“Let me simplify that,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something you may not want to hear, and I hope I’m not doing it merely to assuage a guilty conscience, but if I am, I apologize.”

“Noted.”

“It’s about your fall into the river. When I rescued you, you were cold, as you say. Very cold. Also unconscious, and as I was trying to warm you up, you—” He cut himself off and shook his head. “No. Not you. It was me. I may have…” Another head shake, sharper now. “There’s no may about it. No equivocating. I did. That is to say, I…”

He trailed off.

“I kissed you, didn’t I?” I said. “I was dreaming of swimming with Gwynn, to this place he had with Matilda, a cavern under the lake. I dreamed of that, and I kissed you.”

After a moment, he said, carefully, “You may have started it, but that’s no excuse. I did not…I didn’t stop you. I…” He cleared his throat. “I thought you had regained consciousness, and I was having difficulty organizing my thoughts.”

“Hypothermia causes mental confusion. I wasn’t the only one freezing in that water.”

“Yes.” A pause. “I mean, no. While there may have been some of that, I’m not making excuses, Olivia. Once I was certain you were not conscious enough to know what you were doing, I stopped. But I let it proceed longer than I should have. I thought you knew what you were doing and I wasn’t thinking straight and…”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “And that’s more excuses, which dull an apology. Which is what this is. An apology. You were very clearly not aware of what you were doing, and I took advantage of that, however inadvertently, and I want to apologize.”

“There’s no need.”

“Yes, there—”

“No.” I twisted on his lap and looked him square in the face. “I’m not trying to deny you an apology, Gabriel. I’m saying it honestly isn’t necessary.”

Because the dream may have started with Gwynn and Matilda, but when I was kissing Gabriel, I’d been dreaming of kissing him.

Now I just needed to say that. One tiny step.

It should be so easy. He’d admitted to returning my kiss, therefore my advance, however unintentional, had not been unwelcome. Yet I’d spent so long analyzing that I couldn’t help doing it even here.

Screw it. Just screw it. If I waited for every damn omen to align, I’d grow old and gray.

“I actually wasn’t—” I began.

Gabriel’s phone sounded. We both jumped.

“So…apparently we have cell service,” I said.

He went to hit a button—Ignore, I hoped—but the phone stopped before he could.

“All right,” I said. “Full speed ahead. It wasn’t Gwynn I was—”