I hate the way she looks at me because there’s nothing I love more. I’ve told myself a thousand times I’d leave, run into the sunset and never look back.
But when she smiles, the sun pours through her, beckoning me. But I’ve made up my mind, I’ll leave.
All it takes is one word to change my mind. “Micayla,” she whispers, “you should stay the night.”
She pushes me down, holds me in place. I want to ask her for a reason. I’m not the one she wants, but I can’t get out of her web.
She leans over, and the bed squeaks under our weight. Bracing all of me in the way I want her to brace me instead.
Hold me, I want to whisper. Hold me until the sun breaks the horizon and hides again. My lips quiver, my determination broken as her fingers brush my cheek.
“Stay.”
So I stay because I don’t need a reason to.
✍️ Author’s Note
I wrote this thinking about how some connections unravel us even when we know better. The push and pull between what we tell ourselves and what our bodies want.
📖 Behind the Story
This is a story about a trans man caught in a relationship that only exists in the shadows—wanted physically but not claimed, desired but not loved in daylight. There’s a specific kind of pain in being someone’s secret, in knowing you’re enough for their bed but not their life. The protagonist keeps telling himself he’ll leave, but when she says “stay,” his resolve crumbles. Not because the relationship is good, but because wanting to be wanted is a powerful, sometimes destructive thing.
I wanted to capture that moment of surrender—not to love, but to the illusion of it. The way we sometimes choose the connection we can get over the solitude we deserve.
The line “Hold me until the sun breaks the horizon and hides again” took forever to get right. I tried “until morning comes” first, but it felt too simple. Then “until dawn breaks and retreats”—too flowery. The final version keeps the contradiction: the sun breaks (violence, rupture) but also hides (retreat, concealment). Matches the hot-and-cold dynamic of the whole piece.
I also played with the verb “brace.” Originally wrote “holding all of me the way I want her to hold me instead,” but “brace” does more work—it’s structural, supportive, but also preparation for impact. Fits the gender stuff too, the embodiment piece.
Word count was tight at 161. Cut an entire paragraph about them meeting at a bar because it slowed the urgency. The story needed to feel like it was already mid-motion, already caught.
Technically, I avoided naming who’s who until “Micayla”—wanted that ambiguity about power and who’s really in control here. She initiates physically but the narrator’s inner voice dominates the space. That tension matters.
💭 A Question for You
Have you ever stayed somewhere you knew you shouldn’t, just because leaving felt impossible in that moment?
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