Marco waited for me at the front of the room with none of the controlled indifference he had worn the first time.
When I reached him, he whispered, “You can still walk away.”
I smiled.
“You really need new material.”
He laughed, and the sound was so unguarded that my father looked down, smiling through tears.
Then Marco said the words he had spent a year refusing to need.
“Stay anyway.”
This time there was no debt behind the request.
No armed man outside the door.
No desperate father deciding for me.
Only a choice.
Mine.
I stayed.
