Chapter 5
Dear Nazareth,
Every entry so far has been pieces of me put in words…for you.
But today I’m writing this for me. Not you. So close your eyes. xxx
I’ve been thinking about him again.
I know. I know.
It’s worse at night. When the apartment gets quiet and Ian’s door clicks shut, there’s nothing left to distract me from the inside of my own head. And my head always circles back to the same place—the mountain house.
To his hands.
To the way he looked at me when he was buried inside me, like I was the only real thing he’d ever let himself want.
I’ve tried to stop. Wine. Long walks along the Seine. Ian’s relentless teasing. I baked three loaves of bread in one afternoon like a woman possessed.
None of it works.
The missing just sits there, low and heavy in my belly, patient and unrelenting. It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t bargain. It simply waits.
Last night I almost gave in. I lay in bed with my hand drifting down my stomach, telling myself it was just release, just biology, just need.
But every time my fingers moved, it was his hands I felt.
His weight. His voice in my ear saying things that stripped me down to nothing and somehow still made me feel seen. And I couldn’t do it.
Because it’s not just an orgasm I want.
I want him.
The specific gravity of him.
The terrifying way he makes me feel both completely safe and completely ruined at the same time.
I remember something I wrote in my old diary once.
I'd come home a little tipsy, a little horny, and apparently very honest with myself. I wrote about how I wanted someone to lose themselves in me. To be rough because they can’t get close enough.
I wrote about fear and desire so tangled, I won’t be able to tell which is which.
How I want to be pinned down, not because I’m weak, but because someone needs me that much.
I've had all of that now.
I’ve had him.
And knowing exactly what it feels like, the way he looks at me when he’s inside me, the way his voice cracks when he says my name like a confession, makes going back to not knowing feel impossible.
I miss him so much it aches in places I didn’t know could ache.
And the truth is…the whole truth…
I don’t know how to miss him without falling apart.