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"Whatever you've been not saying since the gravel."

He's quiet for so long I think he's going to let it go.

"I've been afraid for you since April," he says. "That's not new. I know that."

"But?"

"Today you put that line where you wanted it and I was on the wrong side of everything I know how to do." His voice goes down to almost nothing. "I couldn't reach you. I was on the ground and I couldn't get up and I couldn't reach you, and I lay there and thought about a world without you in it."

"Gage."

"There's a version of this where you never choose me. I can live in that one. I've had six months of practice." He turns his head. "There isn't a version where you're gone. I looked at it today. There's nothing on the other side of it."

The house is so quiet I can hear the wood stove settling downstairs.

I think about a man sitting on my porch steps all night. A door rehung in the dark. A toothbrush the same purple as the one in my burned-up house. Six ruined donuts.

"I'm not ready to call this destiny," I say.

He nods. He expected that.

"I don't know how to love something that got picked out for me. I'm not going to lie and say I do." I turn until I'm facing him. "But I know what I'm choosing tonight."

His eyes come up.

"Nothing’s standing behind me," I say. "Nobody's making me."

He goes completely still. Because that's his own sentence and he never expected to hear it handed back.

"Maren."

"Tell me no if you want. I'll go sleep in the guest room and I'll never bring it up and you'll have to fix something of mine at four in the morning to apologize."

"I don't want to say no."

"Then don't."

"This isn't a claim." His hand comes up to my face, careful, like I'm the one who's hurt. "Whatever happens in here, it isn't that. I need you to know that before, not after."

"I know it."

"Say it back."

"It isn't a claim." I lean in until my mouth is nearly on his. "It's a Tuesday."

He makes a low moan, and then I kiss him.

It isn't the fire pit. That was lightning. This is slower and worse and better, his hand sliding into my hair, my knees going either side of his hips, careful of the leg, and that lasts about forty seconds before neither of us bothers.

I get his shirt off him. It's already ruined. I get mine off too and he stops breathing, and I would make a joke about that, except his hands are on my ribs and his mouth is on my throat and I have lost the ability to be funny.

"Slowly," he says against my skin. "I've had six months of thinking about this. I'm not rushing it."

"You're hurt."

"I'm fine."

"You're wrecked."