The Man I Didn’t Know

John reached out to comfort me, but I stepped back, my body rejecting the touch I had once found so reassuring. “Don’t,” I whispered, my voice trembling under the weight of betrayal. The man I thought I knew had been keeping a devastating secret, and now everything felt different.

The life we’d built together seemed sullied, as if it rested on a foundation I could no longer trust. My chest ached with the weight of it all, but his presence only deepened my confusion. I needed space, room to breathe, to think, to feel something other than this suffocating pain. Turning away, I searched for clarity in a storm of emotions.