I didn’t need to plan the words. They were already there.
“I love you,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake. “I mean it. I love you.”
Her eyes went wide for a second. Then she smiled in that soft way she did when something truly mattered to her. She didn’t rush to fill the silence. She didn’t smother the moment. She just leaned in and rested her forehead against mine.
“I know,” she said quietly. “And I love you, too.”
We stood there for a while in that little kitchen, hands clasped, her father somewhere down the hall giving us space he didn’t used to know how to give. The past wasn’t erased. It was still there. But it wasn’t running the show anymore.
This was real. It was ours. And for once, I wasn’t bracing for the moment it would slip away.
I was holding on.