He looked back at me. “I’m here because I stopped using other people as proof I could live without you.”
My throat tightened.
Cupcake hissed again, apparently committed to representing my emotional boundaries.
“I was a coward,” he said. “I called it protecting you. Then I called it choosing Georgia. Then I called it doing the right thing. But it was fear. All of it. I loved you, and I was afraid of what that meant, so I made everybody pay for it.”
The words moved through me slowly.
Not healing everything.
Not enough.
But real.
“I’m not your almost,” I said.
“No.”
“I’m not your punishment.”
“No.”
“I’m not the woman you come to because the safe one left.”
His face tightened, but he held my gaze. “No. You’re the woman I should have been brave enough to choose when you were standing in front of me.”
My heart did the stupid, dangerous thing again.
It reached.
I made it wait.
Dylan took one step closer, then stopped himself. Like he knew every inch mattered now. Like he knew restraint only counted if I did not have to ask for it.
“I’m not asking for forever tonight,” he said. “I’m asking for one date. The one we never got. No hospitals. No bullets. No graveyards. No goodbyes.” His mouth curved a little, tired and hopeful and scared enough to make him honest. “If you still want me after that, I’ll spend the rest of my life earning the second one.”
I looked at him standing there beneath the weak gold light of the apartment walkway, no ring between us now, no fiancée in a chair, no old lie dressed up as sacrifice.
Just Dylan.
Finally in the light.
Behind me, Cupcake hissed again.
I glanced down at her. “You’re not helping.”
Dylan’s mouth twitched.
I looked back at him.
“One date,” I said.
His whole face changed.
Not into victory.
Relief.
