Every single time I thought about that moment, it gutted me, rendered me powerless. I watched her carefully.

She was dabbing at her eyes again. “I just need a little time.”

“Okay.” I swallowed. It was easy to see that she had herself tied up in knots emotionally and I had no idea whatsoever how to help her. This didn’t bode well. She was physically healthy again, but in all the time we had concentrated on her healing from the cancer, had we neglected some other important components along the way?

“It will be okay. We’ll be okay,” she said in such a way that it sounded as if she was convincing herself as well as me.

I smoothed my hand along her cold cheek. Deep down this felt wrong, shoving this aside again, as we had for months and months.

This was wrong.

“Mia, at least talk to me. Tell me what you are feeling.”

She shook her head again. “I’m okay. I promise…it was just a brief thing that I wasn’t prepared for. Next time…” Her voice died out as if she realized how ridiculous her words sounded.

“There will be a next time, and one after that. This won’t go away if we just ignore it.”

She nodded, avoiding my eyes. “You’re right. We shouldn’t do that. But let’s just give it a little…time?” And abruptly she stood and went into the cabin’s bathroom. She spent a few minutes tidying her face, wiping off her smeared mascara from the suppressed tears. Because that’s what she was doing—suppressing her pain. Burying it under a brave face.

I was one hundred percent certain that this was going to bite us in the ass. And I had no fucking idea how to deal with it. Or even if there was a way to deal with it.

When she came out, she was looking a little paler than normal but otherwise fine and acting like nothing had happened. This did not reassure me.

“I’m so pissed I left my scarf behind.”

I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. “I grabbed it for you.”

She grinned a grin that didn’t reach her eyes, bending to kiss me on the cheek. “Now I know why I keep you around, boy genius.”

She tied her scarf back on and stuck by my side for the rest of the party. At the end of the event, we stood at the end of the footbridge with the other homeowners, bidding everyone goodbye as they went off to the charity dinner. It was getting dark when we walked back to the house together. She held my hand, firmly lacing her fingers between mine.

I remembered that she’d intimated that she wanted us to be together tonight and I stole a glance at her bowed head as she picked her way back in the dim light. I was feeling tired, as usual, but if I put her off, she’d get insecure about it and take it as a personal rejection.

Maybe the encounter with our friends had changed her mind? She’d seemed quieter than normal since it had happened.

We came upstairs and there was an awkward moment at the top when we hesitated near the doorway to her room. She turned and looked at it and then looked back at me. She swallowed. “How much longer are we going to do this, do you think?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“The separate bedrooms.”

I ran a hand over my jaw. “You want me to come sleep with you tonight?”

She turned and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I want to do more than sleep…”

I almost made up an excuse. I was still so worried about her, but then she was kissing me on the neck and it felt so damn good. And for God’s sake it was five months since we’d had sex. My starved body was responding instantly. I’d probably have to have been half dead not to respond to her.

She stepped back from me and said, “Meet me back here in ten minutes? I want to change into something.”

“Come find me in my room, then.” I said. “I’m going to take a shower.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

My mind raced the entire time in the shower. Certainly most of it was dedicated to the happy thoughts that I was going to get sex again after such a long dry spell, but the small minority part of my brain that could still think rationally was worried. Was she ready? She’d insisted over and over again that she was. Physically, maybe. But what about emotionally?

And she still felt so frail in my arms, the thought of being on top of her scared the shit out of me, like I’d break her in half or something. I was desperate to find a way to make this work. Because I knew when I got out of that shower, she was going to be there and I had to think fast.

I came out of the bathroom with my towel around my hips. The lights in the bedroom had been dimmed—her doing, because they had been perfectly normal when I’d gone into the bathroom. She was on the bed, laying crossways with her elbows on the mattress, her head in her hands, watching me.