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Not the kind she did in the shower where he could only hear the water. This was the other one, the one with her eyes open on him and her mouth halfway between laughing and crying, and she put both hands on his face.

“Nobody’s ever done that either,” she said. “Stayed looking at me after. You do. Every time. I used to think it was a thing you did.”

“It’s a thing I do.”

“With me?”

“With you.” He went into her the way she’d taught him she wanted, slow, all the way, and didn’t stop, because there was nothing in the room to stop for anymore.

She kept her eyes open. So did he. It was the thing they’d found out on a night before Odessa and lost at a door, and they had it back on a floor with a fire going, and he moved in her slow with his eyes on hers and hers on his and neither of them hid anything, because there was nothing left to hide, it was all there, on both their faces, in daylight, in a house with no roof.

“Say it,” she said. “You. This time. Not me.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.” He didn’t stop moving. “I loved you at a fridge with the light on your face and I loved you on a step with a foot of daylight between us and I loved you at a door when you told me it was never me, I stood there and loved you and couldn’t hear the lie, and I don’t care that I can’t. I’ve decided I don’t need to. That’s what staying is. I take your word for it, and I don’t go anywhere.”

She made a sound. Her hands had come to his back and they held on.

“Say yours,” he said. “In this voice. Not the bar. This one.”

“I love you.” Quiet. The one. “I love you, Brody. There’s nobody but you. There was never anybody but you. I’m staying.”

He went then. He couldn’t have held it after that, with her saying it in the voice under him with the light on her, and he said the quiet name, Rose, out loud, in his own house where nobody could hear it but her, and she went with him, a breath behind, with her eyes open on his the whole way and her hands flat on his back, and neither of them looked away, and it went on, and then it was quiet, and the fire ticked, and somewhere outside a windmill that was his went around.

He fed the fire. He did it in his jeans and nothing else with a chair leg, and she lay on the jacket wrapped in the bedroll and watched him do it.

“You’ve got a fireplace,” she said.

“I’ve got a fireplace.”

“You’ve got a fireplace and a windmill and a tank and two sections and no roof. And a chair, apparently.”

“Had a chair.”

“Had a chair.” She looked at the tarp. “Chase is coming at nine.”

“With a ladder.”

“And an opinion.”

“He’s had the opinion since Friday. The ladder’s new.” He sat down on the hearth. “He wants tin.”

“Tin’s fine.”

“Tin’s loud in rain.”

“Then I’ll hear it rain,” she said, “in a house, on purpose, for the first time in my life,” and he looked at her, and didn’t say anything, because she’d put it plainly and it didn’t need him.

She sat up. She had the bedroll around her and her hair down and the light on her, and she looked at him on the hearth with a chair leg in his hand and a look on her he knew, the one that had a joke coming.

“I don’t like you, you know,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Can’t stand you,” he said.