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“You don’t have to say anything,” she said, fast. “I’m not saying it so you’ll say it back. I don’t need you to. I just wanted you to know, I wanted to say it out loud once in my life and actually mean it and not be scared of it, and I am scared of it, obviously, but that’s not your problem, and you don’t have to...”

“Allison.”

She stopped.

He had come up on his elbow. He was looking down at her. He wasn’t smiling, not exactly. His face was doing the thing it did when he was deciding something, except she could see that he had already decided. That he had decided a long time ago and had only been waiting.

“I don’t say things I’m not sure of,” he said.

“I know.”

“You know that about me.”

“I know.”

“So listen.” He put his hand flat on her chest, right over her heart, the way she had put hers on his in his bedroom on Pine Street. “I love you.”

She stopped breathing.

“I’m not telling you it might rain,” he said. His voice was low and rough and absolutely steady. “I’m not telling you maybe. I’m telling you it’s done. It’s been done for a long time.” He was quiet for a second. “I think it started with a cinnamon roll with no name on it. I was sure by the festival. And I haven’t been unsure of it for one minute since I watched you walk out of the trees at five in the morning with a thermos and say inventory.”

She laughed. It broke out of her wet and shaking, and the tears came right behind it, and she didn’t try to stop either one.

“You love me,” she said.

“I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you, Allison.” He brushed a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “I’ll say it every morning if that’s what it takes for you to stop bracing.”

She pulled him down to her by the front of his shirt and kissed him.

* * *

There was no hurry. There was nowhere to be. It was Christmas morning and the whole valley was still asleep and the store was closed and school was out and Margaret’s dinner wasn’t until four, and the only thing in the whole world that needed doing was this.

This morning she wanted to be the one who took her time.

She pushed him gently onto his back. He let her. He looked up at her with those chestnut eyes gone dark and warm, and she watched him understand what she was doing, and she watched him decide to let her.

She had spent four months watching this man learn things. The way he learned a room. The way he learned what a window needed, or a pipe, or a shelf. The way he had learned her, on the couch in the storm and in his bed on Pine Street, like she was something worth getting exactly right.

It was her turn.

She pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it somewhere off the side of the bed. Then she sat up, straddling him, the quilt sliding down off her shoulders, and pulled her own sweater over her head and let it fall.

She didn’t reach for the blanket.

The morning light was coming through the east window, gray going gold, and it fell across her, all of her, and she let it. Her dark hair loose and wild over her shoulders. Her full, heavy breasts. The soft round curve of her stomach. Her hips, wide and generous. Her thighs, full and warm, on either side of him. The faint silver lines of stretch marks along her hips and the undersides of her breasts, catching the light like pencil strokes. Like someone had sketched her in by hand, carefully, over years, and left every line in on purpose.

She was an art teacher. She knew what she was looking at. A real woman, in real morning light.

She looked down at him.

He was looking at her like she was the lake at sunrise.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he reached up, slowly, and put both hands on her hips, his big work worn hands spreading wide over the curves of her, and held her there. His thumbs moved over the silver lines on her skin like he was reading them.