Page 133 of Cross Ice

“I love you,” he said. “But I need more than I don’t know. I need to know you’re choosing this.”

“I need to figure out if I can actually do it,” I said. “Not try to do it. Not hope it gets easier. Actually do it.”

“Yeah. You do.”

Then Nico shifted closer on the couch. Put his arm around me. And I let myself lean into him because even now, even after everything we’d just said, this was the only place I wanted to be.

That was the cruelest part. I loved him. I didn’t want to lose him. But loving him didn’t make me brave enough to stay.

And I didn’t know how to fix that.

“What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.

“That I don’t want to lose this.”

“Me neither.”

I turned to look at him. “So we both do the work. Separately. And then we figure out if it’s enough.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t romantic or a grand declaration. Just honest.

He leaned down and kissed me. Soft at first, tentative, like we were both testing whether it still felt right.

It did.

I kissed him back, and for a minute, everything else fell away.

Just this. Just us.

When we pulled apart, we stayed close. Foreheads touching, breathing the same air.

“I should go,” I said eventually.

“You could stay.”

I wanted to. Wanted to fall into his bed and his arms and pretend everything was fixed.

But it wasn’t fixed. And pretending wouldn’t help.

“Not tonight. We both need to do this part alone.”

We stood up, and he walked me to the door. He kissed me again before I left… longer this time, like he was trying to memorize it.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”

I walked to my car, feeling lighter than I had in days. Not because anything was solved, but because for the first time in three weeks, we’d been honest with each other. No deflecting. No trying to fix it with solutions that didn’t work.

Just the truth.

And maybe that was enough to build on.

Thursday morning, I woke up anxious.

The video call with Wesley was at ten. I’d spent the night going over what I wanted to say, what questions to ask, how to explain what I’d been going through without sounding like I was falling apart.