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‘I may not be able to feel you as well as if I were alive, but I can see your muscles tensing.’

‘I have a knot,’ I lie, swirling my finger in the water and watching the bubbles spin.

‘You’ve been silent for about twenty minutes longer than I’ve ever seen you conscious.’ I sigh and roll my eyes. ‘Or unconscious for that matter,’ he adds with deliberation.

‘I’m just thinking.’

‘A dangerous pastime,’ he mumbles against my hair.

I try to laugh but it won’t work. My throat feels too tight. My breath feels constricted. I feel the gentle rumble of the house shuddering and look behind me to find Walker studying me with a frown between his brows. I get the urge to smooth it with the pad of my thumb, but when I give in, my touch is met only with the cool pressure of him, before I move through him. I want to cry.

‘I wish you were living,’ I admit in a quiet voice. The bird song out the window dances with my admission.

Recognition shutters his expression. Walker pulls at the damp, errant strand of my hair, fondness painting his features a softer version of himself. I focus all of my attention on the freckle beneath his eye to try and keep myself from crying.

‘What do you need, Miller?’ His head tilts as he studies my conflicted expression.

I wish these phantom touches could heal what is broken by default between us.

I plaster on a fake smile and request, ‘A distraction.’

I’m only just learning now that happiness doesn’t mean having it all. Life won’t let you. And death won’t either for that matter. The road to happiness is paved with sacrifice and choice and bends in the road that can take you further from the path of where you thought you wanted to be, to deliver you to the doorstep of your final destination. I’m no stranger to difficult decisions. I’ve gone decades fumbling through them. And even though the last month has given me a newfound confidence in myself, I just really wish I didn’t have to. I have to decide where my happiness will live. And I need to decide if giving up the journey I thought I’d take to get there is a worthy cost of being with Walker. I think I already know the answer. I even think I may have already arrived here. I just didn’t know it wouldn’t be inherent. I didn’t anticipate the feelings of conflict, I didn’t know that this acceptance would be laced with sadness.

And lust.

Walker looks unconvinced, but instead of pushing me, his hands disappear beneath the surface of the water and get to work delivering on my invitation.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘No.’ He goes back to his ministrations beneath the surface and I shudder. I can practically feel his self-satisfaction at my reaction.

‘That spiritual contract, what was the relevance? Obviously it was bullshit.’

‘It wasn’t bullshit.’

‘Oh really? So where are our hives then, buddy?’

‘Buddy?’ He says the word with disgust, before pinching a nipple and I squeal. Water sloshes over the rim of the tub and I sink into the water to escape his hands before coming up for breath. ‘The hives part was bullshit.’

‘So again, the relevance?’

‘The relevance was that I couldn’t help myself,’ he admits.

‘All the way back then?’

He nods.

‘I thought you hated me.’

‘I never hated you, Miller. I hated our circumstances.’

‘Well, what changed?’

‘My propensity to embrace chaos. However complicated it may make things.’

Whatever external or internal conflicts arise, I’m grateful I feel some semblance of contentment within myself and with him. There are decisions to be made, and nothing in life is ever easy. But at least now I feel sure enough of myself to make them.

Tomorrow.