Secrets

He turned to look at her.

Her eyes closed and soft with sleep, hair flattened beneath her cheek on the pillow. Her fingers curled and pressed against her face, surely a comfort embedded over years of having nothing else to wrap them around.

Maybe this was the first time he was truly seeing her. Seeing her for who she really was and not the façade she so effortlessly carried during the day. That thought made him sad. How many people know that she sleeps with her mouth just slightly open? Or that she sometimes forgets to remove the day’s makeup before bed and it gives her eyes an added darkness below them as the night carries on?

Small things that seem irrevocably insignificant and yet now as the sun was just starting to rise, though his eyes had not shut once, appeared to be the most important. The secrets that maybe she herself didn’t know. Intrusive. A sudden wave of regret washed over him for deciding to stay the night, taking away the last of her secrets with it.

So he did the one thing he said he would never do. The one thing that could hurt the strong woman beside him any further, but also maybe the one thing that could save her.

He left.