“You think I don’t feel it?” I murmur.
“Then why are you fighting it?”
“Because I’m thirty-seven,” I say. “Because I’ve buried a wife. Because I have a daughter who deserves stability. Because if I let myself need you and it goes wrong?—”
She steps closer.
“It won’t,” she says.
“You can’t promise that.”
“No,” she agrees. “But you can’t promise it will either.”
My hands curl at my sides.
“You think this is easy for me?” I ask. “You think I enjoy lying awake knowing you’re down the hall?”
Her breath stutters.
“That’s not fair,” she whispers.
“Fair?” I step closer. “You walk around in my house wearing my clothes. Laughing with my kid. Looking at me like I’m more than a widower who survived something he wasn’t supposed to.”
“You are more than that.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Then make me get it.”
That challenge ignites something dangerous. I reach for her. Not gentle. Not rough. Just decisive.
My hands settle on her hips. She inhales sharply.
“You want honesty?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“I love my wife,” I say. “I always will. That doesn’t change.”
“I don’t want it to.”
The steadiness in her voice shakes me more than tears would have.
“And I want you,” I continue. “In ways that aren’t safe. In ways that make me question every rule I’ve built to survive.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt.
“Then stop surviving,” she whispers. “Start living.”
The porch light hums above us. The wind whispers through the pine boughs around us. I lower my forehead to hers.
“You don’t shrink,” I murmur. “That’s what undoes me.”
She swallows. “I won’t,” she says. “For you or for anyone.”
My grip tightens slightly. “Good.”
Silence. Heavy. Charged. She doesn’t kiss me. She waits.
