"Yeah." His voice is off. Just slightly. A quarter-tone flat. "Herbs would be good."
"Jason said he'd help me pick out a starter kit. Basil, thyme, rosemary. The basics."
"That's — yeah. Good."
I look at him. Really look. He's standing there with his hands in his jacket pockets and his jaw set and his eyes on the room like he's trying to memorize it or burn it down, and I realize he's not okay.
"Silas."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You look like someone cancelled your library card."
"I'm fine, Dev. This is good. This is your moment."
"Then why do you look like that?"
He's quiet. A car passes. The October wind moves the leaves in the gutter. Mrs. Zillmann's shadow moves behind the kitchen window.
"Because I'm about to say something selfish," he says.
"Okay."
"And I know it's selfish. And I know it contradicts everything I've said for the past two weeks about your plan and your timeline and respecting your independence. And I'm saying it anyway because we made a deal. No editing, no curating, honesty even when it's inconvenient."
"Okay."
"Don't move in here." He says it fast, like ripping off a bandage. "Stay with me. At the bar. In my terrible twin bed with the creaky frame. Stay."
The lease flutters in my hand.
"I know," he says before I can respond. "I know that's not fair. I know you need this. I know the apartment is the thing you did yourself, your money, your plan, your name on the line. I know all of that and I'm asking anyway because —" He takes a breath. "Because I don't want to sleep without you. Because my room doesn't make sense without your books on the nightstand. Because you reorganized my shelf by emotional impact and I can't put it back and I don't want to put it back. Because I'm selfish and I love you and I want you HOME, not three miles away in a studio with a two-burner stove."
The words hang in the air. Honest. Messy. Exactly what he promised. No curating, no waiting for the right moment.
I look at him. This man. This quiet, patient, book-reading man who waited for me and now can't stand the thought of sleeping without me. Who built bookshelves into a house I hadn't agreed to live in. Who said "I love you" in a laundromat under fluorescent lights and meant it more than anyone has ever meant anything.
"No," I say.
His face doesn't change. Doesn't fall, doesn't close. He nods, once, the way Knox nods. Accepting, complete.
"Okay," he says.
"Let me finish."
He waits.
"No, I'm not staying at the bar. I'm signing this lease. I'm moving into this apartment with its kitchen window and its door that locks from the inside. I'm going to buy a kitchen scale and put herbs on the sill and sleep in a bed that's mine in a room that's mine and prove, to myself, not to you, to myself, that I can be alone and be okay." I hold his gaze. "But Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm only signing month to month."
He blinks. The nod freezes halfway. Something shifts behind his eyes, the calculation, the recognition, the slow dawn of what I'm actually saying.
"Month to month," he repeats.
"Not a year. Not six months. Month to month. Because the apartment is the bridge. Not the destination."