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We stay like that for a long time. Him still inside me. Both of us shaking. Snow falling past the uncurtained window.

Eventually he softens and carefully pulls out. I make a small sound at the loss. He discards the condom, then disappears into the bathroom and comes back with a warm washcloth. He cleans me gently—my stomach, between my legs, everywhere—then tosses the cloth aside and stretches out beside me.

I turn onto my side facing him. My body feels used in the best possible way, loose and heavy. He brushes my hair back from my forehead with his fingers.

"You okay?" he asks softly.

"Yeah." My voice is wrecked. "More than okay."

"Your knee?"

"Fine."

He studies my face in the pale light. "You looked at me the whole time."

"You told me to."

"I did." He leans in and kisses me, slow and sweet. No heat left in it—just tenderness. "Thank you for trusting me with that."

I don't have words big enough for what just happened, so I pull him closer instead. He comes willingly, tucking his face into my neck, one arm draped across my chest the way he always does.

Outside, the snow keeps falling. The house is completely silent. No one knows we're here. No one can see.

For the first time, that feels like enough.

I wake up before him.

The room's full of white light off the snow. It's still coming down, big slow flakes past the window, landing on the ice of the lake and the long white line of the dock. It's the quietest morning I've ever heard. No traffic. No ice machine. No hotel air conditioning. Just his breathing, slow and deep, and the tick of the old radiator under the window.

He's asleep on his stomach with his face half in the pillow, one arm thrown across me. Like always. Like I'm going to fall off the world.

I lie there and look at him and I know.

I've known for a while. I just haven't let myself look straight at it. It's been there in the corner of my eye since the stairwell, since the empty rink, since he walked into a room singing with one earbud in and made the whole place feel different.

I'm in love with him.

It doesn't feel like I thought it would. It doesn't feel like a movie. It feels like the ache in my knee after a long game, deep and constant and so much a part of me I can't remember what it was like before it was there.

He stirs. His eyes open, and it takes him a second to find me, and when he does he smiles, slow, still half asleep.

"Hi," he says, rough.

"Hi."

"You're looking at me."

"I'm looking at you."

"Why?"

I don't say it. Not yet. It's too new. It's too big to hand him before he's even awake.

"I've never wanted anything I wasn't supposed to have," I say instead. "My whole life. I did everything right. I did what everybody expected. I married who I was supposed to marry. I never wanted anything else. I made sure of it."

He's awake now. He's watching me.

"Now?" he asks.