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“Hot,” I warn.

“I understand hot.”

“Good. I’d rather not explain first-degree burns while holding dessert.”

He looks at the dessert. “That would make dessert worse.”

“Exactly.”

I put one peach in each bowl and spoon a little of the hot syrup over them. After we sit at the table, Kell cuts into his with the side of the spoon, then watches the marshmallow stretch before taking a bite.

I wait. His woven eyebrows rise.

“Well?”

He takes another bite.

“That good?”

“Yes.”

“You know, normal people usually answer before taking a second bite.”

“I was confirming.”

“Of course.”

He eats another piece of peach with melted marshmallow while I try mine. I haven’t made these since I was a kid, and the first bite is so aggressively sweet that I remember exactly why children think this qualifies as haute cuisine.

Kell points at my bowl. “You don’t like it.”

“I do. I’d forgotten that it’s basically canned fruit wearing a sugar hat.”

He looks down at his peach. “Good hat.”

I laugh again. For a few minutes, that is all we do. We eat warm peaches at the table while the painting dries in the next room and dessert does absolutely nothing to make the room feel less charged.

It doesn’t go away. It changes.

The urgency recedes enough that I can think around it, but every time Kell reaches for his bowl, I remember those hands on my back. When his tongue catches a streak of marshmallow from the corner of his mouth, I have to concentrate very hard on my own spoon.

This isn’t helping as much as I’d hoped. Kell finishes first. “More?”

“You can have mine if you want.”

He looks at my half-eaten peach. “You’re finished?”

“I’ve reached my annual marshmallow limit.”

He takes my bowl without hesitation. I watch him eat two more bites before I say, “There’s something else.”

Kell sets down the spoon. That matters to me. He doesn’t make me compete with the peach.

“If we do anything else tonight, I need you to understand that you can change your mind.”

“I understand.”

“No. I mean during. Five minutes in. Halfway through. Whatever we’re doing. You can decide you don’t like it or you don’t want it anymore, and we stop.”