The realization settled over him like certainty.
She'd painted herself into the mural. She'd called his condo "home." She'd built rituals with his team, relationships with his community, a life she kept insisting was temporary even as she sank deeper roots with every passing week.
She didn't want to leave.
She was just terrified to stay.
And you let her run.
Tarmek sat up in bed, suddenly unable to lie still.
What had he done, really, when she'd started pulling away? He'd given her space. Respected her wishes. Let her pack her bags and move back to her camper without a single word of protest.
He'd thought he was being supportive.
But maybe he'd just been taking the easy way out.
Maybe fighting for her would have been harder—messy, emotional, requiring vulnerability he'd spent his whole lifeavoiding. Maybe the reason he'd let her go wasn't respect at all, but fear.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of being too much, too intense, too desperate.
Fear of needing someone who might not need him back.
Coward.
The word stung because it was true.
He'd hidden behind respect and understanding, using her stated wishes as an excuse to avoid the terrifying work of actually fighting for what he wanted. And what he wanted—what he'd wanted from the moment she'd smiled up at him from that chaotic pile of art supplies—was her.
All of her.
Forever.
The thought should have been terrifying. Commitment, permanence, building a life with someone who'd spent years running from both—that was the kind of risk he'd always avoided.
But somehow, lying in his empty bed, surrounded by traces of the woman who'd changed everything, Tarmek found that the terror had transformed.
It wasn't fear anymore.
It was determination.
She's not leaving.
The thought crystallized into certainty.
Not without a fight.
He didn't know how to fight for someone. Didn't know the words or the gestures or the grand romantic moments that people in movies always seemed to pull off effortlessly. He'd spent his whole life expressing care through actions rather than declarations, through protein shakes and fixed heaters and silent presence rather than speeches.
But maybe that was okay.
Maybe Edie didn't need speeches.
Maybe she just needed someone to show up. To stay. To prove through consistent, stubborn presence that he wasn't going anywhere, no matter how hard she pushed.
Actions, he thought. She understands actions.
