"I'm asking foryou.I've been asking for days. I hiked up a mountain and got concussed and kidnapped and shot at, and the one thing I have not done is change my mind about you. Not once."
"Because you don't have all the facts."
"Screw the facts!"
"Spoken like no lawyer ever." He laughs and presses his forehead to mine. "Listen to me. Tonight, you wanted to give me something, and I took it. Selfishly. I needed to forget for a little while, and you let me. But I'm not taking the rest. Not yet."
"Why not? Give me one good reason."
"Because when I have you—" He stops. Breathes. "IfI have you. It's not going to be because I was sad about the past and you felt sorry for me. And it's not going to be with you half-informed about the man on top of you. When you say yes, I need it to be a real yes. Eyes open. Everything on the table."
"My eyesareopen."
"They're not. And that's my fault, not yours." He kisses my forehead. The tenderness of it, after everything his mouth just did, scrambles me completely. "Soon. I promise you. The rest of the story, and then—if you still want this—everything else."
"And if I still want this, you won't stop me?"
"If you still want this," he says, "God himself won't stop me."
Well.
That's one way to phrase that.
You can accuse Afon of many things, but you cannot deny that the man has a way with words.
He releases my wrist. I flex my fingers and consider my options.
It doesn't take long. In short, I have none, because the man has the self-control of a monument and I just discovered I have the self-control of a spazzy golden retriever.
"This is extortion," I inform him. "Again. You keep extorting me, and I keep letting you get away with it."
"I never claimed to be a good man."
"Agree to disagree." I gesture at myself, then at Wolf. "Exhibit A. Exhibit B."
"Those prove nothing."
"Au contraire—Wolf and I proveeverything, Your Honor. You're constitutionally incapable ofnotsaving things that need saving. You see a stray dog, you save a stray dog. You see a concussed girl, you save a concussed girl. Et cetera."
He sighs and rubs his face. "Go to sleep, Caroline."
"You always say that when you're losing."
"It's late, and we've both had a long day." He reaches down, finds the flannel where it landed, and hands it back to me. "Put your shirt on before you freeze."
"I thought it was your shirt?" I tease.
"It stopped being my shirt three days ago and we both know it."
I pull it on. He drags the quilt up over both of us, and Wolf, sensing that the coast is clear, hops back onto the foot of the bed and flattens our feet with his entire body weight. Nobody objects.
I tuck myself against Afon's side, my head on his chest, and his arm drapes around me without any hesitation at all. That's new. Four days ago, this man wouldn't share a coffee mug's worth of personal information. Now, I can hear his heartbeat slowing under my ear and his thumb is moving in small circles on my shoulder like it's been doing it for years.
"Afon?"
"Mm."
"Did it work? The forgetting?"
