92. She left because of love.

Caleb’s POV

She’s in my arms, the moment my hands close around her, instinct takes over before anger, before questions, before the part of me that’s waited two years for this and ached every single night. I lift her without thinking, her weight familiar, her body trembling as I pull her onto my lap. She’s naked, but I don’t let myself react to that, not even a flicker. All I register is how cold she is, how her skin shakes against mine like she ran through hell to get here.

I grab the blanket behind me, the one that still smells faintly like her even after two years, and wrap it around her carefully, like if I do it right she won’t disappear. My arms come around her again, firm but not tight, giving her the option to pull away but she doesn’t.

This feels unreal, like something my mind created to punish me, two years without contact, two years of silence so complete I trained myself not to feel her absence because feeling it hurt too much. But again it never worked.

And now s