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“Thank you,” I say as he sets it beside me.

Ross takes the chair across from mine. “You’re welcome.”

We eat slowly, talking only when there is something worth saying. There is no need to dissect last night or force it into a definition before either of us is ready. I find myself relaxing into the quiet until Ross reaches for the marmalade and pauses to read the label.

His head tilts slightly.

My chest tightens.

Wells does the same thing when he is concentrating on something insignificant as if the answer somehow matters.

Ross looks up and catches me staring.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

The question lands harder than it should.

I could tell him.

The thought comes so clearly that for one suspended second I can almost hear the words leaving my mouth.

You have sons.

Two of them.

They have your eyes.

Instead, I curl my fingers around the warm coffee cup.

“Nothing,” I say.

Ross’s expression tells me he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t press.

“You were looking at me like it was something,” he says.

I manage a small smile. “You reminded me of someone.”

His brows draw together slightly.

“Someone I should be worried about?” Ross asks.

“No,” I reply. “Definitely not.”

That is enough for him. He nods and reaches for his coffee again, leaving me alone with the truth I nearly handed him.

I watch him for another moment and feel the weight of everything I know now compared with the man I left seven years ago. He is not suddenly perfect, and I am not naïve enough to pretend one weekend can erase what happened between us. But the man sitting across from me listens when I speak, respects the boundaries I set, and seems to understand that wanting me does not give him the right to decide for me.

For years, I have justified silence because I believed I was protecting Wells and Miles from the same man who once decided what was best for me without asking.

I am no longer certain that man is sitting across from me.

The thought stays with me as we finish breakfast and begin talking about what we want to do with the rest of the morning, quietly following me into a day that suddenly feels much more complicated than it did when I woke.

***

We leave the Cotswolds late Sunday afternoon, the Range Rover quiet except for low music and the occasional conversation that rises and falls naturally between us.

The drive back feels different from the one that brought us here. I’m more relaxed, but that ease comes with its own complications now. The weekend has stripped away some of the distance I had been relying on, and sitting beside Ross as he drives toward London, I’m too aware of how little I want to put it back.