“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “A lot. And I don’t want to keep dancing around this.”
My stomach tightened.
“I can come to Paris,” he said. “Not for a visit. For real. I’ve already talked to my firm. There’s a remote rotation. It’s not ideal, but it’s possible.”
My breath caught.
“I don’t need you to come home,” he continued. “I just need to be where you are. I can build a life there. With you.”
Silence filled the space between us.
He wasn’t pleading.
He wasn’t romanticizing it.
He was offering it like a blueprint for a solution.
“I’m not afraid to change my life,” Dominic said softly. “But I am afraid of losing you because I am too careful to do it.”
My chest hurt in a way that wasn’t sharp — just immense. It wrapped its vise like arms around me and squeezed out all of the oxygen.
“You’d… move?” I whispered when I could finally push the words out.
“For a year,” he said. “We try it. No pressure. No promises. Just… us in the same city.”
I closed my eyes.
I pictured him in my apartment. His mug. His coat. His routines folding into mine. My life becoming something that had edges defined by him.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” he added gently. “But I do need to know if I’m offering something you want… or something you’re just tolerating.”
The question sucked all the oxygen out of me. What air I’d managed to inhale past the vise just gone.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Because the truth was unbearable. I wanted him, but I wasn’t ready to be chosen yet.
I wanted love, but I wasn’t ready to be a home—his or anyone else’s.
“I don’t want you to upend your whole life for me,” I said finally, voice shaking. “That feels… wrong.”
Dominic exhaled slowly. “It doesn’t feel wrong to me. It feels like commitment.”
The word made my stomach flip.
“I don’t know if I can be that for you,” I whispered.
A long silence so heavy with understanding that the tears burning in my eyes began to slip out.
“I see,” Dominic said quietly. “You’re not undecided. You’re just not ready.”
The kindness in his voice was worse than any accusation.
“I love you,” he said. “But I can’t keep waiting for a life you’re not ready to choose—if you are ever ready to choose.”
My eyes burned.
“I know,” I whispered. “Dominic…” A ragged breath escaped me, and it was hard to try and quiet the panicked nature of it. “I…”
