“I do not know how to stop,” he said, barely above a whisper. “The guilt. The fear. I do not know how to set it aside.”
“You need not set it aside all at once. Only lessen it.” She released one of his hands and raised the other to his face, her touch light but certain. “You allow Thomas in a little. Then a little more. You make space for something that is not pain. In time, it will not be everything.”
He leaned into her hand, his eyes closing briefly.
“And if I fail?” he said. “If I cannot be what he needs?”
“Then you try again.” Her thumb brushed his cheek. “That is all anyone can do. Try, fail, and try again. Love is not perfection. It is constancy.”
His eyes opened. They were dark in the low light.
“And you?” he asked quietly. “If I… persist. If I continue to come to you—what then?”
The question stilled her.
She ought to step back. Ought to restore distance, to remember what stood between them.
She did not.
Instead, she rose slightly and pressed her lips to his forehead—brief, almost weightless, but unmistakably tender.
“Then we shall discover it,” she murmured. “A day at a time.”
She withdrew. His hands tightened around hers for a moment, reluctant.
“I should go,” she said at last. “There will be talk.”
“Let them talk.”
“You do not mean that.”
“No.” A faint, fleeting smile touched his mouth. “But I should like to.”
She slipped her hands from his. He let them go slowly, as though unwilling to do so too quickly.
At the door, she paused.
“Lorraine.”
She turned.
“Thank you,” he said. “For what you told him. For telling him the truth.”
“He deserved it.”
“Yes.” His voice had quieted again. “Yes. I believe he did.”
She inclined her head and left him.
The corridor felt colder after the warmth of the room. She leaned for a moment against the wall, her hand pressed to her chest.
A day at a time.
She had not meant to say it.
But she had.
And she knew, with a kind of quiet certainty, that she meant every word.
