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“I love you.” Her words are quiet.

They’re not the same as last time—the ones she gave to me in her grandmother’s kitchen in Ignacio. That declaration cost her because I froze and couldn’t answer. This is a confession that has come through authentic emotion. It is for lack of a better word, confident. Sure of me.

“I love you,” I reply.

She gazes at the valley for one more minute—the unhurried minute her grandmother used to take, the minute she learned before she learned anything else about what it means to know where you come from.

The minute means: I see this. I’m here. This is mine.

Then she exhales. Long. Complete.

A release.

A breath.

“Home?” she says.

“Home,” I say.

She drives.

The canyon closes in around us the way it always does—133 picking up, the mountains on both sides, the creek through the cottonwoods, the town appearing around the last curve the way it always has, knowing what it is.

I know this road.

I know this place.

I know the pull-off on the east bench and the eight miles north of town and the way the valley opens when you come over the ridge and the light at this hour and the sound of the creek at three in the morning and the hook by her door where my jacket lives now, permanently, without anyone deciding it should.

I know this.

I know this place.

I’m not going anywhere.

CHAPTER 46

taya

Mason leaves at seven-fifteen in the morning for milk.

This is the mundane fact at the center of everything that follows—that I ran out of milk, which we don’t need for coffee, but we need for the pancakes I want him to make for us, because he said he makes fantastic crepes.

Not having milk is the kind of problem that arises when two people are beginning to occupy the same space and haven’t yet synchronized their inventories.

We spent the night together in my bed—holding each other because that’s what we needed, comfort and connection.

I’m not scared of making love with him.

But I’m also not in a big rush.

Okay, fine, I am, but he refused, so there you have it. He wants me to be sure.

Whatever! Men are weird.

“I’ll be twenty minutes.” He picks up the keys to my Wrangler.

“Eunice opens at seven. She’ll have milk.”