Prompt - "Admittance"

Prompt - "Admittance"

         He said it every day. Well, almost every day. Weekends didn't count. To him, if life were a TV show, the weekends would be the commercial breaks, while the weekdays had all of the content.
         It wasn't much, really. Just four simple words. Every time it was the same, every time the same pause right before the fourth word. It was routine, automatic.
         Every time he said it, he was right on the line between telling her and not telling her. Sometimes he had the courage to be louder than normal, but there was probably some other stuff in the background to block it out. Every time, it was a whisper under his breath, so soft that the scratch of a pencil on paper could almost completely drown it out.
         "...I love you, Cristina."
         She pauses, but he doesn't notice. He didn't see this coming. Not in a million years did he think she'd hear him. But she did.
         "...hmm?"
         Not even a word, but a sound. It was still every bit as incriminating. For a split second he hesitated, his pencil frozen in place, breath hitched in his throat. It seemed to last hours, but it was over as quickly as it began. He sighed, breathing back to normal.
         "...Nothing."
         She shrugged, and continued working. The tension in his neck loosened a bit. He certainly dodged a bullet there. Aside from that incident, he continued this almost-daily ritual of his, and he was much more careful in how loud he said it. Part of him was hoping she heard enough...but the other part was content to wait for the right time.
         After all, he couldn't admit it to her without admitting it to himself, first.