*Tristan*

 ‘Wake up, wake up,’  my mind whispers, but I  do not dare say the words out loud. I am not certain I want her to know that I am here, leaning against the bedpost at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep again. While I was away, I had thought of the night before I left, when I had observed her while she lay sleeping. Every night I wanted to be back here, my gaze honed in on her face, the sweet expression of it.

 All the women I have known intimately had been coarse and hard, shaped by life into something impossible to break. She could break....