Page 91 of Fractured Ice

I look at him. I look at the papers.

I open the first one.

The handwriting is his, slanted and quick, crossed out in places and started over. It reads:

Sienna. I know I keep messing this up. Every time I'm around you, every single word I have goes wrong, and I know that, and I can't stop it. But here's what's true. I've liked you since second grade. I liked you the first time you smiled at me and I've liked you every day since. I've been trying to get your attention since we were kids and I've been terrible at it. In college I didn't come after you right away because I wanted to be someone worthy of you. Because I knew it would be you. I knew you'd be it for me. No one else has ever mattered. No one else has ever come close.

I'm very still.

I open the next one.

I'm not good at this. You know that. You've watched me be not good at this for years. But I'm good at you. Or I want to be. I want to be the person who shows up right. Who says the right thing. Who doesn't stand at kissing booths spending money like an idiot. I want to be the version of myself that deserves to be in the same room as you.

The next one.

You went on a date with Dylan Reed and I drove Knox insane and I sat in a restaurant and watched. I still can't explain it better than this: I can't watch you be with someone else. I physically cannot do it. That should tell you something.

I pick them up one at a time and read them all, and they're messy and crossed out and some of them abandon the thought entirely mid-sentence and start again, and all of them are the most honest thing anyone has ever put in front of me.

I look up.

He's standing beside the bed, hands at his sides, hair wrecked, watching me with an expression I recognize now as what it's always been: Ethan Walker completely undone and completely unable to hide it.

"You've liked me since second grade?" I say.

"Yeah."

"Since second grade."

"I know how it sounds."

"It sounds like a long time." I set the papers down on the bed. "Is it real? All of this, us, is it actually real?”

"Sienna." His voice is very quiet. "It's the most real thing I've got."

I look at him. I think about every file I've built, every assumption I've stacked, every piece of evidence I've collected and categorized over years and months. I think about what I've been doing with all of that.

"If this is real," I say, "and we do this, can you actually do that? Be a boyfriend? After everything? All those women? You'd be faithful to me?"

"I've been only thinking about you for weeks," he says. "Since the project started. Since I requested to be assigned to you. I haven't touched anyone else. And I don't have even the smallest concern about it going forward." He holds my gaze. "There's no version of this where I'm looking at anyone else."

I look at him for a long time.

"How do you feel about me?" he asks. "Honestly."

"I think you're irritating," I say.

"Okay."

"Possessive."

"That's fair."

"Clumsy. Awkward. Completely unreasonable about hockey statistics."

"I accept all of that."

"And I'm really into you." I watch his face. "Genuinely. Embarrassingly. I've been trying not to be for months and it hasn't worked at all."