The weight of that settled over both of them. Morgan watched Lincoln’s expression carefully, saw the way his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the way his hands stilled on his knees.
He was running calculations. She knew this version of him by now—the version that processed difficult variables by going silent, by withdrawing into the architecture of his own mind. He was preparing himself. For whatever she chose. For the possibility that she’d thank him for everything and walk away from the compound that had started to feel like home.
He wasn’t going to ask her to stay.
The understanding hit her like cold water. He would let her leave. Would watch her drive away and tell himself it was the right thing to do, that her choices shouldn’t be influenced by his wants, that loving someone meant giving them room to choose.
He would break his own heart trying to do the noble thing.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
Lincoln blinked. “Doing what?”
“Calculating all the variables, deciding the optimal outcome, and not telling me what you actually want because you think your wants shouldn’t influence my decision.”
He didn’t deny it. Just watched her with those eyes that had learned to read code before they’d learned to read people.
“Lincoln.” She shifted forward on the couch, closing the distance between them. “What do you want?”
The silence stretched. She could see him fighting it—see the war between the part of him that wanted to answer and the part that had spent thirty years learning to keep his needs small and manageable.
“That’s not relevant to?—”
“It’s relevant to me.”
Something cracked in his expression. He took a breath that seemed to pull from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Stay.”
The word came out like it cost him something. Like he’d reached into his own chest and pulled out his heart, still beating.
Morgan waited. Let the silence tell him she needed more.
“I want you to stay. With me.” His voice had gone uneven, words coming in fragments like he was assembling them from spare parts. “Not because you’re hiding. Not because it’s safe. Not because you have nowhere else to go.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want you to.” He said it like a confession. Like admitting it out loud might make it disappear. “Because this house was always too big and too quiet, and I never knew that until you were in it. Because I’ve spent my whole life building systems to make up for the parts of me that don’t work right, and you’re the first person who’s ever made me feel like those parts aren’t defective. They’re just—” He stopped. Swallowed. “They’re just how I’m built. And that’s okay with you. I don’t know why that’s okay with you, but it is, and I can’t?—”
His voice broke. Actually broke, the way voices did in moments that exceeded their capacity.
“I can’t go back to who I was before you,” he said. “I don’t want to.”
He met her eyes then, and what she saw there made her forget how to breathe. All his careful defenses stripped away. Every wall he’d built dismantled. Just Lincoln, raw and terrified and asking for something he didn’t believe he deserved.
“Stay,” he said again. “Please.”
Morgan could have answered immediately. Could have thrown herself at him and kissed away the uncertainty written across his face. Part of her wanted to—the part that had spent her whole life reaching for belonging and finding empty air.
But she needed him to understand something first.
“I’m still going to be a lot.” Her voice came out steadier than she expected. “My memory isn’t going anywhere. I’m still going to remember every conversation we have. Every argument. Every time you leave the toilet seat up. I’m still going to make people uncomfortable at parties. I’m still going to reorganize things that don’t need reorganizing.”
“You already reorganized my bookshelves.”
“Chronologically. By publication date.” A wet laugh escaped her. “And you haven’t complained once.”
“Because you were right. The system is better.”
