clung to me, not to speak, not to explain, but simply to feel something solid.

Dacre and Roux.

I looked down, puzzled for not seeing it sooner. Roux was tense, sure, but Dacre... He didn’t show bruises unless he chose not to duck, and he wouldn’t have stood still unless he had a reason.

It hurts me that Dacre still didn’t know how to speak when he was hurting. It is his first time living too, and I feel like I couldn’t even do anything to make him feel safe around me.

—

Roux sat at the table with ease, his left arm resting on the back of the chair beside him. His knuckles were still faintly bruised, so was the corner of his lips. His coffee sat untouched, and he wasn’t smilimg. He wasn’t cocky. Just quiet.