26. Pivotal Decision 2
Reid and I don’t plan the conversation. It just…
happens, the way storms gather even when the sky looked fine an hour ago.
Liam is finally down after a sugar-high Halloween weekend, the apartment dim except for the soft glow from the kitchen.
I’m sitting at the small table with my laptop open, half-working, half-not.
Reid clears his throat as he drops into the chair across from me, like he’s easing into something fragile.
“We need to talk,” he says quietly.
My stomach tightens, not from fear but from the weight of everything we’ve been dragging behind us these last few weeks. I close the laptop—because if I don’t, he’ll think I’m listening with only half my attention. And this? This deserves all of it.
“Yeah,” I say. “We do.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped like he’s bracing himself. “I don’t want to keep having the same fight without actually dealing with it.”
“It’s not a fight,” I say. “It’s… us reaching the edge of pretending everything fits when it doesn’t.”
His jaw flexes, and he nods. “Exactly.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The silence isn’t hostile—it’s tired. The kind of tired that sinks into your bones after months of trying to bend your life around someone else’s without asking if you're both bending in the same direction.
I take a breath. “Reid… I’m scared.”
His eyes snap to mine—soft, worried, instantly paying attention. “Of what?”
“Of choosing wrong.” The words spill before I can soften them. “For me. For you. For Liam. For all of us. I keep thinking I’m supposed to already know what our future looks like, but I don’t. And acting like I do feels… irresponsible.”
He nods slowly, like he’s been waiting for me to say this out loud. “Okay. Then we figure it out together.”
I look at him for a long second. “Do we actually do that, though? Or do we assume the other person will adjust?”
He swallows. Hard. “You mean—assuming you’d move with me.”
“I didn’t even realize I assumed that you’d stay here,” I admit. “Or at least choose something close. Because of Liam. Because my job is here. Because our support system is here.”
He runs a hand through his hair, exhaling. “God, Amelia… I wasn’t trying to blindside you. I just—when I think about internships and jobs and maybe grad school, I picture you with me. You and Liam. It never crossed my mind that it wouldn’t work like that.”
“And it never crossed mine that it would,” I say gently.
We sit with that truth—two visions of the future that were never actually spoken, just quietly carried around like matching luggage we didn’t realize weren’t the same size.
Reid shifts forward, voice lower. “I don’t want you thinking my plans matter more than yours. They don’t. But I can’t pretend I’m not thinking big. I can’t shrink my goals because I’m scared they won’t fit our life.”
“And I don’t want to shrink mine either,” I say. “Nexus offered me something today. A leadership opportunity. It’s not official yet, but it’s real. It would mean… staying put. Committing. Building something long-term.”
His brows lift, surprised. “Ames, that’s amazing.”
“It is,” I say, though my voice wavers. “But if I take it, I’m rooted here for a while. And if you take a job in another state?—”
“We wouldn’t survive that,” he finishes softly.
“Or we’d try to,” I correct. “But not without bleeding for it.”
He leans back, staring at the ceiling as if the right answer might be written up there. “I wish this was easier.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
But love didn’t magically solve anything when we became parents. It didn’t solve anything when we survived long-distance. And it won’t solve this unless we let the hard conversations have space.
Reid drags the chair closer until his knees touch mine. His voice is steady now—quiet, but grounded. “Tell me what you need.”
I look down at my hands. “Stability. A plan that doesn’t change every semester. A life where I’m not uprooting Liam every time your program shifts.”
“Okay,” he says. No defensiveness. No frustration. Just… listening.
“But I also need you,” I add. “And I need you to still chase what you want, not resent me for whatever decision we make together.”
His throat works. “Ames… I could never resent you.”
“You say that now,” I reply. “But what about five years from now if your dream job is on the other side of the country and we’re stuck because of the choices we made today?”
He quiets. Thinking. Not avoiding—actually thinking.
Then he nods once, slow and deliberate. “You’re right to bring this up. And I should’ve talked to you before assuming we’d just… figure it out.”
“And I should’ve talked to you,” I say. “I’ve been afraid to open the door because I didn’t want the answer to be that we’re heading in different directions.”
He reaches for my hand, fingers smoothing over my knuckles like he’s memorizing the shape again. “I don’t want a life without you. That part is not up for debate.”
“And I don’t want one without you.”
“So,” he says, squeezing my hand, “that means we find the version where we both still get to be who we are. It doesn’t have to look perfect. It doesn’t have to match anyone else’s expectations. It just has to be ours.”
My eyes sting—not from fear this time, but from the relief that comes when someone meets you in the middle instead of pulling away.
“Reid,” I whisper, “what if the right choice hurts either way?”
“Then we choose the hurt we can carry together,” he says. “Not the one that breaks us apart.”
Something settles in my chest at that. Not a solution.
Not a promise that everything will line up perfectly.
But a willingness—the thing I’ve needed from him, maybe more than anything else.
We sit in that space—hands tangled, breaths steadying, the future no longer a shadow we avoid but something we can actually look at, even if it’s blurry at the edges.
“I don’t expect you to give up your dreams,” I say. “I just need to know where I fit in them.”
“You’re the constant,” he replies. “The part I’m sure of. Everything else… we build around that.”
It’s not a fairytale answer. It’s not simple. But it’s real. And right now, real is enough.
He leans forward, resting his forehead against mine. “We’re going to figure this out, Ames. Not by pretending it’s easy. By choosing each other—even when it’s hard.”
My eyes close. “Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
There’s no resolution yet. No clear path. But the ground beneath us feels steadier than it did an hour ago. We’re not running from the future anymore—we’re facing it together. And that, for the first time in weeks, feels like hope.
He sits across from me on the couch like he’s trying to find the right angle to reach me without pushing too hard. My hands are clasped in my lap, stiff from how tightly I’ve been holding everything inside.
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Reid says quietly. “We’re just… stretched.”
I meet his eyes. “I know. But knowing doesn’t make it easier.”
He nods. His knee bounces once before he stills it. “I don’t want you to feel like your life has to bend around mine.”
“And I don’t want you to feel like you’re failing because you can’t be in two places at once,” I say. “We keep talking like distance is temporary, but the decisions behind it aren’t.”
He swallows. “Grad school, job offers, internships… they could be anywhere.”
“And my work is finally moving me forward,” I say. “For the first time, I’m not just surviving. I’m building something.”
We both fall quiet. It’s the kind of silence that feels like a crossroads.
“Amelia,” he says suddenly, voice lower than before. “I don’t want to lose you because of logistics.”
“It’s never just logistics,” I say. “It’s our lives. Our son. Our careers. Where we raise him. Where we grow.”
He watches me with this expression that makes my chest tighten—like he’s weighing every version of the future he imagined and realizing some of them were missing pieces he should have considered.
“I want all of it with you,” he says. “Not the dream version. The real one. The hard one. The one where we figure it out together even when it’s messy as hell.”
My throat goes tight. “What if figuring it out means choosing different things?”
“Then we talk until we find something we both choose,” he says. “I’m not asking you to uproot everything blindly.”
“No?” I ask softly.
“No.” He exhales. “I’m asking for something else.”
He stands, and for a second I think he’s going to pace or take space from the conversation. Instead, he reaches into the pocket of his jacket draped over the chair. My breath stutters. He kneels. Not dramatic. Not rehearsed. He kneels because he wants to be eye-level with me.
“Reid—”
He shakes his head once. “Let me say it.”
I nod, heart pounding in my throat. He opens his hand. A small ring rests in his palm—simple, delicate, nothing extravagant. Something chosen with intention, not spectacle.
“I didn’t buy this for a perfect moment,” he says. “I bought it because I realized I didn’t want to wait for our lives to get easier before choosing you. Before choosing us.”
My eyes burn instantly.
“I can’t promise the road won’t be messy. I can’t promise I won’t screw things up or that long-distance won’t get ugly sometimes.” His voice cracks slightly. “But I can promise to keep showing up. To keep choosing you and Liam even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”
Tears spill over before I can stop them.
“I want to figure out the future together,” he continues. “Not with assumptions. Not with hopes we never say out loud. With choices we make side by side. So—” he exhales, nervous for the first time, “—will you marry me?”
My chest tightens with a mix of fear and certainty. Not fairytale certainty. Not naive belief. Real certainty—the kind you feel in your ribs when someone is already threaded through your life in ways you can’t undo.
I nod, tears still falling. “Yes. I love you. Yes.”