We slept in the same bed for ten years without ever touching each other. Everyone else thought our marriage was over, but the truth hurt more. Some wounds can be reopened with just a touch.

It was not an embrace. Not a grand gesture. Just an awkward, trembling brush—like two teenagers learning how to exist together. But in that touch, there was something sacred: permission.

She closed her eyes. She did not cry. She had wept enough in silence. This time, she let the warmth of another hand remind her she was still alive, still a wife, still a woman, still a person.

He intertwined his fingers with hers. Her hand felt smaller than he remembered. Or perhaps it had always been that way, and he had never dared to notice.

“Forgive me,” he whispered.

“I already did,” she replied. “But now I need you to forgive yourself.”

The dawn moved forward gently. No more words were needed. They did not make love. They didn’t need to. Sometimes healing begins simply by staying.

When sunlight crept through the window, it found them asleep, still holding hands. The room had not changed. The bed was the same. But the invisible space between them had disappeared.

The days that followed were not magical. There were uneasy silences, memories that returned without warning, nights when fear tried to reclaim its place. But now, when that happened, one of them would reach out. And the other would take the hand.

She began to sleep more deeply. He stopped waking in panic at three in the morning. They resumed small rituals: hot coffee shared, bread broken in two, afternoons spent in quiet without retreating from each other.