“We wouldn’t be drifting. We’d be choosing where we go.”
“That sounds like drifting, but with better branding.”
He smiles slightly at that, but doesn’t argue.
I tear a piece of bread, thinking about it. “How would we see family?”
“We go to them. Or they come to us wherever we are.”
“And when they ask where that is?”
He shrugs again. “We tell them when we feel like it.”
I shake my head, but I’m smiling. “That’s not a real plan.”
“It’s a flexible one.”
“It’s barely a plan.”
“I’m still working out the details.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to them... coming back after being gone for so many years only to leave them again.”
“Is it fair to stay and be miserable just to be near them?” he says.
“There’s no easy answer.”
“No,” he agrees. “There isn’t.”
By the time we’re done, the sky’s fully dark and the water is quiet around us. I take the plates below and wash them at the sink.
I hear him come up behind me.
“You’re thinking about it.”
“I am.”
His arms slide around me, pulling me back against his chest. I lean into him, hands still in the warm, soapy water. His mouth finds my shoulder, his teeth catching there—light this time.
My body reacts anyway.
A memory hits all at once—the last time his teeth found my skin, the shift in his voice, the mark I kept touching for days because I couldn’t leave it alone.
Heat follows straight away. No build, no warning—just there, immediate.
I decide to make use of it.
“You know,” I say, rinsing the last plate, “if we stay at the house in Brisbane, we might need to revisit that idea I had.”
“Which idea?”
“The one about seeing other people.” I set the plate on the drying rack. “Publicly, I mean.”
His arms don’t tighten, not yet—but something in them shifts. “That conversation’s over.”
“I don’t think we actually finished it.”
“Charlotte...” he warns.
