Klaus was curled up in his bed, knees drawn up to his chest, as if trying to make himself disappear.
The room was plunged into darkness.
His shoulders were shaking.
Katrina's words played on a loop in his mind, relentless, cruel in spite of themselves.
"Yes! You're too young for me, Klaus. I'm old enough to be your mother! Those hot nights we spent together... It was a mistake. It should never have happened! We can't see each other anymore. It's wrong! What would people think if they found out that I was dating a boy who was my daughter's age?"
His throat tightened violently.
"No…" he murmured in a broken voice.
As if saying them out loud could make them less true.
But they crushed against his heart again and again, leaving behind a painful void.
Tears rolled down her temples, sinking into the pillow.
He didn't understand.
He loved her.
This feeling was not a mistake. He was sincere, whole, burning.
And yet, to her, he was just a problem. A mistake. Something to erase.
"Why…" he whispered into the silence.
Why should what seemed so true to him be dismissed as something shameful?
He remembered her look, her voice when she spoke softly, the way she looked at him sometimes... as if, for a moment, she forgot everything else.
Then fear took over again.
Fear of judgment.
Fear of others.
Fear of what she really felt.
Klaus clenched the sheets between his fingers, his chest compressed by a dull pain.
"I'm not a mistake…" he breathed, like a prayer.
But even his own words seemed too weak to soothe the hurt.
He stayed there for a long time, crying in silence, with a heavy heart, broken not by a lack of love...
but by a love that we refused to recognize.