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My husband mentioned it. Seven years he’s had his eyes on me. It never once occurred to me to ask why. Why not six, why not ten? Why that year? I feel a little sick.

I can't believe I didn't remember his face at the wedding or from the photograph on Laszlo's desk, even though something did tug at my memory strings. His father had been dying, bleeding out from the inside, and I was responsible for his recovery. How could I not recognize him? He was a patient for one week of my first year at this hospital. I moved on and forgot him. That's what we do. I was taught to let patients go or drown, so I followed the rules.

I saved Laszlo's father, and I had no idea. While somewhere across this city a man I had never met, the patient’s son, found out my name.

And he never told me. All these months. All the fights. He told me what he did for seven years. He never told me why.

"Everything all right?" Dr. Shah asks.

"Fine." I straighten up and give him back his screen. "Small world."

I finish my shift and can’t remember how. It’s ten o'clock and I'm sitting in my car in the garage with my seatbelt on. Honestly, I can’t even remember how I managed to do my work after that bomb fell on me. I think about calling Daphne, but I don't. I think I might cry, and I don't even know what about because nothing sad has happened—a man is alive because of me, so this is the best possible scenario.

It's just too big though, this whole thing. This fact must have been the entire reason why Laszlo started stalking me in the first place and why we got married.

I drive home and when I go up the driveway, the lights are still on. Of course, he’s waiting for me.

He's in the kitchen when I come in, sleeves rolled up, jacket over the back of a chair. The table is laid for two—properly laid with cloth napkins, the fine china plates his mother gave us that I feel stressed actually eating off of. Something in the oven smells like it's been cooking for hours. He's opening a bottle of wine, and when he hears me he looks up. His entire face transforms with pure joy. My stomach can’t handle it.

"You're late," he says. "I kept the food warm for you."

I know where you were seven years ago…

I hang up my coat.

He's plated up before I'm done washing my hands. We sit down and the food is beautiful, a slow-cooked stew that Dolores might have started but he likely finished. I start to push it around my plate, unable to taste. Time ticks in silence.

Then he puts his fork down and looks at me.

"All right," he says. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened."

"Manon. You've been home for ten minutes and you haven't insulted me once. Something happened."

I wasn't going to do this tonight. I'd planned to sleep on it, to work out what I wanted to say first. But I've never been able to hold anything in, and he's watching me like he already knows something’s up. That only makes me angrier because he always knows everything, while I don’t.

"I saw your father today, at the hospital. He was in the surgical outpatient wing for his annual follow-up." I put my fork down too because my hands are shaking and I don't want him to see it. "I looked at his file, Laszlo. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. My name is all over it. I treated him seven years ago, when I was a first-year. I'm the one who fought to have him re-opened when several scans said he was fine. I found the bleed that was killing him. I never knew who he was—I obviously had no recollection. And you never told me."

He stops chewing his food but doesn't say anything.

"Seven years," I say, and my voice breaks a little. "I know what that means. You know too… you’ve known. Not once did you tell me why you mentioned that number, and I didn’t ask. So tell me now. Why didn't you tell me?"

He's quiet for a moment. Then he looks down at his glass, avoiding my gaze. This man can stare down a room full of armed men without blinking, I’m sure, but right now he can't even look at me.

"Everything you've found out about me since the night you agreed to the marriage has been ugly," he says. "The photographs. The reports. Me breaking into your apartment. Moving your books. All of it was me taking from you without asking. This was different. You saved my father's life. You did it on your own, for nothing, without even knowing who he was. That was the one thing between us that was clean." He turns the glass once on the coaster. "If I told you, it would have just ended up in the same pile as everything else I've done. One more secret I kept from you. I couldn't stand that. It was the only thing I hadn't ruined. The thing you did. The thing you gave me as a gift, without ever expecting anything in return. Because it’s you. You’re like that. You save." He swallows, then lifts his gaze to me. “You saved him.”

I make myself ask the question I've been carrying inside me all evening because I have to know, even though I'm afraid of the answers.

"Is that what this is?" I ask. "You found out I saved your father, you felt like you owed me, and this is you paying it back? Because if that's what I am to you, Laszlo, a debt, then just tell me. I'd rather know." Even though him forcing me to marry him isn’t exactly what I’d ever have called paying a debt.

"No," he says without hesitation. I can see that he is fighting with himself to stay calm, but he can’t lie to me right now. He won’t. "It started as a debt I wanted to pay. It stopped being one the first time I saw you. You were sitting on the hospital stairs, eating a sandwich, too tired to get up, and I forgot why I'd come. I only wanted your name. I was going to send money and walk away." His voice drops, roughens. "Then I wanted to know you. Then I wanted to know everything, and I couldn't stop. I'm a controlled man, Manon. It's the thing I'm actually best at. And I couldn't control this for a single day of seven years." He shakes his head. His eyes glaze over but no, he’s not crying. He can’t be. "It was never gratitude. Gratitude wears off. This never did. I've loved you since before you knew I was alive."

I cannot speak. The oven hums. My throat has gone tight and there's a pressure building behind my eyes that I refuse to give in to, because if I start crying at this table I don't know what I'll do next. He's just told me he's loved me for seven years, across a dinner table, without any drama or fancy declarations. He's just sitting there, speaking quietly from the soul. And the thing that's undoing me is that he isn't waiting for me to say it back. He isn't asking me for anything at all. He told me because it was true, and now he's letting me sit with it. This is so much more devastating than demanding that emotion of me.

"I don't love you," I blurt out.

He doesn't move. He just keeps staring at me.