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"I have more," he said, already turning for the door. "For next time."

Then they were gone. The front door closed. The house went quiet.

Adam refilled both our coffees without asking.

I sat at the kitchen table where James had been sitting, the Ankylosaurus gone but a small smear of chocolate on the placemat still there. Adam set my mug in front of me and took the chair across from mine.

The morning light was coming through the kitchen window at the angle it got around eight-thirty, falling across the table between us.

He looked at me for a long moment. Not the checking-for-damage look, though that was in there. Something underneath it.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing." He turned his coffee mug a quarter turn. "I should have gone straight to Gathered and picked you up instead of expecting you to just come over. I should’ve been with you from the moment I got off work."

"That's only slightly stalkerish. Besides, it wasn’t Pacific Rim, and you’d handled them. You couldn’t have known I hired an idiot drug dealer. I’m the one who should have known. Maybe I’m the dumb one.”

“But I should’ve⁠—”

I put my mug down. "Adam."

"I know." He set his coffee aside. "I know. You got yourself free. You found the crate. You were handling it."

"I was," I said. "But I was also really glad when I heard your voice."

Something in his face shifted.

"Good," he said. "Because that's what I'm here for."

He reached across the table and turned my hand over, his fingers tracing a slow line across my palm.

"You are my heart, Zoe." His voice was quiet, the directness in it the kind that had nowhere to hide. "I know we've been dancing toward this, and I know there's been a lot happening, and I know I'm not always good at saying things plainly. But you are my heart. You are the reason this place feels like somewhere I'm supposed to be."

I looked at him across the table.

"You complete something in me I didn't have words for before I met you," he went on. "I thought I knew what my life was supposed to look like. I thought I had all the pieces. Then you showed up in a ditch and you turned out to be the piece I didn't know I was missing."

My throat ached in the best way.

"Adam—"

"Let me finish."

I pressed my lips together.

"You asked me once if I'd be happy here. In Jasper Creek. For the rest of my life." His thumb moved across my knuckles. "The answer is, I'll be happy wherever you are. That's the honest answer. You could tell me tomorrow that you wanted to move to Portland, and I'd start researching neighborhoods." He paused. "Though I'd lobby for you to reconsider, because I've put a lot of work into this community."

"That sounds like you."

"But here's what I actually know." He looked at me steadily. "Nothing would make me happier than having you as my wife. Nothing. That's what I want. You, James, the life we'd build. I want it so much I've been thinking about rings."

My breath caught.

"I don't have one yet," he said. "I haven't found the right one. I'm not doing this the way I planned to, in a restaurant, with a better speech and an actual ring box." His jaw tightened slightly. "But I mean every word of it, and I didn't want to wait anymore. So, consider this a pre-proposal."

The morning light sat between us.

"Consider this a pre-yes," I said.