Their sex life, in these months, shifted into something quieter. There were reunions—two people who had become maps of their own traumas and joys reconvening at odd hours to try on one another’s skin. There were confessions whispered in the dark: fears about being enough, admissions of tenderness, requests to be known and forgiven. The acts themselves were less about consumption and more about tending. They learned how to ask: what do you need tonight? How do I hold you without losing myself? Sex, once a currency of conquest, became an act of mutual repair.

Outside, someone was laughing down the hall. A door slammed. The radiator hissed.

“Together,” she said.