Laura leaned against him. His arm came around her, familiar as breath. "I keep thinking about the stairs," she said. "Her coming down. You saying wait. Ethan saying she stays here now. I thought my life was ending in the foyer."
"And now?"
"Now I think my life was being asked a harder question than the one I prepared for." She paused. "Would you have told me eventually if I hadn't come home that night? Or would you have kept building the secret until it became a house of its own?"
Daniel was quiet long enough that she knew he was not performing honesty. "I like to believe I would have told you that week. The truth is I had already become a person who deferred hard conversations, and I hate that person. Your walking in forced the door. I'm grateful for the forcing even though it hurt you."
Laura watched Oliver's chest rise and fall. "Chris asked you in that armchair. Did you ever ask me, even hypothetically, years ago?"
"No," Daniel said. "That was the first failure. Before any of this. I treated our future like it was mine to pledge."
She turned and kissed him—not passionate, not cinematic, just present. "Don't pledge us away again."
"I won't."