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Olivia held on to the edge behind her.

"You were at that sale," she said.

"I was at all three."

"You had the money."

"I had the money in my pocket at the second one and I stood at the back by the door." He looked at her. "I could have bought half of them. I'd have got them cheap because nobody else there knew what they were looking at, and I could have put them on my grass and never said a word about it, and I'd have had them for you whenever you came round to it."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I've done that to you three times," Owen said. "The bull. The fence. Your horse. Every one of them was me getting a thing for you where you couldn't see me doing it, and every one of them cost you something I never counted." He turned his hand over once and dropped it. "So I stood at the back of that sale barn with the money in my pocket and let your daddy's cows go through the ring, and it was the hardest thing I ever did, and it was the first thing I ever did right."

She got off the counter and crossed her mother's kitchen to him.

"Say the words again."

"Both names on the catalog."

"That's not words I mean."

"It's the one that matters."

"Owen." It came out with nothing holding it up. "I love you."

He shut his eyes. He didn't move. He didn't say a word. She watched a man take a thing he'd waited thirteen years for and hold still under it.

"Say it again."

"You want it twice?"

"I want it every day for the rest of my life," Owen said, "but I'll start with twice."

"I love you." She got two fists in his shirt. "There. And I've said it in a kitchen with the light on and no bull in the yard and nobody paying me to, so you can quit⁠—"

He got her up onto the counter.

She had one leg around him before her back hit the tile, and she was laughing into his mouth. She'd had thirteen years to picture this and she had not pictured it in her mother's kitchen with a box of plates in the way.

"There's a box of my mother's plates on this counter."

"It's behind you."

"It's my mother's⁠—"

"Then move it." He moved it. He got it onto the chair one-handed and never took his mouth off her neck.

"That's the good ones."

"I'll buy her new ones."

"With what?"

"With whatever money’s left after the cows," Owen said, and she laughed so hard she had to put her forehead on his shoulder, and then he got her jeans open and she wasn't laughing.

He was not slow this time. Neither was she. She got his belt. He got her boots off one at a time and dropped them. One went over, and she said something about her mother's floor. He said something about the floor that made her laugh. Then his hand was where it had been Sunday and she quit talking.

"You're going to have to hold on to something."