The Room Beneath Her Skin

Verlaín-

“You didn’t burn it, Léa. You buried it.”

Her breath hitched.... a betrayal of silence. Her eyes didn’t widen, but her fingers curled ever so slightly, nails digging into her palm. It was small. A flinch meant for no one. But I saw it. And I didn’t let her lie again.

I stepped closer.

“You buried it, and then you forgot where.”

She didn’t move. Not back, not forward. Not away. Only her jaw tightened .... a silent rebellion I almost admired.

“There’s something you’re hiding,” I said, my voice almost tender. Almost. “In this house, in your body, in the way you kiss like you’ve lost something.”

Still, she didn’t speak.

“Let me find it,” I whispered.

That broke her.

She turned to me.... quick, sharp, with the look of someone ready to wound or be wounded. But she didn’t speak. She stepped forward and pulled my shirt over my head like she was peeling off my hesitation. Then hers.... discarded in silence. We were bare before meaning could catch up.

It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t desperation. It was excavation.

She pushed me onto the floor.... not hard, not rough.... just enough to make gravity choose for us. The wooden boards beneath my back were cold, but her body followed, and I didn’t care. She hovered over me, not with hunger, but with memory. Like she had kissed me here before. Killed me here before.

“Say it again,” she whispered, her voice low, wrecked.

“You buried it.”

“No,” she shook her head. “The way you said it.”

“You didn’t burn it, Léa. You buried it.”

Something in her broke open. Or tried to. Her mouth found mine.... but it wasn’t a kiss, not really. It was a question. A wound. She tasted like truth she never wanted to speak. Her body pressed against mine like she wanted to climb inside me and scream.

“I lied,” she said between breaths. “When I said I didn’t read it. I did. All of it.”

The journal. My chest clenched.

“What did you see?”

She pulled back just enough to look down at me.

“Her name.”

I stopped breathing.

“Solène,” she said, like it hurt to say. Like it tasted like ash. “The one you wrote to. Page after page after page.”

My mouth dried. “That was before you.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”

Silence stretched, burned, split.

“She was me, wasn’t she?” Léa asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know who she was. I just know… I was trying to remember her by writing, and then I met you. And you were louder. Brighter. Like she never existed.”

“But she did.”

“I think so.”

Léa moved off of me slowly. Stood. Walked to the corner of the room where the floorboard creaked. I watched her kneel. I didn’t move. Not until she lifted the edge of the rug and dug her nails into the wood, pulling up one plank with a sharp, familiar crack.

And there it was.

A box. Black. Locked. Old. She didn’t look at me when she spoke.

“I found it months ago. The day after we met again. I knew it was yours. I told myself it didn’t matter.”

She looked up now, and her eyes were wet with something ancient. Not grief. Not even guilt. Something more dangerous.

“I read every page. Every one. And the worst part, Verlaín?”

“What?”

“I think I wrote some of them.”

I rose to my feet. Slowly. Carefully.

“What do you mean?”

She opened the box.

Inside the box there were letters. Photos. Pages that looked like my handwriting. Others that looked eerily like hers.

“Did we… know each other before?” I asked. She nodded. “I think we were in love before we knew how.”