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She was pulling away, and I couldn't figure out why.

It started after the rink. She stopped saying I love you at night. I'd say it and the pause would stretch too long before she'd smile and kiss my shoulder. She was tired a lot. Too tired to talk after dinner, too tired to stay up after Hazel went to bed. When I reached for her, she'd put her hand on my chest and tell me I needed sleep, that I'd been on for twenty-four hours, that I should rest. She was taking care of me when I hadn't asked to be taken care of, and every time she did it, the distance between us got a little wider.

She used to be the one who reached for me. In the kitchen while I cooked. On the couch after Hazel fell asleep. In bed, with her hand finding my arm in the dark. That had stopped, and I didn't know when it started.

I'd been here before. The warmth that was still there but thinner, the easy thing between us going quiet, the growing feeling that the woman I loved was already somewhere I couldn't follow. I'd lost Cheryl this way. I'd missed every sign until she handed me the papers, and by then there was nothing left to save.

I wasn't going to let that happen again.

"Something's wrong," I called Erin. "I think Janine is done with me. She's stopped reaching for me. She's stopped saying I love you. I don't know what I did."

"Have you asked her?"

"I've given her space."

"Alex." Erin had watched me make this exact mistake before, and I could hear it in her voice. "Giving her space is what you do when you're afraid of the answer. You gave Cheryl space for three years and she used it to find someone else."

I closed my eyes. I didn't want to be reminded. And I didn't want to believe the same thing was happening again.

"Talk to her," Erin said. "Tonight. Sit down, look her in the eye, and ask her what's wrong. Whatever it is, you can handle it. What you can't handle is another month of guessing while the distance gets bigger."

"What if I don't like the answer?"

"Then you deal with it. That's what adults do. That's what people in real relationships do. You're not twenty-two anymore, Alex. Stop acting like a man who's afraid of his own kitchen table."

I laughed. The sound came out harder than I intended.

"I love you," Erin said. "Remember what you promised me? Don't screw this up. Go talk to her."

The dispatch center sat inside a precinct building on Tremont. I'd taken the T from our apartment and walked the last four blocks with a bunch of flowers I'd bought from the stand outside Park Street station. I was leaning against her car when she came through the doors.

She stopped when she saw me. Her bag was on her shoulder, her jacket zipped to her chin, her hair pulled back from a full shift. She looked tired and beautiful and completely confused.

"Alex? What are you doing here?"

"Can't a man do something nice for the woman he loves?"

I held the flowers out.

"These are for me?"

"Who else would they be for?"

She smiled, the first real one I'd seen in days.

"They're beautiful." She took the flowers and held them against her chest. "Thank you."

She walked up to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me. I pulled her close, one hand on her back, and let the kiss last. For the first time in days, I felt like I could breathe. I'd been so convinced that I'd lost her, and now she was kissing me in a parking lot.

"Where's Hazel?" she asked.

"Sleeping over at Erin's. I called ahead." I took her bag off her shoulder. "I thought we could do something tonight."

"Like what?"

"I'll cook, you put on something nice, we have dinner together. Just us."

"Like a date?"