Rob’s eyes could see little more than the blurred abstraction of the morning haze. The bright lights shining down on him from the windows was so much to take in. And in this moment as he tried to come back to reality, he wasn’t sure if it had been hours or days or even weeks since last he had spoken to Jane.

She permeated his mind even still. In this first moment of waking up, even now, she entered into his thoughts. And as his vision corrected to morning night, as he saw her small form across from him in the chair beside the bed, he was unsure if she was more than an abstraction. If any of this was still truly happening.

She spoke with a deep hesitance in her voice. She seemed to croak with the voice she held after long shows, or soon after she had woken up and said her first words to him in the morning. Rob blinked a few times to try and clear the last of the haze from his mind. What was happening to him? How could everything he ever felt and believed about Jane these past few weeks fade so fast? Why was he feeling so desperate for her again? 

His thoughts and his logic failed him again, and he felt, for once in his life, simply in the moment with the woman in front of him. 

She confessed her pregnancy next. Something Rob couldn’t truly process as it struck him. The concept of a life within Jane in this moment made so little sense. He would feel so cruel bringing new life into their torn little lives. But the emotions he was feeling in this moment couldn’t be described has he had done so many times before. He couldn’t find a way to process Jane as she spoke as he normally had in the past. 

In fact, it had felt like they had become anagrams of each other. Jane was here, acting against her common code—trying desperately to show care through her words. And here was Rob opposite her, simply wanting to hold her. To pull her in close in bed and intertwine their bodies. To make her happy. 

And as she admitted her love again, Rob could feel little more than regret for all the pain that had been caused between them. All of the struggles they faced after his rooftop confession. The ephemeral moment they shared as a couple soon afterwards. The complications of so many other variables, the press, the European Tour, Vicarious…the sum total of their tour. His epiphany that he had loved her had fallen so subtly by the wayside in such recent times. And he had tried so recently to fix them—oh had he tried—and in this trying, he had done nothing but push them apart. Push Jane away. 

“Jane,” he said, speaking for the first time in the new day. There were a lifetime of words he could say in this moment. Eloquent speeches about how sorry he could be. Long digressions about everything that had come before and everything that could be. 

But none of it could ever be necessary in this moment. 

“Jane,” he said again, with just a shade of more confidence. He climbed out of the bed and approached her. 

She had done what he would have. She had spoken to him in his own language. Now it was his turn to speak hers. 

He approached carefully and brushed the hair from her eyes. He pulled her in close and gently pressed his lips into hers. He felt overcome in this moment. And for several seconds, not a single thought passed through his mind. Just feeling her in this moment. The touch. The taste. The sound. 

He pulled away—conscious of how forward he had been.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shrinking back just a bit. He perched himself close to her, on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know how for a second, but…I lost myself.”

He could think of little else to say, so he reached his hand out and took hers within it. He rubbed gently at them—-her soft skin against his cracked hands. 

“I pushed you away,” he admitted to himself. “I don’t have the right to ask for you back. And I’m probably confusing you by seemingly changing my mind so quickly. I think, even when I said we should break I tried to phrase it some other way. A part of me knew I couldn’t just walk away from this. And I don’t want to.”

He stopped for a moment, looking down. 

“I thought because I loved you we needed distance. And maybe we’re supposed to. Maybe that would be the smart choice. But honestly, Jane, fuck it. I just want you.”

His eyes lifted back to hers. 

“I don’t want what’s smart or what makes sense. I miss just holding you and knowing that no matter what was happening away from us, it was going to be okay.”