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“For you, maybe. I only want you to be okay, Oscar. And I’m right here if you’re not.”

He laces our fingers together and props his chin on my chest. The shaking fades and I’m not sure if he sleeps. If I do. I just know that time passes and then I am awake and I want him again. I need him again, and this time he is not so gentle. My bed bangs against the wall and my bones rattle, and this time I come without making a sound, because I am too shocked and awed by the sheer force of it.

After, he cleans up again and I realise I haven’t moved from the bed since he pushed me onto it a few hours ago. That I’ve let him take care of me since then and I haven’t thought to stop him. I couldn’t imagine this a year ago. Did I have to nearly die before the gods allowed me this?

Poet stretches out beside me, on his stomach, head propped on his folded arms. He pulls the rumpled sheets over us, so we are in bed and he is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

There is nowhere on earth I would rather be.

He traces the ink on my forearm with his fingertip. “Tell me about the lube?”

I laugh, contentment rolling through me. “People have noticed we are…close. I think Rubi might’ve snuck into my house and made sure we have everything we need.”

“Rubi’s the prime suspect, eh?”

“Only River and Sol have keys, and only Rubi would be so mischievous as to steal one. Though, I should tell you—I talked to River about us. He caught me at a moment when I felt like I needed to.”

Poet rolls his neck, then fixes me with a look that’s halfway between amused and stern. “You don’t have to keep us a secret. I don’t tell my family stuff because they’re annoying, not because I don’t want them to know. And…maybe I’ve never really had anything to tell them before you.”

“You think this is something, Po?”

His mirth fades to the same emotion I feel in my own heart. The same bewildered, careful affection that grows with every day, every minute, every moment we spend together. “I think we want it to be, but I’m very aware I’ve never had a relationship to compare it to, so I might be really bad at this.”

My body still hums with enough euphoria to be certain he is not bad at anything. But I hear the subtext in his words. Beyond sex, this is as new to him as it is to me, and he is nervous, I think.

“I have Aras,” I say, as if he might’ve forgotten. As if I have forgotten in the heated joy of this night. “He is obsessed with you, and very used to men being together. But he will always come first for me, over anything and anyone.”

“Oscar, I know that. I think it’s why I feel so at home around you.”

“What do you mean?”

Poet twines his busy fingers with mine. “I was raised in a house where the little ones always came first. Whatever I needed, they needed it more, but it never felt like a sacrifice. It was family and we all found our place, and with you and Aras…if I’m meant to be with you, I’ll find my place there too.”

It is beginning to grow light outside. I stare at him in the first strains of daylight. “That is very astute for a man who believes he doesn’t know how relationships work.”

“Maybe.” Poet chuckles, brief and wonderful before he sobers again. “But I need you to know whether we make this into something or not, Aras will always come first for me too. I’ll walk away in a heartbeat if that’s what he needs.”

I believe him and the mere thought of such a thing renders me mute long enough that I might doze a little. I am not sure of much beyond Poet gently rousing me sometime later.

“I have to go.” He presses a kiss to my cheek. “I’ve lost two days. I need to finish baling before it turns.”

My brain feels sluggish, but the words make sense to the parts of me that don’t need to be fully awake to understand how farming works. And they hurt the part of me that doesn’t want Poet to leave.

Blinking away sleep, I grab him before he can get too far. “Wait. I will come with you.”

19 OSCAR

Despite the time pressures, Poet showers with me and waits for me to eat and steady my numbers before I drive him back to the farm that still has no name. A state of affairs he turns back on me.

“What do you think I should call it?”

I have parked by Hanna’s house.

We cross the road and slip through the gate. The dawn sun is hazy and strong, like it is trying to tell me something. But though the graph at my wrist is as green as Poet’s new front door, I am sleep-deprived, and in my feelings about how we spent the night together. Perhaps he really has fucked me stupid. “Something that matters.”

Poet nods. “I know. It’ll come to me. Or someone else will figure it out.”

“Who named your parents’ farm?”