"I know that too."
I looked at him standing in the amber light in his spare room, boots by the door and no art on the walls and one enormous bed, and I thought about my mother lighting candles at Saint Anthony's for exactly this—not this specific situation, not a fertility clinic and a contract and an impossible inheritance law, but this feeling. This landed, certain, terrifying feeling of a man looking at you like you are not a variable in his life but the fixed point everything else gets measured from.
"Your dad really proposed after eight days," I said.
"Eight days." He paused. "She really did make him wait six months."
"Smart woman."
"Smartest person I know." His mouth curved slightly. "Second smartest."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"Ask me again in six months," I said.
Something settled in his face. Not disappointment—the opposite of disappointment, the expression of a man who'd just gotten the answer he was expecting and was satisfied by it.
"Six months," he said.
"And I'm not—I'm not making you wait for any other reason than I want to be sure. That I'm sure. Not just that you are."
"Millie." His voice was low. "Take all the time you need. But for now…”
He looked at my duffel, along with the big box we’d brought in from the cottage. The box of…things. Accessories.
Breeding tools.
The bench—maybe the thing that made me feel the weirdest, hot and embarrassed and…excited—was still in its box. Gage pulled it out himself, checking it out with a sly smile.
I blushed.
I'd assembled it in the cottage two days ago, looked at it for a long time, put it in the closet facing the wall. It had felt like too much, alone in there. Like something that required a witness.
He turned it over in his hands. Ran his thumb along the edge of the padded rest, the dark wood, the iron pipe handles where the cuffs were attached.
"Tell me how it works," he said.
“Um…the lower pad is for your hips," I said. "The upper one is for your chest. The angle keeps everything tilted." I cleared my throat. "So gravity works with us instead of against."
He looked at the cuffs.
"And these."
"Wrists." I said it evenly. "So you can—so I'm not holding myself up. So I can just—" I stopped.
"Just what."
"Stay still," I said. "Receive it."
Something moved in his jaw.
He set the bench down on the floor at the foot of the bed, adjusting the angle, taking his time with it. I sat on the edge of the quilt and watched him. The room had gone quiet in that specific way—no goats, no cattle, just the ceiling fan and the two of us and the last pale edge of light at the window.
He straightened up. Looked at the bench. Looked at me.
"Take everything off," he said.
Butterflies erupted in my chest and stomach.
