There was one subject James and I kept avoiding.
The nine months.
We talked around it.
Never through it.
I knew where I had been.
I knew what I had done.
I knew about Mohammed.
But James?
I knew almost nothing.
One afternoon, while we were sitting outside the farm, I finally asked.
"What did you do during those nine months?"
He looked at me.
"Why?"
"Because I want to know."
He smiled faintly.
"I worked."
"Only worked?"
"Mostly."
I studied his face.
"What about relationships?"
He went quiet.
My heart sank slightly.
I immediately regretted asking.
"You don't have to answer."
"I wasn't with anyone."
His answer came calmly.
I nodded.
"Okay."
But something inside me still felt unsettled.
Not because I had proof of anything.
I didn't.
It was simply the uncertainty.
I had spent nine months living a completely different life.
It would have been impossible for James to remain exactly the same person.
And I couldn't expect him to.
So I stopped asking.
Instead, I focused on what we had now.
We worked together.
We laughed.
We argued over silly things.
We cooked.
We talked about my business.
James encouraged me to start again.
"You can rebuild."
"I don't have much capital."
"Start small."
So I did.
One customer became two.
Two became five.
Slowly, my confidence returned.
I began to feel like myself again.
But sometimes, when I looked at James, I felt something I couldn't explain.
It wasn't fear.
It wasn't distrust.
It was distance.
A tiny invisible distance.
Like standing beside someone you loved while knowing there was a room inside them you no longer had the key to.
One evening, I asked him,
"Are we okay?"
He looked surprised.
"Of course."
"I mean really okay."
He took my hand.
"We're together, aren't we?"
"Yes."
"Then we're okay."
I smiled.
But his answer didn't completely satisfy me.
Still, I let it go.
I had learned that relationships couldn't survive if every silence became an interrogation.
I wanted to trust him.
I wanted us to have a second chance.
And I desperately wanted to believe that love could return stronger after being broken.
Maybe it could.
Maybe it couldn't.
I simply wasn't ready to know yet.