Child. Jane Child. That was her name. He wondered what had happened to her. Probably she’d joined the hundreds of other people who disappeared after one good song. Maybe they all met once a week in some smoky bar and sang their songs to one another.

Jane Child. Henri-Frédéric Amiel would love her. A child sees what we are, he thought. Through all the fictions of what we would be. Don’t wanna fall in love. You make a knife feel good. Ben Ransome was not a knife. Still, he had the capacity to hurt Hudson, and that was a danger greater than any other.

You’re the one who wanted to talk about what happens now, he reminded himself. And, yes, he had raised the question, not six hours earlier, in fact. And it had been Ben who had wanted to wait. Why? Hudson had intended to have the talk about not getting too serious. He’d felt it was necessary to spare Ben getting his hopes up. But perhaps Ben was thinking the same thing, thinking that he didn’t want to hurt Hudson’s feelings.

All this time, Hudson realized, he had believed that he had been helping Ben come to terms with who he was. It had freed something in himself as well, given him the strength to let go of Paul, but always he had assumed that Ben was the one being transformed. Now he saw that he had been just as transformed by his time with Ben. Both of them had lost something during the night in one another’s arms, and both of them had gained something as well.

The idea that Ben might not want to be in love with him was suddenly deeply frightening. He felt a loss that had not been there moments ago, as if he had opened a secret door and found behind it an empty room, the footprints of the former occupant left in the dust on the floor. He found himself worried that something terrible would happen before he could get to Ben and tell him this, tell him that, although he was so very afraid, he was willing to try to love him.

He increased his speed, passing the cars ahead of him. Time seemed incredibly important, the wasting of it a crime. The need to see Ben, to touch him and feel the solidness of him in his hands, was overwhelming. He pressed the gas pedal harder, watching the needle of the speedometer leap in response to the quickening of his heart.