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"Yes."

"You've been on my porch fixing my railing for six months, and you had all these facts the whole time, and hid them from me."

"Yes."

"Every conversation we've ever had." Her voice is very level and very quiet, which is worse than shouting. "Every one. I was in a different conversation than you were."

"Yes."

"Don't just say yes."

"There isn't a better word than yes, Maren. Every version of it is yes."

She turns away and puts both hands flat on my counter, and then she sees what's hanging over it and turns straight back around, and something in her face gives way.

"So which is it?" she says. "Do you want me, or do you want what was assigned to you? Because from where I'm standing those look exactly the same, and I can't tell them apart, and I've been letting you touch me."

Now. Tell her now.

"Maren."

"Would you still want me if nobody had told you to?"

Yes.

The answer is yes. It's been yes since a lot longer than my wolf has had an opinion, and it's the truth, and it's right there behind my teeth ready to tell her.

But she’s standing in my hallway on no sleep with blood dried under her nose, and if I hand it to her now, in this minute, she’ll take it because she needs something to hold on to. Then she’ll never once know for the rest of her life whether she believed me or just wanted to.

I've watched my mother spend years not knowing which.

So I take too long.

I take about two seconds too long, and I see it in her face like a door closing.

"Right," Maren says.

"That's not..."

"Don't." She picks her coat up off the newel post. "You just told me you've been sure about me since April. It took you six months to say the words out loud and it's taking you longer than that to say the rest, and I’m not going to stand here and help you."

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"Maren."

"You said no stopping." She's got the door open and the fog is coming in around her boots.

"So finish it or let me go."

Just say the words to her. I could have it said before she's off the step.

But, I chicken out and let her go.

I stand in my own doorway and count to a hundred so I won't follow her, because the last thing she needs this morning is a shape in the fog stalking her.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.