"How do we stop?"
"By choosing differently." She reached out and took my hand, the trembling one, the one I always tried to hide. She heldit firmly, not trying to still the tremor, just accepting it as part of me. "By me refusing to walk away just because you're scared. By you refusing to push me away just because you're trying to control an outcome you can't actually control."
I looked at our joined hands. Her fingers were warm and steady against my perpetual tremor.
"I'm still scared," I admitted, the words coming out rough and broken. "For you. For us. For the future."
"I know." Her thumb traced across my knuckles. "So am I."
"It could get really hard."
"I know."
"I might…" The words caught in my throat. "I might forget. Forget you. Forget us."
Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn't look away. "Then I'll remember for both of us. I'll tell you our story every day if I have to. I'll remind you that you loved me and I loved you and we chose each other even when it was terrifying."
"That's—" My voice broke. "You can't promise that."
"I can promise to try." She squeezed my hand. "That's all any of us can do. Try. Show up. Choose each other, over and over, even when it's hard." She lifted our joined hands, pressing her lips to my knuckles briefly. "I don't want safe, Miles. Safe was empty. Safe was lonely."
She looked at me, seeing every broken, terrified, trembling part of me.
"I want you."
Three words. They demolished the last of my defenses. They weren't a naïve promise of a cure, weren't a romantic denial of reality. They were an acceptance. A voluntary choice.
I want you.The man with the tremor. The man with the failing memory. The man who was scared.
"Okay," I breathed, a surrender to her, but a commitment also.
"Okay?"
"Okay." I turned my hand over beneath hers, lacing our fingers together. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to let someone in. I've spent fifteen years building walls, and you just," I shook my head. "You knocked them down in two weeks."
"I'm very determined."
"You're terrifying."
"That’s accurate." She smiled, and it was like watching the sun come out. "But you're worth it. I need you to believe that."
"I'm working on it."
"Work faster."
I laughed, a rusty sound that felt foreign in my throat. "Has anyone ever told you you're extremely bossy?"
"Frequently. It's one of my best qualities."
I leaned toward her then, slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn't. She met me halfway, her free hand coming up to rest against my jaw.
The kiss was nothing like our first kiss under this same tree fifteen years ago. That had been youthful fire and discovery and the certainty that we had all the time in the world.
This was something else entirely, soft and slow and tasting like tears. It was an apology and an acceptance. A goodbye to the past and a terrifying, hopeful hello to a future we'd have to build together.
When we finally pulled apart, our foreheads resting together, the world felt both more fragile and realer than it ever had.
"So what now?" I asked, my voice rough.
