Koda comes over and sniffs my hand. She's been checking on me all morning, which means I've been worse at hiding it than I thought.
I strip the waders. I load the truck. I sit in the cab for a minute with my hands on the wheel and I think about what I'm going to say. The thinking doesn't help. I don't have a speech. I'm not a man with speeches. What I have is the truth and the truth is short: she's not confused, I'm not a mistake, and I am done being steady past the point where steady serves anyone.
That's all of it. That's the whole thing.
The Victorian hotel comes into view and I pull into the lot and sit there for a moment. The river is visible from here, a pale thread through the spruce. She can see it from her room. I have wondered, the past two days, whether she has looked at it.
I get out of the truck.
Maple is at the front desk when I walk through the lobby and she looks at me for a second, knowing I’ve tracked in water and mud on my boots, then says "Third floor" without me asking.
"Thank you," I say.
She nods once. Goes back to her screen.
I take the stairs.
I don't let myself slow down on the second floor landing. The thing about patience, real patience, is that it's supposed to be in service of something. Waiting for the right moment to set the line. Waiting for the water to tell you what it knows. Patience is a tool. I've been using it as a wall and calling it a virtue, and I'm done with that.
I knock.
There's a pause.
“Come in.”
I don’t hesitate. I open the door and take it in. It's the kind of hotel room where the balcony is visible straight through, and Peyton's out there, laptop open, a cold coffee beside her feet. She must have heard the knock because she's already turning in her chair, and when she sees me standing in the doorway her whole body goes still.
I step inside. The room is small and tidy and smells like her. I cross to the balcony door and push it open and step out and it's a small balcony, barely enough room for the two of us, and she looks up at me and I look down at her.
She doesn't say anything. Neither do I, for a moment. The river is right there, glinting through the trees, and the town is quiet in the midday heat, and she is sitting in a square of sunlight with her hair loose and she looks like she hasn't slept well and I did that. My steadiness did that.
"I've been on that river for twenty years," I say. "I've stayed when staying was comfortable and I've called it patience and I'm not going to do that this time."
She doesn't say anything.
"You said it was a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. You know it wasn't." I put my hands in my pockets because it's the only way to keep them still. "You're scared because it's fast and because things got you hurt before. That's fair. But you didn't miss anything with me. You read me right from the first morning and you know you did."
“Silas,” she lets out a breath, but I keep talking. I have to keep talking or I’ll lose my nerve.
"The river doesn't lie," I say. "I don't lie. And neither does what happened in that cabin." I hold her gaze. "I'm not asking for promises. I'm asking for the rest of the summer. You said you wanted to stay. I'm asking you to stay."
She stares at me.
The river is visible from the balcony, a pale glint through the spruce. She looks at it. Then back at me.
"That's the most you've ever said to me at once," she says.
"I know."
She closes her laptop and stands, her face brightening with a smile. We're nearly eye level now in this small space and she looks at me for a long moment like she's checking something, and whatever she finds must be enough because she says:
"Okay."
The weight comes off my shoulders. Relief.
I reach out and tuck a strand of hair back from her face and she leans into my hand and closes her eyes, and that undoes me more than anything else. Trust. I cup her jaw and she opens her eyes and looks at me and I kiss her, slow and deliberate, the way I do everything, and she makes a sound low in her throat and grabs the front of my shirt with both hands.
When I pull back she's still holding my shirt. Her eyes are still closed. I wait, because I am good at waiting, but this time it doesn't cost me anything.
