"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're doing the thing where your face goes completely neutral."
"This is just my face."
"It's not." He took the mug out of my hands and set it on the table and then he had both my hands in his, warm and certain, and I looked up at him and tried to find the thing in his expression that told me how bad this was going to be.
It didn't look bad.
It looked—terrified. Almost as terrified as I felt.
"I've been trying to figure out how to say this for about a week," he said. "And I'm just going to say it because I'm not good at speeches and you're standing here looking at me like I'm about to fire you and I need you to know that's not—" He stopped. Exhaled. "That's not what this is."
"Then what is it," I said. Barely sound.
He looked at me. The pale early light on his face, the cedar dark behind him, Bishop at the fence watching us with his ears straight up.
"I don't want while you're here," he said. "I want you. All of it—the film and the career and the traveling and whatever comes next." His hands tightened around mine. "I want to be the person you come home to. Whatever home looks like for you. I'll figure it out." A beat. "I love you. That's what I'm trying to say. I've been trying not to say it because I thought it would scare you off and then I realized I was just scaring myself and?—"
"Sawyer."
"I know the timing is?—"
"Sawyer."
He stopped.
I looked at him. At this man who made my eggs right without being asked and waited at picnic tables in the cold and talked to his grieving brother on Thursday mornings and had spent two months quietly, methodically taking apart every wall I'd ever built without once making me feel like I was losing something.
"I thought about you the whole time," I said. "Every scene. Every line." I turned my hands over in his and held on. "Every love scene on the page I was thinking about you and it made me insane because I'm supposed to be a professional and I could not stop—" I stopped. Swallowed. "I left at five-thirty in the morning, Sawyer. I haven't slept. I drove two and a half hours in the dark." I looked up at him. "Why do you think I did that?"
He was very still.
"Say it," he said. Low.
"I love you." It came out steadier than I expected. Steadier than I felt. "I've been trying not to for months and I'm done trying."
Something moved through his face—fast, unguarded, the careful thing dissolving all at once.
He pulled me in and kissed me, one hand at my jaw, the other at my waist, and I grabbed his jacket with both fists and held on. He kissed me like the week had been long and the morning was cold and he'd been waiting at a picnic table in the dark…and like he loved me.
When he pulled back his forehead dropped to mine.
"Okay," he said. Rough.
"Okay," I said.
Behind us Bishop exhaled loudly, deeply satisfied, and went back to his grass.
THIRTEEN
Daniela
I loved him.
I loved him and he loved me…and oh God, he was pulling me into the camper, up the little set of stairs, pushing my jacket off my shoulders…
He was slow, not frantic, but…still desperate. Desperate andenjoyingit as much as I was enjoying him, my hands sliding under his shirt and sweater, curling against his abs. He leaned in to kiss me, pressing me against the counter, then he trailed his lips down my neck.
