“I know.”
“I went to see Lila on Tuesday. Did she tell you?”
Melissa’s face crumpled. “She told me. She said you came to the house, and she wouldn’t talk to you. She said…” Her voice broke. “She said you left like everyone else.”
“I did leave.” June felt the weight of it, the truth she’d been avoiding. “I know I said I couldn’t stay and watch you deny me. And that was true. But it’s also true that I ran. When things got hard, I ran, just like I did in Portland, just like I always do.” She took a breath. “So I’m not blameless here. I made you a promisetoo, that I wouldn’t leave, that I’d always tell Lila the truth. And I broke it.”
Melissa looked up, something shifting in her expression. “You did what you had to do.”
“Maybe. But I still hurt her. I still hurt you.” June sat down on the bed, leaving space between them. “If we’re going to do this, really do this, we both have work to do. It’s not just you earning back my trust. I have to earn back yours. And Lila’s.”
“June—”
“Let me finish.” June took another breath. “I can’t promise I won’t get scared again. I can’t promise I won’t want to run when things get hard. But I can promise to try. To stay, even when it’s difficult. To talk to you instead of walking out the door.”
Melissa was very still. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying—” June’s voice wavered. “I’m saying I love you. I have for a while now. And I want to figure this out. Together. If you still want that.”
“If I still—” Melissa laughed, a wet, broken sound. “June. I just came out on live television. I told a room full of politicians and reporters that I’m bisexual and in love with you. Of course I still want that.”
“I needed to hear you say it.”
“I’ll say it as many times as you need.” Melissa reached out, her hand hovering in the air between them. “I love you. I want you in my life—not as the nanny, not as some temporary summer fling. As my partner. As part of my family.”
June looked at Melissa’s hand. She thought about Lila’s voice sayingyou stay longer than the other people.She thought about Ember, about all the ways she’d been broken before. She thought about driving to Salem in the grey morning, telling herself she was just here to know.
She took Melissa’s hand.
“Okay,” she said. “But we’re going slow. And we’re going to talk—really talk, not just kiss and hope the hard stuff goes away. And we’re both going to work on earning back Lila’s trust, because she’s the one who got hurt the most in all of this.”
“Agreed. All of it.”
“And I’m not moving back in right away. For my sake and Lila’s both. I can’t walk out and then walk back in like nothing happened. She needs to see that I’m not going anywhere before I’m back under the same roof.”
Melissa nodded.
June ran a hand through her hair. “And I need to know this is real. That it’s not just the adrenaline of today, or the relief of the bill passing, or—”
“It’s not.” Melissa’s grip tightened on her hand. “It’s been real since the first time you made me dinner and I didn’t know how to sit at my own kitchen table. Since you taught my daughter to make otter-shaped pasta and I realized I’d forgotten what happiness looked like. It’s real, June. I promise.”
“And I think you mean it.” June squeezed back. “But now we need to show each other that. Not with grand gestures—in the small things. Going out together. Not hiding. We were already good at the home stuff. Now we have to do it in the light.”
“It will be rough,” Melissa said. “But together—”
“We can do it.” June exhaled slowly, feeling something loosen in her chest. “Okay.”
They sat there for a long moment, hands intertwined, the silence between them no longer heavy but peaceful. Outside the window, Salem glittered in the darkness. Inside the generic hotel room, something new was beginning.
“You should sleep,” June said finally. “You look exhausted.”
“I am.” Melissa didn’t let go of her hand. “Stay? Not… I just don’t want to be alone tonight.”
June thought about saying no. About boundaries and going slow and all the things she’d just said.
But Melissa was looking at her with those grey-blue eyes, and the truth was that June didn’t want to be alone either.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay.”
