Casey draws his eyebrows together and tilts his head. “You can’t fix her.”

“But I can help her. I want to help her. I want it more than anything.” I pause, taking a deep breath and smiling to myself. “I’m so fucking happy. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you, but she… I think she’s my soulmate. If you believe in that sort of thing, I guess. I don’t know if I do, but if soulmates exist, she’s mine. Nothing felt right in my life until she was back in it. Even before I kissed her again…just knowing she was here and she was okay…it settled something in me. Like a missing piece.” The cliché makes me cringe, and I silently curse the English language for not having words to adequately express how it feels to hold her again.

She could walk away from me a million times. As long as she comes back to me a million and one, I’ll die a happy man.

Casey regards me as he rubs his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “You love her again.”

It’s a statement, not a question, but I answer anyway. “I never stopped.” I’ve never known something to be true in my bones like I know this: I love Scarlett. I will always love her. Even if she left me high and dry again, I’d still love her. Probably forever.

Casey sighs, resigned. “I know.” He smiles sadly. “I hope things turn out better this time.”

“They will,” I insist. They have to. For both of us.

Pulling containers out of the bag, I announce each as it lands on the counter in front of me. “I got buttered noodles, mac and cheese, and pad thai.”

“You sure know the way to a girl’s heart,” Scarlett calls from her seat in my bedroom. When she had come here the first time after we spent the night at her apartment, she squealed with delight that I had set up the desk for her again in there and ran to it, setting up to work.

I didn’t tell her I never had the heart to take it down in the first place. That it has remained, unused and untouched, since the last time she sat there. I couldn’t bring myself to move it. Not the place she sat when she wrote her second book or when she told me she loved me for the first time.

“Pretty sure the saying is about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach,” I reply, shifting so I can see her from my kitchen.

“Same biology,” she says distractedly, not moving her eyes away from the screen. She taps her lips rapidly with her middle and pointer fingers. Her eyes narrow, then she starts typing again.