Yes

They talk about it at the table, plates forgotten, the phone still face down where the call ended.

“It changed fast,” Lana says. “This morning we were in bed with no rules. Tonight she’s pregnant and booked on a plane. Six months just… folded.”

Adam nods. He turns his glass and does not drink either. “I know. One minute, the list of rules. The next, a flight number I don’t even have yet.”

“We can’t do anything about it.” She says it plain, not bitter. “We both knew it wasn’t forever. You said it when I moved in. I said it back. Mia comes home. I go. That was the shape. We just thought we had time to live inside it before we had to step out.”

“Maybe it’s better this way,” he says. “Quick. If it had been six months of the slow mornings, the needs, the way we’ve been lately… it would have been harder to put down. More complicated. For you. For me. For her, when she walked back into a house that had started to mean something else.”

“We fed our needs,” she says. “I’m not sorry about it. The kitchen. The bed. You telling me to forget the rules. It was good. It also had an end date written on it from the first night. The end date just moved up. That’s all that happened. The thing itself didn’t become a marriage.”

He is quiet for a moment. “You’re taking it cleaner than I am.”

“I’m not clean,” she says. “I’m clear. There’s a difference. I liked being here. I liked the blowjobs that stopped being a chore. I liked you eating me like you meant it. I also know whose name is on the lease and whose baby is on that plane. Clear isn’t the same as not feeling it.”

Adam lets out a breath. “I don’t want to make it ugly for her. Or for you. She called happy. I want her to come home to that.”

“Then we don’t make it ugly,” Lana says. “We finish the time we have. We don’t build a secret that needs a speech. When she lands, I pack up and I go. That’s the original rule. The fast ending just means I pack sooner.”

They sit with that. No fight. No plan to hide a second life in the gaps of a marriage. Just two people who got something unexpected and are watching the clock run out on it, and choosing not to smash the clock.

Lana stands. Her chair scrapes. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’m coming too.”

They clear nothing. They are almost at the hall when she stops. She turns, puts a hand on his chest, and kisses him. Soft. Not a start. A period she wants him to feel.

“Last night and this morning were a gift,” she says against his mouth. “Thank you. For treating it like it mattered. Like I mattered. I’ll keep that. Even after I leave.”

Adam’s mouth curves. Not the grateful smile. The other one. Naughty. Mischievous. She has seen it on nights that did not end in talking.

“What?” she says. “What is that look?”

“We still have two nights,” he says. “I still have needs for those two nights.”

He picks her up before she can answer. Arms under her knees, her startled laugh against his neck, the two nights already starting in the hallway. He carries her toward the bedroom.

Mia's flight is still a day away. The plates are still on the table. Her arms go around him anyway.