When I was seven, my father left.
No fights.
No screaming.
Just his car gone from the driveway one morning and his voice gone from the dinner table.
My mother didn't cry.
She poured herself coffee like nothing was missing.
Started locking the doors earlier.
Started speaking less.
I learned early that silence was survival.
That feelings were heavy, and people left when they got tired of carrying them.
We never said "I love you" in my house.
Not once.
Not when I came home with straight As.
Not when I played piano at the school showcase.
Not even when I got sick and she stayed up all night beside me.
She showed it, I guess.
In ways that didn't look like love more like routine.
Rice cooked. Laundry folded.
A hand on my forehead. A blanket pulled tighter.
But never the words.
So I learned to lock myself in too.
Cool. Calm. Unshakable.
It made me a little famous at school untouchable Kellie, the girl with the sharp tongue and sharper eyeliner.
But it made me lonely too.
Until Rose.
It didn't happen all at once.
She'd always been there the elegant girl with the black hair and soft laugh, the only one who could get me to show up to group projects or linger in the hallway between bells.
But then came that day.
We were thirteen.
Walking home in the rain, just one umbrella between us.
She kept trying to angle it toward me, even though her left shoulder was soaked through.
"You're gonna catch cold," I said.
She laughed. "Then I'll just let you take care of me."
It was such a dumb, simple thing.
But it made my heart stutter.
That night, I stared at my bedroom ceiling and said it out loud, just once.
"I think I love her."
No one was listening.
But it still felt dangerous.
Like the room might explode just for hearing it.
I didn't say it again for years.
Not until she kissed me at the seaside.
Not until she looked at me like I wasn't hard to hold.
I've never told her about my father.
Never told her about how my mother flinches when anyone raises their voice.
How I learned to keep love quiet even when it burned inside me.
But I think Rose knows anyway.
Because when I go quiet, she doesn't pull away.
She waits.
She stays.
She lets me unlearn silence at my own pace.
And I think that's the most dangerous, beautiful kind of love there is.