I thought I was being responsible. I thought if I stepped back before things got harder, I'd be protecting both of us. But I wasn't protecting you. I was protecting myself from having to find out whether I could actually have something good after everything that happened to me. Victoria said nothing, but her eyes had already changed.
Laura taught me how much can be lost. Daniel continued his voice roughening, and after she died, I stopped trusting happiness. I thought if I kept my life small enough, if I only loved what I could control, then I would never have to go through that kind of pain again. But that isn't living. That's just surviving with better lighting.
A tear slipped down Victoria's cheek before she wiped it away quickly, almost angrily, as if she resented the body for betraying the composure she had worked so hard to maintain. Daniel's chest tightened. "I don't want easy," he said. "I want real. I want honest.
I want the parts of this that are difficult, too, because for the first time in a long time, I don't think difficult means wrong." Victoria stared at him for a long moment. Then in a voice barely above a whisper, she asked, "Do you mean that?" Daniel nodded once. "Yes."
She stepped forward then slowly, as though afraid the moment might break if either of them moved too quickly. "You know," she said quietly, "I spent years being the person in the room who was supposed to have answers. My father built an empire. People smiled at me and measured me and tried to place me somewhere useful. You were the first person who looked at me and did not seem to want anything from me except the truth.
Daniel's throat tightened. That's because I already had what I wanted, he said. She lifted her eyes to his, and the rest of the room seemed to disappear around them. "And what was that?" She asked.
"You," he said simply, and the word landed between them with the fragile force of something finally and completely surrendered. Victoria laughed softly through the tears. And then he was crossing the last small space between them, and she was in his arms, her face pressed against his shoulder, both of them shaking with the release of everything they had been trying not to feel. It was not dramatic. It was not polished.