I exhaled.
“I mean… you don’t have to carry everything by yourself just because we’re not married anymore.”
A beat.
“We’re still… on the same team. At least where life gets heavy.”
She studied my face carefully.
Like she was trying to see if I meant it.
“Are we?” she asked quietly.
That question sat between us.
Complicated.
Loaded.
Honest.
“I think we can be,” I said.
“And I think we’ve been pretending we can’t… because it’s simpler.”
She looked down at her hands.
Then back up.
“I didn’t just come because of work,” she said.
My chest tightened.
“I came because…” she hesitated, then continued, “…I missed you.”
The words didn’t explode.
They didn’t shatter anything.
They just… settled.
Heavy.
Real.
I didn’t answer right away.
Because this was the moment.
The one that could undo everything we had carefully rebuilt as something stable and safe.
“I’ve missed you too,” I said finally.
No drama.
No rush.
Just the truth.
She nodded slowly, like she needed to hear it but didn’t expect to.
We didn’t hug.
We didn’t move closer.
We didn’t try to rewrite the past in one night.
We just stood there.
Talking.
Quietly.
Honestly.
About things we had avoided for a long time.
What went wrong.
What didn’t.
What we were now.
At some point, we sat down
At some point, the tension shifted.
Not gone.
But different.
gh the curtains, we were still in the living room.
Still talking.
And that wall I had spent two years building—
carefully,
deliberately,
convincing myself it was necessary—
It didn’t collapse.
But it cracked.
Not in a way that felt dangerous.
Not in a way that erased everything we had learned.
In a way that made room.
For something new.
Epilogue
The next morning, Eke ran into the living room and found both of us there.
“Why are you both awake?” he asked, confused.
Adanna and I looked at each other.
Then back at him.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He shrugged, completely satisfied with that answer, and started talking about dinosaurs within seconds.
I watched them together.
Listened to her laugh.
Felt that shift in my chest again.
Nothing was fixed.
Nothing was decided.
But for the first time in a long time—
It didn’t feel finished.
THE END
