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"Stop looking at it," Gage says from the kitchen.

"I'm not looking at it."

"You've been not looking at it for ten minutes."

"It's my house."

"It's just a house." He comes in with two mugs. "You're the part I care about."

He hands one to me and goes to the fire like he didn't just say that out loud. I sit there holding hot cider I never asked for, working very hard on my face.

I end up on his couch under my grandmother's quilt, the one he returned washed and folded and never mentioned again. He builds up the fire and takes the other end of the couch, and the cushion dips so far under him that I slide two inches toward the middle, which is unfair on a structural level.

Sid appears on the middle cushion and lies down facing me, which feels editorial.

Gage lifts him with one hand and sets him on the floor.

Household staff, Sid says, are becoming a problem.

Gage nods at my foot. "Your ankle."

"It's fine."

"Let me see it."

"It's fine."

He waits. He's very good at waiting. It's the single most annoying skill anyone has ever developed.

"Can I?"

That's what does it. He asked before he touched my throat on Monday, and he hasn't stopped asking since, and my whole body reacts to the two syllables like it's been waiting all day for them.

I put my foot in his lap. And I can’t help but think about what I did the other night.

He turns my ankle toward the firelight. The salt burn from the garden has gone from red to angry pink, ugly in the shape of a splash. His thumb settles just below it, careful, not on it, and his hands run so hot that the ache is gone before he's even done anything.

"It's healing," he says.

"You sound disappointed."

"I sound relieved. They're different."

"You'd have to smile for me to tell."

He works something out of a tin and smooths it over the burn with two fingers. It smells like beeswax and pine sap. He goes slow, and I stop being able to hear the fire. My body reacts to his touch. A pulse of heat throbbed between my thighs.

He doesn’t say a word but I can feel him tense up as he probably can smell my arousal again. No matter how much I try to hide it, he’s always going to know. It’s not fair.

I need to say something. Anything.

"I was scared of you for six months."

"I know."

"You could have fixed that."

"I could have."