Things feel different with Brendan after our argument. All weekend he is gentler with me, as if it’s possible he’s changed his mind about what this could be. I still want the kind of future I once envisioned with Rob: stability and children and Little League games. A small piece of me has begun to hope, though, that I could have some version of that future with Brendan instead.

We spend Saturday night inside. He convinces me to make him coconut bars and while I bake he sits on the kitchen counter with a map, discussing the first week-long bike tour he’s planning for next spring. I catch myself wishing I could come with him. It seems like he kind of wishes I could go too.

Later, we’re lying in bed. The song we danced to at Will and Olivia’s wedding comes on and he pulls me to my feet to dance, though I’m clad in nothing but a T-shirt. God, I wish things had happened differently that night. I wish the deejay’s announcement hadn’t interrupted us. Though Brendan had been awful all summer, I’d somehow known there was more to it. For every shitty thing he’d said, he’d done something sweet—making sure I got to my car safe at night, changing the radio to my favorite station when I came into work. He’d even washed my car one day, although when I’d tried to thank him, he’d insisted it got wet “accidentally” when he was cleaning off the kayaks.

I still remember the way I practically ran back to the reception to find him, once Will and Olivia had gone. When Rob told me Brendan had already left with the wedding coordinator, I felt my heart cracking so thoroughly I was sure it would never go back together.

“We’ve danced to this before,” I tell him.

He smiles. “I know. I wanted to kiss you so badly I'm still not sure how I held back until I got you around the corner.”

"I wanted you to."

“Sometimes I wish that night had gone a different way,” he admits. “I wish we’d had this before I met Gabi.”

“So you were ready for a relationship then,” I venture, “but you’re not ready now?”

“I thought I was ready then,” he corrects. “It all worked out for the best. I just would have hurt you.”

“If I got hurt, that would have been on me, not you. How someone reacts to what you’ve done isn’t your responsibility. It’s not even your business.”

“No,” he says. “It’s a pattern with me. Gabi’s not the only girl I ever hurt. There were girls in high school, in college. One of them left school because of me, another one freaked out and started doing meth. I just bring it out in people.”

“You’re giving yourself way too much credit, Brendan. You didn’t bring the crazy out in those girls, you just chose poorly. Normal people don’t drop out of school over a break-up, or do drugs. Can you see Olivia reacting like that? Or me? Just allow yourself to consider the possibility.”

He pulls me closer. “I’m trying. I really am.”

It’s the first time in all the weeks we’ve been doing this that it feels like he’s offered me a sliver of hope.

* * *

On Sunday afternoon, we return from kayaking, and he pulls me toward the hammock. We curl up together, a light blanket over us while the breeze from the French doors streams in.

His mouth ghosts over my cheek, his nose brushing across my skin, as if he's trying to memorize me using all of his senses at once. "I like you best just like this," he says, his tongue flickering out to taste my neck before he lowers his mouth and pulls at the skin, drawing a small, needy sigh from my throat. "Just you, sunburned and sandy.” He pulls the blanket aside and slips my T-shirt over my head. The hammock swings and he puts a foot on the floor to steady us. “With miles and miles of skin to taste." His hand skates up the inside of my thigh, brushing lightly until it is exactly where he wants it, and then he draws a nipple into his mouth, pulling on it just enough to keep me on a tightrope between pain and pleasure. "So I can listen to you gasp." And then his fingers slide inside me, and I arch toward him, helplessly.

"Brendan," I moan. "More."

He rolls over so he's above me. "Is that what you need, Erin?" he breathes as he pushes inside me, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment as if it's just too much to keep them open.

"Yes," I sigh. "That."

The light glimmers and dances around us, and I hear only the sound of our breath and his quiet words. I wish we could stay here, just like this, for hours and days and weeks.

I love him.

The words arrive like something I've known all along. Just like when, as a child, I’d bury my feet in the sand. I knew exactly what was there, if I was only willing to look. But I didn't want to see it.

I don’t want to feel this way. Rob hurt me, but Brendan—he could destroy me entirely, irreparably. And it seems almost inevitable that he will.