You're allowed to love them deeply and still be slow to trust. Slowness isn't withholding; it's careful, and careful is how you stay.

The thought behind it

The guilt was borrowed. This line gives it back and lets you keep the thing you were quietly ashamed of wanting. Under Couple the romance is a thousand small repairs, made quickly, before the small thing became the whole thing. Everything hinges on “16”, which is the part a politer version of this sentence would have left out.