Chapter 275. Asking.
DANTE
We had stopped calling it anything months ago, which I'd noticed without saying anything about it. Not because the absence of a name bothered me, I'd never needed labels the way some people seemed to.
I'd needed proximity. I'd needed steadiness. I'd needed to keep showing up, the way I'd kept showing up for fifteen years of six a.m. sessions, regardless of whether anyone was watching to confirm it counted.
But somewhere in the last few weeks, in the ordinary texture of a life that had quietly become shared, Nick and Drew's homework spread across the same kitchen table, my toothbrush sitting in the cup beside hers without either of us discussing how it had gotten there, the easy domestic rhythm of two households that had simply, gradually, stopped being two, I
