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The line comes back between his eyes. "No it’s not. That’s two sizes too small for me."

"You gave it to me fifteen years ago, after you got me out of the water. I’ve kept it all these years." My face is going hot and I keep talking anyway. "I need you to understand the level of ridiculousness you'd be signing up for here. Thirteen-year-old me built you a shrine, and twenty-eight-year-old me still dusts it."

He doesn't laugh. He looks at the shirt for a long moment, and then at my face, and then he sits down slowly.

"I don't remember the shirt," he says. "I barely remembered the day until you told me. And you've been carrying it around for fifteen years."

"Everywhere I went." There's no point being cool about it now. "Every single place."

He drags a hand down his face. When it comes away he looks about ten years younger and completely lost, and I have to hold the edge of the table to keep from going to him, because I'm not done, and the next part is so much worse.

"There's one more thing. It's bigger." I stay standing. If he's going to bolt, I want to see it coming. "I stopped taking my contraceptive pill the day you fired me. Not on purpose. I forgot everything that week. I barely ate. The packet slipped behind my bed and I didn't notice until finding it when I was cleaning Sunday." His face is a completely blank mask. "So the night in the office, I wasn't protected. It's too early to test. It’s probably fine, I’ve been on birth control for years. But there's a very tiny chance I could be pregnant, and you deserve to know now, not after. And I need you to believe I would never-"

"Don't finish that sentence." It comes out hard and fast. "I know I said some pretty despicable things to you when I found that letter, but that thought would never have crossed my mind and it's not crossing it now."

"Okay." My eyes are burning. "Thank you."

He stands up. He walks to the window and looks at the water, and I watch his back and wait to find out what he’s going to do. Then he turns around, and it doesn’t seem like he’s planning on bolting.

"You want all the facts on the table. Fine. Here are mine." He looks pained. "I didn't read your papers on my own steam. My mother stood in my workshop and threatened to read them out loud to the crew if I didn't. She said she'd do voices. So I can't even claim I came to my senses by myself, because I didn't. I was dragged to them."

"That sounds like Nora." I’m going to buy her the biggest bunch of flowers and most expensive chocolates I can find in this town.

"And the morning I opened that drawer," he goes on, like he'll lose his nerve if he stops, "I walked to the yard planning to tell you I love you. That day. I'd been carrying it a while by then. It didn't go anywhere afterwards, either. I'd wake up, decide I was done with you, and then love you the entire day anyway. Every day. Being angry at you didn't touch it. Nothing touched it." He takes a breath. "So no, the last thing you told me doesn't scare me. You could tell me right now it's certain, and the only thing I'd feel is that I got something I didn't earn."

I can't say anything. There's nothing in me but heartbeat.

"I love you," he says, plainly, to my face, in his kitchen, in broad daylight. "That's the rest of what I had to say."

"Oh God."

Two tears escape, one after the other, and I don't even try to stop them. I pull in a breath that shakes the whole way down. "I love you too. I've been besotted with you for fifteen years, then I got to know you and you captured my heart even more completely. This whole thing feels like a fairy godmother just granted me my biggest wish. I love you so much, Aiden."

For a second neither of us moves. The house is dead quiet, and the last two secrets I had in the world are lying on his kitchen floor with the sun shining on them.

I don't wait for him to come to me. I cross his kitchen, reach up, and take his face in both hands, three days of stubble rough against my palms, and pull him down to me.

He comes down easy, like there was never a single day where he couldn't look at me.

The kiss starts soft and stays unhurried for a very long time, which is brand new for us. Every kiss we've ever had was either the start of a fire or the middle of one. This one is morning-slow, his hands settling warm around my waist, and halfway into it I feel his mouth curve.

Aiden Cole is smiling while he kisses me, and the feel of it goes through me like sunlight through water.

"You taste like hazelnut," he murmurs against my lips.

"You got up at an ungodly hour and drove in the dark for that hot chocolate. I’ll be expecting that kind of spoiling all the time now."

His laugh is quiet and I feel it in his chest more than I hear it. Then his hands tighten on my waist and the kiss deepens, his tongue sliding against mine like he's got the whole day. He does have the whole day. We both do. The thought makes me lightheaded all over again.

When we finally break apart he takes my hand, wrapping it up completely in his.

I'm the one who tugs him toward the hallway. I've been in his bedroom exactly once but I remember the way.

He turns me to face him at the foot of the bed and starts on the flannel's buttons. Slowly, careful not to rip them. One at a time, top to bottom, with total focus. My breathing goes shallow just from standing still under his hands.

"It survived fifteen years of you hauling it around the country and brought you back to me. I'm treating it with the reverence it deserves." He slides it off my shoulders, then folds it in half and lays it over the footboard, smoothing it flat with one pass of his hand. Something inside me comes apart quietly at the sight.

Then all of his attention is back on me.