“I’m aware it sounds ridiculous.”
“It does.”
A small smile touches his mouth.
“Still true.”
I take him in for a long second.
Because there it is again.
The thing we keep finding in each other.
The willingness.
The maddening, lovely willingness.
“I know you would have tried,” I say.
Mark’s thumb moves slowly over my knuckles.
“But?”
I breathe out.
“But at some point, I started thinking what the actual version of that looked like.”
I shift a little closer.
“I could have asked you to move.”
His hand stills.
“And maybe you would have.”
Mark doesn’t deny it.
That says enough.
“But your life is here,” I continue. “Your family is here. Callum is here. Your work is here. Everything that makes your days yours is here.”
His eyes stay on mine.
“And if you had come there, we’d have been two people in a city full of strangers trying to make each other enough.”
Mark exhales slowly.
I keep going because this matters.
“That sounds romantic until one of us is lonely, or homesick, or has a bad day, and suddenly the other person has to carry all of it because there is no one else.”
He nods once.
Very slightly.
“We’d have drowned in each other,” he says.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Exactly.”
