Chapter 45 – “When We Disagree”

It started with the color of a couch.

Cream or charcoal. Clean minimalism or deep mood.

It was ridiculous, really — how something so small could spiral.

They were furnishing the new guest room. Or, more accurately, trying to.

Will had pulled up a photo on his iPad. "This one feels warmer. Lived in."

Eliza tilted her head, unimpressed. "It feels soft. Safe. Boring."

"It feels real," he countered. "Like something people actually sit on, not just stare at."

She crossed her arms. "That's the point, Will. It's a guest room, not a family rec center."

His tone dropped. "You know, sometimes I can't tell if you want this house to feel like home or like a magazine spread."

The air snapped tight.

She went still.

"That's unfair," she said coldly.

"I'm not trying to be unfair," he said, gentler now. "But you shut me down when I try to shape anything around us."

"Because you treat 'around us' like a compromise," she said. "Like I'm supposed to bend to your version of home just because it's softer."

"No," Will said quietly, "just because it's ours."

The silence that followed didn't last long.

Eliza walked out.

Not stormed. Not slammed.

Just… left the room.

Will didn't follow.

Not immediately.

He sat with the words they'd thrown, softer than insults but sharper than knives. And when he finally found her—in the garden, kneeling in the dirt with unplanted lavender in her hands—he saw the way her shoulders curled in.

He knelt beside her.

"Hey."

She didn't look at him. "I don't know how to fight like a partner yet," she said. "Only how to fight to win."

Will exhaled.

"That's okay," he murmured. "I know how to stay."

She set the pot down slowly. Wiped her hands on her thighs.

"I hated that you called the room 'safe,'" she whispered. "Because I don't know what safe looks like. I never have. I thought building sharp corners and clean lines would make me feel something. But I still flinch when things get too still."

He reached for her hand. Took it gently.

"You don't have to build perfect to be worthy of peace."

"I'm afraid if I stop building, it'll all fall apart."

He brushed his thumb across her wrist.

"Then we build together. And if something falls—we fix it. Not you alone. Us."

She turned then. Fully. Eyes open and tired and raw.

"I love you," she said. "Even when I forget how to show it."

"I know," he whispered.

And then—there, in the dirt, surrounded by unplanted things—they kissed.

Soft. Long.

A slow rebuild.

Not from rubble.

From love.

That night, they didn't finish furnishing the room.

But they did choose a color.

Charcoal… with a cream throw.