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“You care,” he whispers, lips brushing just behind my ear, voice lowered with meaning. “You care too much. That’s why it’s going to hurt.”

I freeze with the spatula mid-air.

“You always this poetic before pancakes?”

He doesn’t answer.

Just holds me tighter — not possessive, not yet, but desperate in a quiet, unspoken way. Like maybe if he holds on hard enough, time will slow down, and the goodbye waiting for us both won’t get any closer.

I pretend not to notice.

Pretend not to hear the truth threaded through his words.

Pretend not to feel my heart cracking with every second of silence.

I flip the pancake and pretend that this is normal. That we are normal. That two people who broke and burned and bled in each other’s arms can stand in a kitchen and joke about breakfast.

But we aren’t a couple.

And the countdown ticks louder every time I look at him.

Thirty days.

No — twenty-six.

Twenty-six mornings left.

If that.

“You okay?” he murmurs, voice soft enough it almost breaks me.

I nod. Then lie. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t call me on it.

Just presses a slow kiss to my neck, lingering, inhaling, like he’s trying to memorise me in case memory is all he gets to keep.

I hate that it makes me want to be memorised.

I slide the pancakes onto a plate with a hand that shakes more than I want to admit.

“Eat,” I say too brightly. Too falsely. Too everything.

He studies me, but sits.

He devours the first bite like he’s starving — like it’s the first real thing he’s tasted in days, like he hasn’t already consumed every part of me that mattered.

“You should open a café,” he says, mouth full. “Call it Butterfly Bakes.”

I snort. “Pretty sure trauma doesn’t make great branding.”

His smile falters. Softens.

“I’d eat there every day.”

My hand freezes mid-pour.

“What?”