He became careful with his thoughts the way others were careful with their words.
Some ideas, he learned, needed polishing before they could be accepted. They arrived rough and unsettling, carrying implications he wasn't ready to face. So he refined them. Softened their edges. Gave them better names.
Concern. Loyalty. Constancy.
Those words felt safer than what lurked beneath them.
He began to measure his days by proximity—by how close he was to her presence, even when they didn't speak. Sharing the same space felt like an achievement, a private alignment the rest of the world was too careless to notice. He told himself that closeness didn't require permission if it wasn't intrusive.
And he was never intrusive. Not outwardly.
He listened more than he spoke. He positioned himself where he could see without being seen. When their paths crossed, his expressions were neutral, appropriate. Calm. No one would ever accuse him of crossing a line—because he made sure the line stayed invisible.
That was the trick.
Inside his mind, the narrative grew more elaborate. He explained his fixation as responsibility. Someone had to look out for her. Someone had to notice when she was tired, when her smile didn't reach her eyes, when the world demanded too much and gave too little back.
Other people missed those things. He didn't.
The thought brought a quiet pride that unsettled him only briefly before he accepted it. Pride, after all, came from purpose—and purpose gave meaning to restraint. He wasn't acting because he didn't need to. Control proved his devotion was real.
Yet control required effort.
On the days she seemed distant, his thoughts tightened, circling explanations until one finally satisfied him. She was overwhelmed. Misunderstood. Surrounded by people who didn't truly see her. The idea irritated him—not because he wanted exclusivity, he told himself, but because negligence offended him.
How could they not notice?
He imagined conversations they might have had without him present and felt a faint, unwelcome surge of resentment. He corrected it immediately, reminding himself that she was free, that she owed him nothing.
Still, the resentment didn't disappear. It simply learned to wait.
He started to believe that patience itself was a virtue only he possessed. That waiting—enduring—proved the depth of his feeling. Anyone could be loud. Anyone could demand attention. What he offered was quieter, heavier, more permanent.
That belief settled into him like a promise.
Late one evening, as he replayed the day in his mind, he caught himself thinking not about what was, but about what should be. Where she should have been. Who she should have spoken to. How things would have gone if the world had arranged itself more thoughtfully.
If it had arranged itself around him.
The realization paused him.
For a moment—just a moment—he wondered when concern had turned into expectation. When care had begun to feel like authority. The question hovered, fragile and dangerous.
Then he dismissed it.
Every story needed a center. Every life needed someone steady enough to hold it together. If he imagined himself in that role, it wasn't arrogance—it was inevitability.
And inevitability, once accepted, no longer felt like a choice.
It felt like truth.