I stand outside Tristan's apartment with a bottle of wine and a decision I have been avoiding for six months.
Tonight. I will do it tonight.
I will let him past the invisible line I have drawn around my body, and I will prove that I am not broken, and everything will be fine. Normal. The way it is supposed to be.
The door is unlocked and I push it open, already rehearsing the words — I'm ready, I want this, I want you.
The apartment is dim and music plays softly from somewhere deeper inside when I hear it. A moan, low and breathless, and unmistakably female.
And beneath it, Tristan's voice murmuring something I cannot make out.
My body understands before my mind catches up. My feet carry me down the hallway, past the kitchen, toward the bedroom door that stands slightly ajar. I push it open.
Tristan is on the bed. On top of someone.
His back is bare, muscles shifting, hips moving in a rhythm I have never let him find with me. The girl beneath him has blonde hair spread across his pillow, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, her nails raking down his spine.
I might make some sound because he looks up in that exact second.
For one frozen moment, we stare at each other. Then chaos.
He scrambles off the bed, grabbing for his boxers while the girl snatches her clothes and pushes past me without a word. Eyes down, face flushed with shame that should belong to him.
I stand in the doorway, the wine bottle I forgot to put down is still in my hand.
Watching my boyfriend after he fucked someone else.
"Nora." Tristan's voice is rough, caught somewhere between guilt and irritation. "Let me explain."
"Explain what? That you cheated on me?"
"This isn't…" He runs a hand through his hair, and I notice the scratch marks on his shoulder, fresh and red. "You don't understand."
"Oh, I understand perfectly."
"No, you don't." His jaw tightens. The guilt in his face twists into something vicious. "Six months, Nora. Six fucking months and you won't even let me touch you."
I blink. "What?"
"What do you mean 'what'?" He laughs — sharp, ugly. "Do you have any idea what that does to a man? Being rejected by his own girlfriend every single goddamn night?"
He steps toward me. I step back.
"I've been patient. I've been so fucking patient with you." His voice rises, cracking with fury. "And for what? You just lie there like a corpse. You flinch when I reach for you. You hold yourself like some untouchable prize, but guess what, Nora — you're not worth the wait."
The words hit like fists. Each one landing somewhere soft.
"You're frigid," he spits. "You're broken. Something is seriously wrong with you."
He's pacing now, hands raking through his hair.
"I have needs. I'm a man, not a fucking monk. And you — you'd rather spend your nights in that stupid game than touch me. That headset gets more of you than I ever did." He stops, staring at me with disgust. "Maybe she actually knows how to make a man feel wanted."
I cannot speak, like my throat has closed around something sharp.
The worst part is that he is not entirely wrong.
I have been absent. I have been withholding. I have been protecting something I do not even understand, giving pieces of myself to a voice in the dark while the man in front of me got nothing but walls.
But that does not make this my fault. That does not make his body inside someone else my failure.
"We're done," I say. My voice is steady. Empty.
"Nora…"
"We're. Done. You can go and continue fucking anyone you want."
I turn and walk out before he can respond. The elevator ride down is silent. My reflection stares back at me from the mirrored walls — pale face, dark eyes, wine bottle still clutched in white-knuckled fingers.
I look like a woman who just watched her life rearrange itself into a shape she does not recognize. But my hands do not shake until I reach my car.
I drive home on autopilot. Park in my usual spot. Climb the stairs. Unlock my door. The silence wraps around me, and I sink onto my bed in the dark, still wearing my coat, still holding the wine.
I do not call Maren. I do not cry. Something burns inside me instead.
And it’s not grief. It’s rage.
Rage at Tristan for being right about the wrong things. Rage at myself for being broken in ways I cannot fix. Rage at every rule I followed, every expectation I met, every piece of myself I gave away to people who never deserved it.
Frigid. Broken.
The words still echo in the dark when I set down the wine and reach for my VR headset.
Echo loads around me, familiar and safe. Ghost is already there, waiting in our usual spot by the stone bridge. One look at him — at the avatar that has become more real to me than most people in my life — and something in my chest splinters.
"Hey," he says, warm and easy as always. "Ready for tonight's quest?"
I hesitate. The Love Room pulses at the edge of my awareness.
I have never been there. Never even considered it. It is where strangers go to lose themselves, to find something they cannot find in real life.
"Not tonight," I say. "I have other plans."
Ghost pauses. "Other plans? In here?"
"Something I need to do alone."
"Siren—"
"I'll see you tomorrow." I log out of the Quest Lands before he can ask more questions.
The Love Room loads differently than anywhere else in Echo.
The darkness swallows me whole. Thick, warm, like sinking into velvet. Ambient light pulses slow and deep — the rhythm of a heartbeat, the rhythm of breath, the rhythm of bodies moving together in the dark.
The air itself feels different here. Heavy. Charged. Like the space knows why people come and is already responding.
No walls I can see. No floor I can feel. Just endless warmth wrapping around my skin, pressing close, intimate. The game strips everything away — pretense, identity, shame. Here, I am not Nora with her family name and her frozen body. I am just want. Just need. Just a woman standing at the edge of something she has never let herself have.
The promise of anonymity hangs in the air like perfume.
No one will know. No one will judge. Whatever happens here stays buried in the dark.
My pulse pounds between my thighs before anyone even touches me.
I wait until the darkness shifts and a figure materializes in front of me. Tall and broad-shouldered, face obscured by the room's design. I cannot see him. I can only feel his presence, the weight of another person in this space meant for two.
"Are you sure you want to be here?"
His voice is modulated, anonymous. But something in the cadence makes my breath catch. Something familiar I cannot place. "I'm sure," I lie.
He moves closer, close enough that I can hear him breathing through the headset. Close enough that the space between us feels charged, electric, dangerous.
"Do you want me to be here with you?"
The question lands in my chest and stays there.
Too careful. Too intentional. Too much like someone who knows me, who followed me, who refused to let me drown alone.
"Ghost?" I whisper.
A pause as the darkness hums around us. "Thought you shouldn't come here alone."
My chest cracks open. Fury and relief flood through me in equal measure, tangled together until I cannot tell which is which.
He followed me. He found me here, in the place where strangers come to lose themselves. "You went for me…"
"You said you had other plans." His voice is soft and unapologetic. "I got worried."
"So you stalked me into the Love Room?"
"I needed to know you were okay."
I should be angry. I should leave. Instead I stand there trembling, realizing the truth I have been avoiding for weeks. Even here — trying to give myself to a stranger — I found my way back to him.
The darkness pulses around us making me decide.
"Ghost." My voice breaks. "Show me what I've been missing."
