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“Then I’ll be right beside you,” he says. “The whole time.”

“I know you will.”

I don’t let go of his hand. I turn around, and I lead him back up the garden path toward the house. Past the dark kitchen window where Milana is definitely watching. Past the spot on the drive where his truck sat last night.

At the front door, he stops.

“I’ll be in the truck,” he says.

“No, you won’t.”

He looks down at me.

“It’s freezing, Theo. And I’m not going out there at one in the morning again because I can’t sleep.” I open the door. Warm air and the smell of Galana’s cooking spill out onto the step. “Come inside.”

He hesitates for one more second.

Then he follows me in.

THEO

Her bedroom is pink.

Not a little pink. Pink walls, pink curtains, a pink lampshade with tassels on it. There’s a row of stuffed animals along the top of a bookcase, a cork board covered in photographs of five girls at various ages, and a single bed with a white iron frame that looks like it was built for someone half my size.

I stop in the doorway.

Evaria turns around and sees my face. She presses her lips together very hard.

“Papa decorated it when I was eight. I asked for purple. He said pink was more appropriate.” She folds her arms. “I’ve been wanting to repaint for seventeen years.”

I look at the bed. Then at her.

“That’s not going to hold me.”

“Then you’ll have to be careful,” she says, and something in her voice changes, low and certain, and the joke goes out of the room all at once.

She reaches past me and closes the door.

The click of it sounds very loud in the quiet house. Somewhere down the hall, water is running. Galana’s lamp is burning in the corridor. Downstairs, I can hear the low murmur of her father’s men changing over at the gate.

Evaria stands in front of me in the lamplight with the tassels throwing shadows across her face. She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me, the way she looked at me in the truck before she leaned across the seat. Deciding.

Last night was fast and desperate and in the dark. I barely saw her.

Tonight I want to see all of her.

I lift my hand and pull the pin from her hair. The knot falls loose. Black hair spills down over her shoulders and her back, heavy and soft, and I push my fingers into it and tilt her face up to mine.

“Slower this time,” I tell her. “Let me see you.”

Her breath catches. “Okay,” she agrees.

I kiss her like I’ve got all night. Because, this time I have.

***

I wake at five with my feet hanging off the end of a pink bed and a woman sprawled across my chest.