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Not for two people. It had managed two people fine.

It was too small for me to stand ten feet from that open doorway pretending something ordinary had happened.

I went outside.

***

Night air hit my face, cool and dry.

I sat on the porch steps.

My hands rested on my knees. The left one ached. I flexed it, then rolled my shoulder carefully until the pain settled back into its usual dull place.

Across the yard, the barn roof held a little moonlight. A horse shifted inside. The creek sounded farther away than it had in spring.

I listened for the bed frame.

Nothing.

For her footsteps.

Nothing.

She was asleep.

I ought to have felt useful. I had felt useful when I’d built the room. Useful when I’d found the mug. There was work, there was completion, there was a reasonable place to put my pride.

This wasn’t pride.

She’d asked me.

I kept coming back to that, and every time I did, my chest hurt in a fresh place.

I hadn’t talked her into it. Hadn’t made her laugh until she forgot to resist. Hadn’t taken the clipboard and assumed that because she hadn’t argued, I understood what she wanted.

She’d said it.

Help me.

I tipped my head back against the porch post.

God.

I wanted to be a man she could say that to when she was wide awake.

That was the part I couldn’t joke away.

Not carrying her. Not being wanted for a minute because I happened to be nearby when exhaustion caught up.

I wanted her to know what she was asking. Know who she was asking. Have every ounce of that formidable mind working, and still choose me.

Which meant tonight didn’t answer a damn thing.

It wasn’t forgiveness for the kiss. It wasn’t permission for another. It wasn’t proof that I knew what she needed better than she did.

She had needed to get to bed.

I had helped her get there.