“But…that changed?”

She reached up and tucked her hand under her hat, rubbing her scalp. ‘Yeah…I started liking it. A lot. I think sometime around the first night we spent on your yacht. It’s not like I’ve hated my full name…it was just never…me. But that night…” She took a deep breath and then let it go shakily. “I began to realize it was the way you thought of me. Of who I was to you…the way you said my name sounded so right.” She glanced at me shyly and then away, smiling.

That pride I’d felt earlier was morphing into something else—this muted joy of just being in her presence, of enjoying every moment with her. But we had things to discuss…

“So I was thinking that maybe we needed to talk,” I began.

She turned to me, her eyebrows raised, and I patted the seat next to me. I couldn’t move to her because I was seated behind the steering wheel of the boat. She frowned, scooting down the bench to sit beside me.

“We have been talking,” she said, glancing up at me a little nervously.

“Sure…but I thought maybe…about last night?”

Her mouth fell open and she looked away. “What’s to talk about?”

I drew in a long breath and then let it go. “Well, I get the feeling that you’re not so keen on the ‘going slow’ plan.”

She closed her mouth and then, without looking at me, shrugged. “I’m just not sure what it’s supposed to accomplish.”

I turned, suddenly uncomfortable, focusing on the polished wood of the steering wheel, running my thumb over the smooth surface. “It’s not because I don’t want to. You understand that, right?”

She looked down, clasping her hands together in her lap. “It’s hard to understand what’s going through your head regarding sex these days…”

“I just want to do things right this time. I’m…I’m scared of screwing up again.”

“I thought—” she said, and cut herself off, shaking her head.

“What?” I prodded. “Tell me what you thought.”

“I thought it was because you resented me.”

I frowned, watching her. She still couldn’t meet my eyes so I reached out, took her chin and lifted her eyes to mine. “I admit that…I still have some issues about your keeping this from me when it all started. It…makes it hard…” My voice died out before I let myself complete the thought.

But she understood perfectly what I’d been getting at. “You don’t trust me.”

I swallowed. Yes, it was true. I didn’t trust her—not fully, not after last time. But I was determined to find that trust again. And I would.

We still had a long road to her recovery—she had months more of chemo treatments in front of her. We had time. “I think we both need time…to learn to trust each other again. To learn how to be healthy—not just physically but in our relationship, too. I believe that we need to be slow and rational about this.”

Her eyes looked slightly haunted as she nodded. “Rational. Right. So until we figure that out, we’re just…roommates.”

Navigating this conversation was beginning to feel like walking a minefield. I took a deep breath, dropped my hand from her chin. “If being deeply in love with someone but not having sex with them counts as roommates…”

Her brow furrowed but a small smile played about her mouth. Something in what I’d said had pleased her. Perhaps it was the reassurance that I loved her. Perhaps that was what she sought whenever she pressed me for intimacy. I resolved to reassure her more often that I did love her. Very much.

“Come here,” I said.

And she leaned forward. I kissed her and felt no fear that she would attempt to pull me into something deeper like she often had tried, of late. I tasted her lips—with that hint of ginger chips—as always just as sweet as I remembered. When I pulled away, she was smiling. That smile did amazing things to me—made me slightly disoriented. That magical moment, those few split seconds after our lips left each other, contained all of the thrill and excitement of those first days we had spent together, quickly—if reluctantly—falling in love.

I opened my mouth to tell her again that I loved her. But she held her hand up and turned her head away, looking as if she was trying to fend off a sneeze.

“Just a min,” she said, her eyes half closed, and then she let loose with the most violent chain of sneezes I’d ever seen from her. People in nearby boats looked over, shocked by the loud sounds coming from our boat.