I step carefully around the puddle."Neither, ideally.”
Karina stands frozen, garden trowel clutched like a weapon, her expression cycling through shock, hope, and wariness.
There's soil smudged across one cheek and her ancient t-shirt bears the faded logo of a laundromat.
Nothing like the polished professional I've worked with for months.
She's never looked more beautiful.
"I saw your tweets," I say when it becomes clear she won't speak first.
"All twenty-five of them?"she asks, voice small but steady.
"Every damn word," I answer, taking a slow step toward her."Including the last one."
Dr.Finnegan clears his throat with all the subtlety of a freight train."I believe I hear your mother calling me," he announces, disappearing inside with surprising speed for a man in orthopedic loafers.
We’re alone now.No one left but the battered tangle of our history, and the wreckage of everything I should have said sooner.
Karina clutches her garden trowel like a weapon, standing there barefoot and stubborn in her dirt-smeared jeans, the faintest smudge across one cheek.She’s never looked more beautiful to me—raw, real, incandescently human.
"I'm sorry," we blurt at the same time.
"You first," I say gently, not moving closer yet.She looks like a cornered animal, and I’ll be damned if I scare her now.
She sets the trowel down with deliberate care."I'm sorry I lied," she says, voice breaking on the word."I'm sorry I didn’t trust you enough to tell you the truth when it mattered most.But I'm not sorry for surviving the only way I knew how.And I'm not sorry for being exactly who I am—dirt under my nails, screwups and stubbornness and all."
"You shouldn't be," I say, and this time Idostep closer, needing to see her face more clearly.Needing her to see mine.
"I owe you an apology," I say, voice low, raw."For holding you to some impossible, polished ideal that no human being could ever meet.For not seeing, from the very beginning, that the woman in front of me—the woman with fire in her blood and dirt on her hands—is already so far beyond perfect, it makes me fucking ache."
She blinks up at me, stunned, and I realize I'm not done.
"I should have seen you," I rasp."Really seen you.The way you took care of your family.The way you fought for your career with nothing but stubbornness and brilliance when the world told you you weren't good enough.The way you stayed when anyone else would have walked away."My throat tightens painfully."I saw it.I just didn'tletmyself see it until it was almost too late."
Her eyes fill, shining like polished amber.
"And I have been an idiot," I add roughly."An arrogant, stubborn, terrified idiot."
She lets out a shaky laugh."At least you're consistent."
"Consistently in love with you, yes."
She freezes.Staring.Breath catching like I've knocked the wind out of her.
"I love you," I say again, surer this time.The words rip out of me, unstoppable."Not the polished version you thought you had to be.Not the one hiding behind degrees and resumes.You, Karina.The woman who drives three hours for the right doughnuts, who calls cucumbers by Armenian names, who curses like a sailor when she thinks no one's listening."
Her lips part, but no sound comes out.
"And if you let me," I go on, voice thick with the weight of all the things I've never said aloud, "I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you just how fiercely, how completely, I love every goddamn inch of you."
A shaky breath escapes her."You...you’re serious?"
"Deadly."I reach out, cradling her dirt-smudged face in my hands like she’s made of something infinitely precious."I want every messy, brilliant, infuriating part of you.I don't want perfect.I wantreal.I wantyou."
The front yard around us seems to fade—neighbors peeking, phones raised, the whole absurd circus of our public life—and there's only her.The only home I’ve ever needed.
Tears spill over her lashes as she surges into my arms, nearly knocking me off my feet.
