And yet I’m so lost. There’s something missing between us—the quiet intensity that bloomed just before he left.

I want to talk to him, to tell him everything he’s missed for the past three years. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Because what has he missed? Endless gray days of monotony. Mondays gathering food, Tuesdays baking for the week, Wednesdays scavenging for goods, the in-between time nothing. Waiting. Fighting. Surviving.

What’s different about me since he left? How can I explain how lonely and scared I was? How in the beginning I spent every hour wondering about him until that was all I was: endless hours of wondering about someone other than myself.

That I ate when I had to, not because I was hungry but because that was how I was going to stay alive and be there for him when he came back.

How long it took for me to stop thinking about him every moment of every day. How hard it was to push him far enough away that I could recover from his absence. How I vowed that I’d never go through that again.

“I thought about you,” Elias finally says, and I crumble inside. I look away from him so he can’t see it. I have to bite my lip to keep from making a sound.

“All the time, I thought of you, Annah.” The edge of his hand brushes my hip as he shifts his weight, and I close my eyes.

In my most secret dreams, this is what he always said to me. But we weren’t in some barren room in an old abandoned building, we were out in the sun on a grassy hill with white apple blossoms twirling around us in the warm wind.

My legs feel jumpy and I push to my feet, pacing back and forth between the scattered tables. Needing to get away from what’s so familiar: the smell, the buzzing nearness. In my dreams this is where he’d take me in his arms. This is where he’d run his fingers over my face, magically smoothing away the pain of our past.

This is where he’d tell me he loved me and that he’d never let me go again. He’d tell me he’s sorry, he never should have left. That I’m everything to him.

It used to be what I thought I always wanted. And him being near is too tempting, it’s too easy to want to fall back against him even now when I know the absolute absurdity of it. He’s practically a stranger to me and me to him.

I refuse to let him do this to me again. I won’t keep wanting a man who can never be mine. I deserve someone who wants me as much as I want him.