When I woke up, sunlight barely poured through the curtain. I was in bed, alone. Still warm.
I wandered out, barefoot and quiet.
There he was.
At his desk in the study, slouched forward, fast asleep. The way he always looked when he spent all night thinking too hard, caring too much.
And in the stillness, I just stared at him.
Admired him.
His jawline, soft under the early light. His eyelashes long, curled like a boy's. That little mole under his left eye.
The curve of his nose, the way it scrunched slightly when he was deep in thought.
And his lips.
His lips.
God, his lips.
We had never kissed.
How was that possible? I loved him-madly, obsessively, with the kind of devotion that eats away at the edges of reason. He was mine. My freedom. My Fuite. My escape.
And yet-nothing.
So I leaned in. Slowly. As if moving too fast might undo the fragile permission I had invented between us. I was shaking. I held my breath and kissed him-softly, just once, barely there.
The world did not soften.
It fractured.
His eyes opened. Not in recognition-but in confusion. Something flickered across his face, sharp and immediate. Not warmth. Not longing.
Revulsion.
He pulled back-not violently, but decisively, as though correcting a mistake. His gaze searched my face, unfocused, startled.
"Misha?" he breathed.
The name landed between us like a dropped glass.
And in that instant, I understood. The way he was looking at me-not as someone betrayed, not even as someone desired-but as a stranger who had crossed an invisible line. As if he were seeing me for the first time.
He stood without another word. Didn't explain. Didn't look back. He left the house as though fleeing something unspeakable.
That was when it collapsed.
I turned, dazed, and caught my reflection in the glass of the wall clock. For a moment, I didn't recognize myself. Then my eyes drifted to the photograph beside it-Misha. Smiling softly, preserved in time.
And I saw it.
I looked more like her than I ever had like myself.
I was wearing her clothes. Her jewelry. Her careful, untouched life.
It wasn't me he had been seeing.
It had never been me.And I stood there, cold, trembling.
I had never felt so filthy. So empty. So unloved.
I went upstairs. The house silent. Too silent.
I sat in the bathtub.
My heart beat wildly, then faded into a distant echo.
I felt no fear-only a strange clarity, as if everything had already been decided.
I had never belonged. I had only been passing through places that did not want me.
And maybe... maybe I'd always known that.
The blade kissed my wrist in a way he never would.
It was soft. Gentle. And then it wasn't.
Warmth spilled out. The kind that finally quiets everything.
The room softened around me.
Thought dissolved into warmth, into nothing.
And the struggle finally stopped.
He truly was my escape.
My Fuite.
And now, I was finally free.