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“Then when?”

“Your grandfather. Wood that’s about to turn into something.” He stepped to me and took my hands in his. “Me. When you said my name after I asked you to stay.”

Eighteen years. Teachers who asked me to repeat things. Clients who asked where I was from, and then asked again, because Boston wasn’t the answer they were fishing for. Eighteen years of sanding off my accent, and I’d gotten good at it. Or at least I thought I had.

Jake had heard it. Listened for it. Kept it.

“You should have told me.”

“Why?” Jake said. “So you could stop?”

I didn’t answer because the answer was yes.

“That’s why,” he said.

“Deda.” I said it again, on purpose. The accent didn’t come through for me.

But Jake’s eyes closed and stayed that way longer than they needed to. When he opened them, they glistened.

I couldn’t hear it myself. But I saw Jake’s reaction, which was unlike any reaction I’d had growing up.

“I’ve been making it smaller since I got to this country,” I said.

“I’m sorry you had to do that.” Jake put his hand around the back of my neck, warm, the way he did when he wanted me to listen. “You don’t have to do that in this place. Not in your home.”

Nobody had ever asked me for the part of myself I’d spent years trying to remove.

Jake let go of me and cleared his throat.

“Stay right there,” he said.

He went to one of the cabinets and pulled out boxes of small, white, battery-powered votives.

I didn’t ask why we were doing it, but I helped once I saw what he was doing. Together we set them around the workshop. On the windowsills. On our benches. On the lumber rack, where we stored our finest wood. On every other flat surface.

I turned one over in my hand before I put it down. No wick. Nothing in it to burn.

Jake turned off the shop’s overhead lamps, leaving the space illuminated only by the votives and the string lights around the windows.

Our workshop, beautiful enough in the daytime, turned into a room full of sparkle. The finished wood took the light and held onto it. Every tool on the wall cast a small shadow of itself.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

“Just one more thing.” Jake went to the radio we kept out and turned it on so our favorite Christmas music station played soft, instrumental tunes.

“Now it’s right.” He smiled and took my hand in his.

We stayed like that for a while, taking it in. Not only the workshop. This feeling of being exactly where we belonged. It was Christmas Eve, and for the first time in a long while I wasn’t treating the day like any other.

“I love you,” I said. The words came easily now that they’d been said once. “I love this. Everything we’ve created in the past couple of weeks.”

Jake’s grin flashed in the votive glow. “I love you too. More than I thought it was possible to love someone.”

Was it fast? Yes. But I didn’t care. You test a joint by how it holds, not by how long the glue took to set. This one held.

He pulled me close, and I nuzzled in against him.

When he kissed me, there was no question left in it. He kissed me like a man who’d decided I was his, and I’d done the same.