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“That’s suspicious,” I say.

He gives me a flat look from under his hair.

“I’m just saying,” I say. “Historically, your motives where I’m concerned have not been excellent.”

He holds the look for a second.

And I laugh, out loud, too loud for midnight in a sleeping house and put my hand over my mouth.

He goes back to the book, but I can see the corner of his mouth.

“You ask a lot of questions, little Tessa,” he says to the page.

I roll my eyes and go back to my page. My cheeks are warm.

We read.

A while later, I look over at him. I’m not checking his eyes or his jaw for what’s coming.

He’s bent over the book with his hair falling forward into his eyes. He hasn’t pushed it back in a while. His sleeve is pushed up to the elbow on the arm closest to me, and there’s ink on the side of his hand, a blue smear from my pen across the edge of his palm where it dragged through his own handwriting. The knuckles on that hand are healed now, just two pale marks where they split on a man’s face in my grandma’s living room.

And I want to touch him.

It’s very simple and clear how badly I want to reach over and push his hair out of his eyes. Or put my thumb on the ink on the side of his hand and rub it off. Or just put my hand over his on the page and leave it there.

I hold the pen instead. The wanting stays where it is in the six inches of rug between my hand and his.

He looks up.

“What?”

I don’t look away. Every other time, I’ve found something else, the TV, the floor, the fire, my own knees. This time I keep looking at him, and he keeps looking back, and neither of us does anything about it.

My stomach pulls low. It’s those eyes that unravel me.

He goes back to the book first.

I don’t for a while.

I finish chapter six. I skip the part with the yacht, like she said. He finishes his book, or says he does, and puts it face down on his knee and leans his head back against the seat of the armchair and closes his eyes. The house is so quiet I can hear the snow against the window behind the cushioned seat.

And the last week collects in the room with me. The Christmas tree, with the potato hockey player in the front. His father at the round table, turning his wineglass. The old house, and the pencil marks up the doorframe. His mother bringing us cookies because she couldn’t sleep and sitting down when I asked her to. Nobody asks me for anything here. Nobody needs my money, or my silence, or for me to be fine.

Room to breathe. That’s what this is. I’ve had room to think about next year, and the year after, and a life I can’t even picture yet.

“Rafe?” I whisper.

He doesn’t open his eyes. “Yeah.”

“I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

He opens his eyes. He doesn’t lift his head. He just lies back against the chair and looks at me, sideways, from about a foot away.

“Here?” he asks.

I look around the room. Then back at him.

“Anywhere,” I say.