Mag-log in"There were a few," I said finally, still holding his hand, needing to for the honesty to come out at all. "A training document Claire had already reviewed twice. I stayed until past seven to read it again. A Friday afternoon I could have ended two hours earlier. Claire could have handled both easily. I just didn't let her.""How many is a few.""I don't know exactly. I didn't keep count because I wasn't trying to. That's part of the problem.""That's not really an answer.""It's the honest one I have." I pulled my hand back slightly, not fully letting go, but needing the space to say the rest properly. "I'm not going to pretend I know the precise number so you can weigh it against something.""I'm not trying to weigh anything." He rubbed a hand across his jaw, visibly working through something. "I'm trying to understand how much time we actually lost that didn't need to be lost. That feels like a reasonable thing to want to know.""It feels like you're building a case.""I'm not buil
"I don't want to say this wrong," Damien started, and then said it wrong anyway. "I want to be able to tell you I missed you without you reaching for a defense of every hour you spent away from me.""I don't always""You did it today. Twice." He wasn't accusing, just stating it plainly, and I felt the familiar instinct rise and made myself hold it this time instead of reaching for it."Try again," I said, quieter.He was quiet himself for a moment, choosing more carefully now. "Wednesday. I wanted to tell you, the second you walked in, that I'd missed you all evening. Not that I understood why you'd stayed. Not that the pencils were fine, we'd use them eventually. Just that I'd sat there missing you, plainly, without making you feel guilty for protecting someone who needed you.""You never said it at all.""I almost did. You walked through the door and I had the sentence ready, I missed you tonight, nothing more complicated than that, and then I looked at your face and reached for the
"You're right," I said finally, setting the toast down, still warm but neither of us had touched it. "I do that. I didn't know I did it quite so consistently until you just said it twice in one conversation.""I wasn't counting.""I was." I pushed his plate toward him, the piece he preferred, an old habit neither of us had to think about anymore. He noticed, took it without comment, and handed me my tea the way I liked it, too much milk, barely any color left, and something in the exchange felt like love even with everything else still unresolved between us.We ate in near silence, close enough at the counter that our shoulders brushed, and I kept almost saying something and then not saying it, the right words refusing to arrive in any useful order.The afternoon passed strangely, both of us moving through the same rooms, orbiting each other without quite landing. At one point he came up behind me at the sink and rested his hand briefly against my waist, and I wanted, badly, to lean b
"That's what you supported," I said, still curled against him, careful with the words. "Not what you actually felt.""They're the same thing.""They're not."He was quiet a moment, and I watched him search for the distinction, something careful and defensive rising before he'd fully found it. "I understood why I had to cancel the restaurant. The way I understood why you had to stay for the pilot fix. I don't want either of us put on trial for choices that were genuinely necessary.""I'm not putting you on trial. I'm asking what you felt. Those aren't the same question."He exhaled slowly, something in his shoulders dropping. "I missed you at the restaurant. I know I'm the one who had to cancel it, but I still spent half that night thinking about the table we never got to, the dessert you chose, the whole evening sitting unused somewhere it should have happened.""You never said that. You just kept apologizing.""Apologizing felt safer." He paused. "Then there was the studio. I'd plann
Damien set the phone aside, screen still glowing with the photograph between us, and neither of us reached to turn it off. "I don't know how to finish this argument," he admitted."Neither do I.""I could delete it. As a gesture.""Don't delete it." I said it faster than I meant to, and he raised an eyebrow, something almost amused cutting through the tension. "I told you I wanted a copy too.""You're very inconsistent for a woman who just accused me of loving a lie.""I never said it was a lie. I said it wasn't the whole truth. There's a difference, even if I explained it badly.""You explained it like a woman who'd been awake since six," he said, and I shoved his shoulder, though the corner of my mouth was already betraying me, the sharpest edge of the argument easing slightly without actually resolving.We got up eventually, hungry enough to abandon the unfinished conversation for breakfast, and I pulled on his discarded shirt from the night before while he found something in the k
I woke tangled against him, his arm heavy across my waist, and when I shifted he pulled me closer without fully waking, murmuring something incoherent into my hair that made me laugh quietly against his shoulder. "You're awake," he said eventually, eyes still closed."Barely.""Stay anyway." He tightened his arm, and I let him keep me there, warm and unhurried, no reason either of us needed to move yet."You snored last night.""I did not.""You did. Extensively. I considered recording it as evidence.""That's slander," he said, finally opening one eye, and I kissed the corner of his mouth before he could properly defend himself, the whole morning easy and lazy in a way neither of us was in any hurry to interrupt.His phone buzzed eventually, and he reached for it reluctantly, scrolling through something before his expression shifted into genuine pleasure. "The reception photos are in." He stayed propped against the headboard, phone held between us, and found the one almost immediatel




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