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Olivia made a sound he'd never heard out of her, not at the creek and not in the barn and not in the line camp, and she took his face in both hands and brought him up and kissed him like she was taking something back.

"Say the rest of it."

"There isn't any rest. That's the whole room."

"Then say my name again."

He said it.

He got the condom out of the drawer. She took it out of his hand and did it herself, and neither of them made a joke about it.

Then he was over her and in her, and she got her ankles behind him and made a sound that went straight down him, and he stopped, all the way, with his forearms either side of her head.

"Don't stop."

"I'm not stopping." He was shaking and he let her feel it. "I'm having a look at you."

"In the daylight."

"In the daylight," he said, and moved.

She was hot and tight around him and she took all of it, and the first slow one he gave her she made a noise he was going to be hearing for the rest of his life. He'd had a plan for this. The plan went in about a minute. Her hands went flat on his back and then up into his hair, and she got her mouth at his ear and told him to quit being careful with her, and he quit.

The headboard went into the wall and neither of them did one thing about it. The sun came up off the foot of the bed and across her legs where they were locked at the small of his back. She said his name going up, three times, and the third one broke in the middle of it, and he got his hand down between them and put his thumb where she wanted it and worked her through it while she went, her whole body drawing up under him and her mouth open on his shoulder and her teeth in it at the end.

He lasted about six strokes after that. Then he had his face in her hair and he was saying it into her ear, out loud, plain, with nothing else left in him.

"I love you. Liv. I have loved you the whole time."

She held onto him while it went out of him. She didn't say it back and he hadn't asked her to.

The sun had come round enough to be off the foot of the bed.

She lay with her head on his arm and her hand flat on his chest. Neither of them had said anything for a while. Out on the road a truck slowed for the corner and went on.

"Somebody's going to have driven past that truck of mine," she said.

"About forty of them."

"Wes Fewell goes home this way."

"Wes Fewell goes everywhere this way."

She laughed. He felt it go through her and into him and it was the best thing that had happened to him in his life, including the last forty minutes.

"I'm not saying anything about June," she said. "Not today."

"I didn't ask you about June."

"I know you didn't." She turned her face into his arm. "I'm telling you so you don't spend the afternoon waiting on it."

"I'll spend the afternoon how I like."

She was quiet a minute.

"What did you do with the twenty-two dollars?"

"It's in my shirt pocket."