“I want to be with you so much, God, so much,” I say, “but I don’t think I can become the person I need to be—or get back to who I maybe always was—if I’m all tangled up in you. I’ve been basing my future around other people—working with Mom at the yoga studio, moving in with Micah. I need to see what it feels like to base my future around me. And I don’t know who I’ll be at the end of that.”

“You’ll be you. And I’ll be me.”

I knew this would be hard. But it’s so much worse than hard.

“This feeling—of us. Of this being it. I had that with Micah, too.” I grip Drew’s hand. “It was different—not like this, not so … certain feeling. But I really thought he and I would be together for good, you know? And now he’s gone.” The tears come, and I just let them run down my face. “Anything can happen. We might change—get older and not fit anymore. Or you might meet someone not all fucked-up—”

“I want you, Hannah,” Drew says.

I look down at our hands, and I can almost see what they will look like with paper-thin old-person skin, age spots, gnarled knuckles.

“You get to be happy,” he says. “You don’t have to punish yourself.”

I trace the lines of this face that is so special to me. “I’m not—I promise. I want the love. Big, big love. Family. All of it. When the time is right. I don’t want to be alone forever—but I need to be right now.”

I can’t tell him how much I want that big love with him. Or that I want to do right by the miracle together. It wouldn’t be fair to make him wait. Or to make a promise I don’t know if I can keep.

We are quiet. For a long time. There is only the soft, strange sounds a hospital makes late at night, and the air conditioner, and Drew’s breath, and mine.

“Okay,” he finally says. He lets go of my hands. So quiet: “Okay.”

I brush my lips against his, quick, then stand. “I have to go now.”

Before I take back everything I said. Before I throw myself into his arms and never, ever leave. I have to go. Now.

He doesn’t get up, just nods. I stand. Cross the room, sail away from the only port I’ve had in this storm. I am pushing out into unknown waters. I pull open the door and, just as it’s about to close behind me, I hear him.

“Hannah.”

I turn. Drew holds up the Chariot card I gave him all those months ago. He’s been keeping it in his pocket, all this time. I never knew.