I want to argue. But the way he's looking at me, like he's already doing math I don't know how to do, makes the words die.
"I'll figure it out," I say quieter.
"Yeah." He exhales hard. "We will. Move in with me."
I stop. "What?"
"I have a flat. In Reiteralm. It's small, but we'd be together."
"You have a flat?"
"I bought it last year. With my winnings and a loan." He's talking fast now. "My mother said it was stupid to cut eighteen hundred a month out of my earnings, but a flat is a good investment, right?"
"Every month?" The number feels impossible. "For how long?"
"Twenty years."
I stare at him. "You'll still be paying when you're almost forty?"
He huffs a breath, somewhere between a laugh and frustration. "That's how mortgages work, Élise."
Heat crawls up my neck. I know what a mortgage is. I just never imagined what it might be like to pay for something for twenty years.
"Right," I say quietly. "I'm being stupid."
The silence stretches.
"Nico," I whisper. "I don't have a job. I don't have an income. I can't just move in and live off you like some—"
"Like some what? Like someone I love?"
The words stop me cold. He's said it before, in the heat of arguments or tangled in sheets, but never like this. Quiet. Steady. Like a fact he's decided to build his life around.
He leans his forehead against mine.
"You said you have influencer contracts. That's something. And I have my salary, prize money. We'll make it work."
"For how long? Until the season ends? Until you realize I'm dead weight?"
"You're not dead weight."
"I'm a liability."
"I don't know how to fix this." His voice cracks, raw and young and terrified. "But I can't just let you go."
I want to argue. I want to tell him this is a terrible idea, that we're two kids playing house with no plan. That he's offering me his only safe space because he thinks he has to save me, and I'm taking it because I don't know how else to survive.
But I'm so tired of being smart. So tired of calculating every move, every risk, every price.
"Okay," I whisper.
"Okay?"
"Okay. I'll move in. We'll figure it out."
He kisses me then, hard and desperate, like he's trying to seal the decision before either of us can take it back. I kiss him back, tasting salt and fear and something that might be hope if we're both stupid enough to believe it.
When we finally pull apart, we're both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, hands still tangled.
