Sit. Breathe.
I found a seat by the window, and stood my case beside me, my backpack in my lap. I leaned back, my head resting against the cool glass, and closed my eyes for a moment.
He was there in a heartbeat, the weight of his hand at the back of my neck. The feel of his lips, kissing me as though none of this had ever been casual.
My chest tightened, and I opened my eyes.
It was real.
There was no questioning it now, no second-guessing, no telling myself I’d imagined it or read too much into it.
Stefan hadn’t held back at the end, when it mattered.
But he didn’t stop me.
I swallowed, my fingers curling into my palms, until I could feel my nails biting.
That split second where I’d turned back, where everything had hung there, balanced on something neither of us had said? I’d felt how easily it could have shifted.
All it would have taken was a word, a step forward…
My name on his lips.
Anything, and I would have stayed. No hesitation. Manchester, college, my career… None of it would have mattered, because somewhere along the way, without me noticing exactly when, I’d fallen for him.
The thought didn’t bring a wave of panic, a rush of denial. It was simply the truth. What accompanied it was the quiet understanding of why I hadn’t told him, hadn’t forced the moment.
Why I hadn’t asked him to choose.
I knew Stefan. I knew what that would do. It would have put him in a position where he’d have to respond, where silence wouldn’t be an option. Yes, he might have said something, not because he was ready, but because I’d made it impossible not to.
I couldn’t do that to him.
I didn’t want him to feel cornered, responsible for something he hadn’t chosen freely.
So I hadn’t said it, and neither had he. Whatever line he’d drawn for himself, he hadn’t crossed it, and that was done by choice.
I wasn’t angry, or even disappointed.
Stefan didn’t doanythinghalfway. He didn’t say things he didn’t mean, or leave things undefined unless he intended them to stay that way.
So if he didn’t asked me to stay…
It was because he wasn’t ready for what that would mean.
I watched the landscape shift, Berlin already slipping further behind me with every passing second.
He gave me so much. Not just the sex. Not just the kink, the discovery, the permission to explore a part of myself I’d kept locked away.
He let me in. That had been huge.
He’d got one thing wrong, however. Berlin hadn’t been an escape.
It had been the most real thing I’d ever encountered.
Maybe that’s the only thing I can take from this.The truth of what we’d had, for as long as we’d had it.
I expelled a breath, the tension in my chest easing enough for me to breathe properly again. The last traces of the city disappeared from view, and I let it happen. I didn’t try to hold onto what was already gone.