He rises from his crouch and sits beside me on the bench instead, close enough that his knee is against mine, and for a moment we just exist in the same space with the fire going and the night outside and the weight of the last several hours settling between us like sediment.
"I broke things," he says. "With you. Deliberately."
"Yes."
"I knew what I was doing and I did it anyway."
"I know." I keep my hand against his jaw. He hasn't moved away from it. "You were protecting yourself. I understand that now. It doesn't mean it didn't leave marks."
"No." His voice is rough. "It doesn't."
"But I'm not asking you to fix the past," I say. "I'm asking what happens now."
He lifts his hand and covers mine, the one still resting against his face. His fingers are warm and the grip is careful, the same careful he used on my arm, and he turns my palm up and presses his mouth to the inside of my wrist, just above thebandage, where my pulse is doing something unsteady that he can absolutely feel against his lips.
"Tell me what you want," he says, against my skin.
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
I tilt his face up with the hand he's holding, and the bond runs through me like current, open and bright and not frightening the way it was in the beginning.
"You," I say. "Tonight. This."
He kisses me, and it's nothing like the first time, which was shock and desperation and neither of us admitting what we were doing. This is deliberate. His hand comes up to my face, his thumb along my cheekbone, and the kiss is slow and thorough and entirely unhurried, as though he has decided that if this is happening, he's going to do it correctly.
I turn toward him and his other arm comes around my waist, pulling me closer, and I go willingly, which is its own kind of answer to a question neither of us asked out loud.
"Are you sure?" he asks, against my mouth.
"Yes."
"Your arm—"
"Is fine. Stop talking about my arm."
He makes a sound that might be a laugh, low and quiet, and kisses me again, deeper this time. His hands are everywhere careful, no urgency, no rush, and I realize that's deliberate too. He's not taking anything. He's offering.
I pull back long enough to look at him, at the fire-lit lines of his face and the dark of his eyes and the man who told me about his sister twenty minutes ago like pulling a splinter out of old wood, painful and necessary and too long left.
"Ryder," I say.
"Still here," he says.
I reach for the buttons of his jacket. His hands cover mine immediately.
"Are you sure?" he asks again.
"You're going to keep asking me that, aren't you."
"Every time," he says. "Until you tell me to stop."
"Then yes," I say. "I'm sure. Now let me do this."
He drops his hands and lets me work the buttons, watching my face while I do it with an attention that would be unnerving if the bond weren't running so open and warm between us that I can feel his steadiness like a second heartbeat. I push the jacket off his shoulders, and he shrugs out of it, and then his hands are at the hem of my shirt, a question in the pause before he moves further.
"Yes," I say, before he asks.
