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The expression on his face pins me in place.

Hunger burns in his eyes, but there’s pain there too. Three years of it. Maybe more. “I saw you at your eighteenth birthday party,” he says. “You came out of the house in that yellow dress.”

My breath catches.He remembers the dress.

“You had your hair pinned up,” he continues. “You kept pulling out the pins because they hurt. By the time Doug brought out the cake, it was falling around your shoulders.”

I remember that night. More specifically, I remember Samuel watching me from beside the porch.

“I tried not to look at you,” he says. “I knew better.”

“But you did.”

“Yes.”

“What happened two days later?”

“I realized it wasn’t going away.”

“What wasn’t?”

His gaze holds mine. “The way I felt.”

The room becomes unbearably quiet.

“Wanting me?” I ask.

“Loving you.”

The words steal the air from my lungs.

Samuel looks almost angry after saying them, as if the truth has been forced from someplace he spent years guarding. “I’ve been in love with you since you were eighteen.” His voice drops. “Does that scare you?”

The honest answer should be simple. It isn’t.

“Yes.”

Samuel stops. The pain that crosses his face is brief, but sharp enough to cut me.

“And no,” I add.

His eyes narrow slightly. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“None of this makes sense.”

“Sophie.”

“Yes, it scares me that you followed me without telling me. It scares me that you know things about my life I never chose to share with you. It scares me that you can carry me away from a crowded market and hide me so well that even my father can’t find me.”

His expression grows grimmer with every word.

“But?” he asks.

I swallow. “But I’ve always thought you were odd… Odd and… attractive at the same time.”

Samuel goes completely still. I’ve embarrassed him. That seems impossible, yet color creeps above the collar of his shirt and disappears beneath his beard.

I almost smile.