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“I don’t know,” she says finally.

“I thought I would be.”

That lands harder than anything else she could’ve said. She looks down at her hands.

“Three months ago, going back was just what happened when the assignment ended. Now it feels more complicated than that.”

I don’t say anything. Blaire glances at me, then away again.

“I know I have a life to go back to. I just didn’t expect leaving this one to feel like leaving something behind.”

For a moment, neither of us looks at the television.

“It’s been more than three months,” she says again quietly.

“It went quickly,” I reply.

“Too quickly,” she says.

Blaire turns her attention back to the screen, but the conversation has put an ache in my chest.

When all of this began, she was a woman I noticed in a library. Now I know the sound she makes when she laughs hard enough to lose control of it. I know which side of the bed she takes without thinking, the way she pushes her hair away from her face when she’s concentrating, and the exact look she gives me when she thinks I’m being impossible. I know what it feels like to wake beside her and what it feels like when she’s angry enough to walk away from me.

The idea that she could pack this apartment, get on a plane and become someone I once knew in London is suddenly intolerable.

Blaire glances up at me. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“That usually ends well.”

I look down at her and smile faintly.

“Not always.”

She shifts upright beside me, drawing one leg beneath herself.

“What are you thinking about?”

I study her face. There are a dozen practical answers I could give her. I could ask how long she expects to stay in the States before her next assignment. I could talk about visits, schedules, flights, all the things I know how to arrange when something matters to me.

None of them are what I want to say. I don’t want to arrange Blaire into the margins of my life. I want her in it. Fully. Completely.

The certainty arrives with enough force that I stop looking for a safer version of the truth. She has become part of the way I think about my days, my home, and my future. I don’t know exactly when that happened, only that pretending this ends because her contract does feels ridiculous now.

Blaire’s expression softens. “Ross?”

I reach for her hand and lace my fingers through hers.

“Blaire, I—”

My phone vibrates against the coffee table before I can finish the sentence.

I ignore it.

Then it vibrates again.

I glance toward the device, irritation flashing first because the moment between us has already been broken twice. Then I see the screen.