Believing it was Over

There is a particular kind of hope that arrives after devastation, quieter than the hope you had before, and far more expensive.

He said it was over. He said he had chosen me. I wanted, more than I have ever wanted anything, to believe him completely, the way I had before any of this happened, without the small, watchful part of me that now checked his phone, noticed which direction he was facing when he answered a call, catalogued the hours unaccounted for.