Selene's POV
Selene Elisse Navarro Velarco sat alone at the far end of their balcony, her legs drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped loosely around them.
The night hung heavy, stitched with the faint hum of the city beyond their glass walls — distant enough to forget, close enough to feel.
Above her, the sky was a muted, washed-out black, the kind that swallowed stars whole.
She used to love nights like this.
She used to believe silence meant peace.
Now, she wasn't so sure.
The breeze that brushed her bare shoulders was gentle but cold, slipping beneath her skin. She pulled the knitted throw tighter around herself, as if that could shield her from the kind of chill that didn't come from the wind.
Behind her, through the half-open doors, the house was quiet. Cassian's study light still glowed faintly — a small, stubborn promise that he was near, even when he wasn't.
Selene leaned her chin against her knees and closed her eyes.
There were so many things she could say.
So many things she had swallowed instead.
Words that once came easily between them now sat heavy at the back of her throat, too delicate, too dangerous.
Because once you name a silence, you give it weight.
Once you say it out loud, you can't take it back.
Maybe that was why she stayed quiet — because pretending was easier than admitting how lost she sometimes felt, even beside the man she had chosen.
A low ache pulsed somewhere in her chest, slow and familiar.
It wasn't anger.
It wasn't sadness.
It was something harder to name — a soft mourning for something that hadn't fully disappeared but no longer felt whole.
Selene opened her eyes and let her gaze drift upward, tracing the invisible lines where stars should have been.
She wondered if Cassian felt it too — the shifting, the hollowing out.
She wondered if he missed her the way she missed him, even when he was only a few steps away.
The faint creak of the balcony door shifting made Selene stiffen, just slightly.
She didn't turn.
She didn't have to.
She felt him — the way the air shifted when he stepped closer, the careful way he moved, like he was afraid to startle whatever delicate thing stretched between them.
For a moment, he just stood there.
A silhouette against the soft spill of light from inside.
Neither of them said a word.
Selene kept her chin tucked against her knees, her face turned toward the sky, pretending she hadn't noticed, pretending it didn't matter. But her heart — traitorous thing — thrummed with an ache she had no name for.
Cassian's footsteps were slow when he approached, a careful kind of nearness. Not close enough to touch. Not close enough to break anything.
Just... there.
She could feel his gaze on her — heavy, searching, almost apologetic.
She didn't look at him.
Couldn't.
Because if she did, she might unravel.
Instead, she shifted slightly, the barest movement, enough to let him know —
You can stay.
And so he did.
Cassian lowered himself wordlessly onto the chair a few feet away, his posture tense but trying. The distance between them wasn't much — two chairs, a few heartbeats, a thousand unsaid things.
For a while, they just sat there, breathing the same night air, looking out at the same empty sky, hearts breaking in the quietest ways.
Selene closed her eyes again.
Not because she was tired.
But because it hurt less to feel him beside her when she wasn't trying to meet the sadness in his eyes.
Some silences are built like homes —
others like graves.
And sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference.
Maybe once, a long time ago, this kind of silence had been comfort.
A quiet place where words weren't needed because everything was understood without them.
But now... it felt different.
Thinner.
More fragile.
Like if she breathed too loudly, it would all fall apart.
Selene kept her arms around her knees, grounding herself in the smallest ways she knew how.
Not because she didn't want to reach for him.
Not because she didn't miss the way it used to be.
But because she was afraid.
Afraid that if she turned and found him looking back at her with the same tired distance she already felt inside herself, she would never be able to piece herself back together.
So she stayed still.
So he stayed quiet.
And between them, the night stretched on — soft and endless, holding two people who once knew how to love each other in all the ways that mattered, and now didn't know how to find their way back.
Selene opened her eyes again, slowly, staring into the heavy dark.
The room around her — their room — was filled with familiar things: the faint smell of his cologne clinging to the sheets, the worn edges of the books they'd once shared, the quiet hum of the city just beyond the window.
It was all here.
And yet none of it felt like enough to bridge the space between her and the man sleeping just an arm's reach away.
It was a strange kind of loneliness, she thought — the kind you could only feel when you were still tethered to someone, and the thread between you was fraying faster than either of you dared admit.
Maybe love didn't disappear all at once.
Maybe it slipped away slowly, in the nights you stopped touching, in the words you swallowed down, in the silences you pretended not to notice.
Maybe it was happening to them now.
Maybe it had been happening for a long time.
And somewhere deep inside her chest, a small truth bloomed — quiet and aching:
Some distances aren't made by leaving.
Some distances are made by staying.
She closed her eyes against the ache, pulling the covers higher around her shoulders as if it could shield her from the growing space she could no longer name, but felt everywhere.
She didn't move closer.
And neither did he.
And the night went on, steady and unbroken — a quiet witness to the things they were losing, piece by fragile piece.