Page 172 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

“I know. But knowing and feeling are different things.”

“Yeah.” Gabe pulls me closer. “But maybe that’s okay. Maybe guilt is just love with nowhere to go. Maybe carrying it means we’re honoring what he meant to us.”

The insight surprises me. Gabe usually processes emotion through action rather than analysis.

“When did you become so wise?” I ask.

His smile holds sadness alongside determination. “When I realized that the best way to honor his memory is to become the man he believed I could be.”

“And who is that?”

“Someone who loves you completely without trying to own you. Someone who protects without controlling. Someone who builds instead of breaks things.” He pauses, considering. “Someone who makes you happy instead of just making you come.”

The observation draws unexpected laughter from my chest, bubbling up from somewhere deeper than grief. “You’re good at both.”

“I try.”

“You succeed.”

“Ready to go inside?” Gabe asks.

“Yes.”

We step through the sliding door into warmth and light, but I stop just inside, my gaze drawn toward the hallway that leads to his half of the condo.

To the closed door at the end. Gabe’s room—a space of dominance and submission, control and surrender, pleasure and pain.

Gabe tracks my gaze, understanding flickering across his features. “Ally…”

“I know it’s there,” I say quietly. “I know what’s behind that door. I just… I don’t know if…”

“Hey.” He turns me to face him, hands gentle on my shoulders. “Look at me.”

I do, seeing patience in his eyes instead of expectation, understanding instead of disappointment.

“That room, what happens in there—it’s not going anywhere. The equipment, the dynamic, all of it can wait.” His thumb traces my cheek. “We don’t have to figure it out tonight. Or tomorrow. Or next week.”

“But you need?—”

“I need you. However you can give yourself to me. If that’s sex in our bedroom for the next year, then that’s what we do. If it’s never going back to my room, then we don’t.” His voice carries absolute certainty. “What I don’t need is for you to force yourself into something you’re not ready for because you think I can’t live without it. I can and I will.”

The relief that floods my system is unexpected, washing away tension I didn’t realize I was carrying.

“What if I’m never ready? What if losing him changed what I can handle?”

“Then we adapt. Find new ways to connect. New things that work for us instead of what worked for us before.” He leans his forehead against mine. “Everything’s in flux, Ally. We’re different people than we were. It’s okay if what we need from each other has changed, too.”

“You’re really okay with that? With not knowing?”

“I’m okay with whatever lets us be together. The rest we’ll figure out when we’re ready to figure it out.”

The acceptance in his voice provides permission I didn’t know I needed—to heal at my own pace, to redefine intimacy on my own terms, to let our relationship evolve instead of forcing it back into familiar patterns.

“I love you,” I tell him, meaning more than simple affection.

“I love you too,” he replies, understanding everything the words carry.

We move past the closed door that holds memories of different kinds of intimacy, toward the space we shared as three and now must learn to share as two. The room feels different—larger and smaller simultaneously, familiar yet strange, ours but also empty.