“How much more?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“And you weren’t going to tell me?”
“I was.”
“When?”
“When I knew what I was telling you.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The thing I had been afraid of from the beginning.
Not betrayal.
Not cruelty.
Something quieter.
Being kept outside.
“Adrian, you don’t have to know the ending before you let someone into the middle.”
He said nothing.
I regretted the sentence immediately because it sounded too much like Daniel.
Too intimate.
Too true.
“I’m not asking you to organize your life around me,” I said. “But if we’re doing this—whatever this is—I need to know when your life might change.”
“You’re right.”
The immediate agreement took some of the anger out of me.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
His voice softened.
“Because I don’t know how to ask someone to stay before I know whether I’m staying.”
