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She turns toward me again.

"Why now?"

I hold her gaze.

"Because I already stayed out of your life once."

Her expression stills. I continue before she can interrupt.

"I thought I was doing the right thing when I ended us. My father had just died, the company was changing, the family was changing, and I believed the responsible thing was to make the decision before I dragged you into the middle of it."

Her eyes remain on mine.

"I know what you believed," she says.

"I know."

"That didn't make it right."

"No," I say. "It didn't."

That gets a reaction, small but immediate. Blaire looks at me more carefully. I lean back against the seat.

"I decided for both of us," I say.

"I told myself it was necessary because that made the decision easier to justify. What I understood later was that I never gave you a choice."

She says nothing. I continue.

"I was out of line."

The words are simple because they need to be.

"I thought I was protecting you from a life I assumed would become impossible," I say.

"Instead, I made the decision, ended it and expected you to live with the consequences."

Blaire looks down at her hands. I don't move closer.

"I regretted it," I tell her.

"Not immediately in the way you probably wanted me to. At first, I was too busy convincing myself I had done what needed to be done. Later, when everything settled, I understood that I had hurt both of us because I decided I knew what was best."

She looks back at me.

"You make it sound very reasonable now."

"It wasn't reasonable."

"No," she says. "It wasn't."

"I know."

She studies me for several seconds. There is no softness in her expression, but the edge has shifted. Not disappeared. Shifted.

"You never said any of that," she says.

"I know."