Chapter 15
Dinner that night was quiet in a way none of their other dinners had been. Not hostile, exactly. Just careful, both of them navigating around the conversation from that morning like it was furniture neither of them wanted to bump into again.
Alex made it through most of the meal telling herself she’d let it go, that Dani had asked for space and the reasonable, respectful thing to do was give it to her.
But clearing the plates afterward, standing at the sink with Dani beside her drying what Alex washed, the whole day’s worth of unspoken tension finally got the better of her.
“I need to say something,” Alex said, setting down the plate she’d been rinsing, “and I need you to actually hear it, not just wait for me to finish so you can deflect again.”
Dani went still, dish towel paused mid-motion. “Okay.”
“I haven’t let myself feel anything for anyone in three years.
” Alex kept her eyes on the sink, on her own hands, because it was easier to say out loud without watching Dani’s face while she did it.
“Not a date, not a passing attraction, nothing. I built an entire life around making sure I’d never have to feel this exposed again.
And then I met you not even a week ago, and every single wall I spent three years building just, came down. Without my permission, honestly.”
“Alex.”
“I’m not a fling person, Dani. I never have been.
I don’t know how to do the thing where this was fun while it lasted and now we go back to our separate lives and post vacation-photos-adjacent memories on occasion.
” Alex finally looked up, and her voice, steady until now, cracked just slightly at the edges.
“I need to know what this actually is to you. Not because I’m trying to trap you into some five-year plan.
Just because I can’t keep standing here not knowing if I’m the only one who’s terrified of this ending. ”
The kitchen went very quiet. Outside, the last of the day’s light was fading fast behind the mountains, throwing long blue shadows across the counter between them.
“I don’t know how to stay anywhere.” Dani’s voice came out smaller than Alex had ever heard it, none of the easy confidence from the yoga mat or the wine cellar or the counter this morning left in it at all.
“I’ve never once, in six years, let myself stay long enough to find out if I could.
That’s not a metaphor. I mean literally, physically, I don’t know how to do it.
I don’t know what staying even looks like anymore. ”
“Then let’s figure it out. Together.”
“It’s not that simple.” Dani set the dish towel down, hands empty now, nothing left to occupy them.
“You want to know what terrifies me more than leaving? Staying, and being bad at it. Staying, and watching myself ruin something good because I don’t actually know how to be the person who doesn’t leave first. I’ve had exactly one relationship where someone asked me for permanent, and I ran so fast I didn’t even look back. What happens when I do that to you?”
“I can’t promise you won’t.” Alex’s own voice had gone rough now too.
“I can’t promise anything, actually, not with any certainty, because the last person who promised me forever meant it right up until she didn’t.
But I would rather risk that with you than spend the rest of my life so scared of being blindsided again that I never let anyone close enough to actually blindside me. ”
“That’s easy to say in a snowed-in cabin with fairy lights and no real world pressing in on us.”
“Is it, though? Because the real world’s been pressing in all day. Cass’s texts, your agency email, the plow outside. I’m not saying this from inside some fantasy. I’m saying it knowing exactly how real the outside is, and choosing you anyway.”
“I don’t know if I can choose back yet.” Dani’s eyes had gone bright, glassy, though she didn’t let anything actually fall.
“I want to. God, Alex, I want to so much it scares me more than anything else about this. But wanting to and knowing how are two completely different things, and I don’t have the second part figured out.
I don’t know if I have it in me at all.”
They stood there, several feet apart in a kitchen that had held so much of the last five days, the fairy lights already coiled and put away, the blanket fort dismantled that afternoon while Alex was answering Cass’s texts, cushions returned to their proper places on the couch like nothing had ever happened there at all.
“Okay,” Alex said finally, quiet, the fight gone out of her voice entirely, replaced by something flatter and more tired. “Okay. I hear you.”
“Alex.”
“No, I mean it. I hear you.” She managed something that wasn’t quite a smile, small and sad around the edges. “I’m not going to push you into knowing something you don’t know yet. That’s not fair to either of us.”
Neither of them said anything else useful after that.
They finished the dishes in silence, careful and polite in a way that felt worse than shouting would have, and when it was done, Dani said something about being tired, and Alex agreed that she was tired too, and they went to bed in their own separate rooms for the first time in days, the primary suite and the room with good morning light suddenly feeling much farther apart than a single hallway’s distance.
Alex lay in the dark for a long time, staring at a ceiling she couldn’t see, replaying the whole conversation on a loop that refused to quiet down. I don’t know if I can choose back yet. Not a no. Not exactly a no. But not the yes she’d apparently, foolishly, let herself hope for either.
What are you doing, she thought, staring up into the dark, the ache in her chest an old, familiar shape wearing new clothes.
Three years of careful distance, and you handed your whole heart to a woman you’ve known for less than a week.
A woman who just told you, plainly, that she doesn’t know if she can stay.
She thought of her wife, of six years of certainty that had turned out to be worth nothing at all. She thought of the particular, specific terror of loving someone who might, despite every good intention, leave anyway.
And underneath all of it, stubborn and quiet and entirely unwilling to be reasoned with, she thought of Dani’s hands in her hair that morning, of fairy lights strung low across a blanket fort, of a woman crying out her name in a voice raw with something that had felt, at the time, indistinguishable from being wanted completely.
I’d still choose this, she admitted to the dark, exhausted and heartsick and unable to talk herself out of it no matter how hard she tried. Even now. Even like this. God help me, I’d still choose it.
Somewhere down the hall, in a room with good morning light, Dani lay awake too, staring at a ceiling of her own, wondering exactly the same terrible, hopeful thing.