"Yes."
"That's a strange thing to have a lawyer draft."
"It's a strange situation." His eyes were on his glass. "Most people in arrangements like this spend years in a slow drift where neither of them says what's actually happening because the contract makes silence easier than honesty. I didn't want that."
"You didn't want to end up performing a marriage that both people know isn't real."
"I didn't want you to feel like you had to pretend." He looked up. The gray eyes steady in the kitchen light. "Whatever happens between us — or doesn't — I wanted you to know you were allowed to say it. That there's a structure that requires it. So neither of us has to decide alone whether it's appropriate to speak."
I thought about that.
"What if one of us says it," I said carefully, "and the othe
