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I let out a breath through my nose. “I thought it had.” The answer slips free before I can tidy it up. “Then I met Spencer.”

Bane’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly. “I remember.”

Of course he does.

“I spent years believing we were building a future together.” My fingers tighten around my cup. “I kept thinking that if I stayed patient long enough, eventually he’d become the man I believed he could be.”

A quiet laugh escapes me. “Turns out I was waiting for someone who never existed. I think it’s so embarrassing now.”

“I don’t.”

I look across the table.

“Hope isn’t embarrassing,” he says. “It only feels that way after it breaks.”

“I had an explanation ready for everything,” I admit.

He rubs his thumb around his coffee cup. “I heard most of them. Security sees more than people think.”

I shake my head and wrap both hands around my coffee, letting the warmth sink into my fingers while rain races down the windows behind Bane.

“After a while, I quit asking what I wanted because every plan, every weekend, every holiday depended on Spencer’s schedule. If he was free, I was free. If work called, my plans disappeared. I didn’t even notice how much I’d shrunk until everything fell apart.”

Bane looks at me for a long beat before speaking. “It looked lonely.”

Thunder rolls across the skyline, and I watch another sheet of rain blur the buildings beyond the glass.

“I still catch myself checking whether anyone else needs me before I decide what I want to do.”

“You don’t owe the world permission slips,” he says, and I look back at him. “You get to make plans because they’re yours.”

“I think I’m still figuring out how.”

“I’d be surprised if you weren’t.”

His answer carries the easy certainty he’s brought into every conversation tonight, and somehow it makes the learning feel less embarrassing.

I smile into my coffee. “I’ve monopolized this conversation.”

“You’ve filled it.” He looks toward the rain. “But thinking about back then, it’s clear I measure life differently now.”

I wait.

“When Celeste got sick, calendars stopped mattering. We counted treatments, test results, mornings she felt well enough to laugh with the girls, evenings that ended in another trip to the hospital.”

He pauses long enough to take a drink. “The twins were babies. I worked security whenever I could, then rushed home hoping I’d make it back before bedtime.”

I picture him trying to divide himself into pieces large enough for everyone who needed him. “That sounds impossible.”

“It was my every day.”

I blink.

He catches my expression and one corner of his mouth lifts. “You’d be amazed what becomes normal after a few months.”

The comment is dry enough that it almost slips past me before I smile.

“I don’t remember sleeping much. I remember making bottles at three in the morning, learning cartoon theme songs, and discovering coffee could solve fewer problems than advertised.”