“Five years ago, you walked away from me. And I let you. I didn’t chase you. Didn’t fight. Didn’t show up at your door demanding you hear me out.” His voice is quiet, but there’s steel underneath. “I told myself I was being respectful. Giving you space. But the truth is, I was scared. Scared of what fighting for you would cost me.”
My throat feels tight. “Corin—”
“Every time you run now, it’s a test,” he continues, his dark eyes holding mine. “You’re asking: Will he let me go again? Will he choose the easy path? Will he prove that I’m not worth the inconvenience of staying?”
Oh.
Oh god.
Is that what I’ve been doing?
I kept my villa reservation even after sleeping in his bed. I never fully unpacked my suitcase. Never fully opened up to him. All those little escape hatches I built into this relationship, telling myself it was self-preservation when really—
I was just waiting for him to fail the test.
“That’s...” I swallow hard. “That’s deeply unfair to you.”
“Maybe.” He smiles slightly. “But I understand it. Because I’ve been doing the same thing, just differently. Every time Imake a donation or launch a transparency program instead of just saying ‘I was wrong and I’m sorry,’ I’m testing whether I can buy redemption without actually having to be vulnerable.”
Nice.
We’re a matching set of emotionally complicated disasters.
How romantic.
“Also, it helps that you gave me the solution to your test ahead of time,” he adds.
I frown. “Did I?”
“During the tropical storm when we were holed up in that storage room,” he explains. “You asked me point-blank: ‘Why didn’t I fight for us?’ Why didn’t Ifight.”
Oh my god.
He’s right.
I literally handed him the answer key and then spent the next few weeks setting up elaborate scenarios to see if he’d studied.
God, what an emotional mess I am.
“So what do we do?” I ask, and I hate how small my voice sounds. “How do we stop doing this to each other? How do we stoptestingeach other?”
His hands frame my face, gentle but certain. “We stay. Even when it’s hard. Even when every instinct says run. We stay and we figure it out together. And I know, we’ve said this before. We’ve said it and started to run anyway. But this time, there’s no going back. It’s final. We mean it for real this time. We stay with each other, no matter what comes.”
I stare at him, speechless for a moment.
For real this time.
“I’m in love with you,” I hear myself say, and immediately want to take it back because that’s not something you just blurt out in the middle of a crisis when you’re both barely holding it together and—
“Good,” Corin says, cutting off my internal spiral. “Because I’m in love with you, too.”
I burst into tears again.
“We’re going to be terrible at this,” I tell him, and laugh through the tears.
“Probably.” He kisses me softly. “But at least we’ll be terrible at it together.”
I laugh again. “That’s the worst romantic declaration I’ve ever heard.”
