The Belated Truth
His voice cracked, eyes reddening. "I avoided my phone, afraid you'd snoop—but it held nothing but work emails! So I kept changing passwords... I didn't know what to do!" He wiped his face in anguish. "The more scared I was, the more I withdrew... acted horribly... making you suffer worse..." Meeting my eyes, his expression held despair and self-loathing. "Annie, I ruined this. Scared of losing you, I made everything worse." He bowed his head, shoulders slumped. "I thought... if I denied it, if you found no proof... eventually... you'd stop suspecting." The truth hit home. Seeing his agony, the puzzle of the past month snapped into place.


The Root of Fear
His odd actions—insomnia, nightmares, phone anxiety, obsessive password changes, deliberate distance—stemmed not from guilt or hidden secrets, but from a panicked fear of my misunderstanding and losing me. Like a drowning man, afraid of drifting farther, he'd curled inward, muddying the waters. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. He stiffened, then shuddered violently, as if a dam had burst. He held me fiercely, face buried in my neck, hot tears soaking my skin. In that small bathroom, we clung together, wordless.


Truth and Embrace
The ceiling light glared starkly, the scent of soap lingering. The emotional storm of the past month—suspicion, fear—settled in our embrace. After the release, exhaustion rolled in like a tide. David and I sat on the living room sofa, a small space between us. The projector rested innocuously on the coffee table, its former menace now gone. Only a dim floor lamp lit the room; silence hung heavy, filled with post-trauma calm but also lingering awkwardness and cracks. Liz brought us steaming tea. "So... is this behind us?"

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