Page 84 of Secret Paths

“Good. I was worried.”

I laugh softly. “There was plenty of mess. Just no villain.”

His fingers rest on the duvet between us, not touching me.

“Did it make coming back harder?” he asks.

“Yes and no.” I look around my bedroom, at the lamp, the chair, the cardigan I left draped over it. “At first, St Claire felt very small.”

“And now?”

“Now it feels like mine.”

Something in his expression changes.

I know he is thinking about the cottage. About a smaller job. About quieter lives and whether choosing one means losing something larger.

I nudge his ankle with my foot. “Do not make my medical career into a metaphor for your employment crisis.”

He laughs. “Too late.”

“Peter.”

“I am joking.”

“Mostly?”

“Mostly.”

He shifts closer, but still does not touch me. “It was worth it, then?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

I think of the heat, the exhaustion, the smell of antiseptic in places where there was never enough of anything. I think of Karim laughing beside me in airport queues, his shoulder pressed to mine. I think of the divorce papers years later, the strange kindness of ending something without hating the person beside you.

“Yes,” I say. “Even the parts that hurt.”

Peter’s hand turns palm up on the duvet.

An invitation.

A small one.

I look at it for longer than necessary.

Then I place my hand in his.

His fingers close around mine.

Nothing else happens.

No kissing. No clever line. No attempt to steer the evening back to what it was supposed to be.

He only holds my hand, thumb moving once across my knuckles, and I make no attempt to pull away.

The room has grown softer around the edges. The wine, the food, the warmth of Peter beside me. His hand around mine. The fact that I have told him about Karim and Nairobi and a woman walking for hours with a hungry baby, and he has not tried to make any of it about himself.