The words hung in the air between them. She didn’t look as shocked as he’d expected, but her hands were shaking.
“I want it more than I have wanted anything in my life. I want to bind myself to you openly and permanently. I want the whole clan to know you are mine and I am yours. I want to sleep beside you until the mountains wear to dust.”
Her face paled at that, and he nearly stopped. He nearly offered her the door again. Instead he made himself stay where he was and keep going.
“But wanting it does not make it mine to take,” he said. “And wanting you to stay does not give me the right to keep you.”
“If you know that, why haven’t you ever said any of this?” she whispered.
And there was the question he’d spent a year avoiding. The thing he’d buried so deep he’d nearly convinced himself it wasn’t there. The truth he’d been dancing around for months, hiding behind patience and restraint and endless careful kindness. This time he was the one to look away.
“Because I’m afraid.”
The word fell between them, stark and strange in his mouth. He did not speak of fear. He was the one others came to when they were afraid—the steady one, the calm one, the mountain that didn’t move. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d admitted to being frightened of anything.
“Afraid of what?” she asked softly.
“Of asking you to stay.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid that if I tell you how much I want you, you’ll hear obligation instead of desire. That if I tell you I want you as my mate, you’ll look at everything I’ve done for you this past year and think you owe me something in return. Because I could not bear to have my wanting become another weight you had to carry.”
Her eyes filled again.
“So I thought the safest thing was to make sure you always knew you could leave. I told myself that was enough.” He looked back at her. “And perhaps sometimes I hid behind it.”
“Because if you never asked me to stay, I could never tell you no,” she said quietly.
He winced, but he forced himself to meet her eyes.
“Yes.”
She stared at him as though she’d never seen him clearly before.
“You’re afraid I’ll reject you.”
“Yes. But I also am afraid you will feel you cannot.”
That distinction mattered, and she seemed to understand that because her face softened.
“So I hide it,” he finished. “I build you doors. I offer you exits. I take back every true thing the moment I’ve said it, because I’d rather you never know the depth of what I feel than have that feeling become a cage. Even if hiding it means…” His throat worked. “Even if it means I never get to have you at all.”
“You’re afraid,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“All this time.” She closed the careful distance he’d kept between them. “All this time I thought you were the one thing that couldn’t be shaken. That you didn’t need anything. That you just gave, and gave, and gave, and never wanted anything back.” Her hand came up to rest against his chest, small and warm over the place where his heart was slamming. “And you were afraid the whole time.”
“Yes.” He covered her hand with his own. “And I’m afraid now, because I’ve finally said it.”
She looked up at him, tears on her cheeks, and for the first time since she’d come home that day the walls in her eyes were gone.
“You should have told me,” she whispered. “You great, stubborn fool. You should have told me you were scared too.”
“I didn’t know how. And perhaps I didn’t want to admit it.”
She sighed and gently patted his chest.
