He was holding her close. His face was flushed, and his breath was hot. Anna wondered if her own desire was anywhere near that well expressed.

“I do want to,” she said. “I want you.”

James groaned and buried his head in her neck.

She climbed off the couch and led him upstairs to her room. They knocked the stuffed animals off her bed. (They’d all be back again the next day.)

For a moment, Anna worried that James wouldn’t be able to undress. But his clothes fell easily onto her floor and stayed there. He must be made for this, too.

She climbed under the covers, still wearing her sundress.

James took it off and cast it aside.

He kissed her. He was smiling again, but his eyes were a little wild and worried; he was capable of nearly infinite mixed emotions.

Anna had never done this before. She’d barely imagined it. She didn’t worry about getting pregnant—she couldn’t even use the bathroom.

James hunched over her. He lay between her legs. He kissed her face while he was inside of her. “Anna,” he said. “Anna.”

Neither of them were tired. After. The window was open. There was a breeze. James lay with his head on her chest, below her throat.

“I love you,” he said.

She stroked his hair.

“I don’t want to love anyone but you, Anna.”

She didn’t say anything at first. She didn’t reassure him. What could she say? She couldn’t revise him. And she couldn’t hide him. She couldn’t control anything that mattered.

“I love you, James,” she said eventually. Because she did love him. And it might not change anything, but it was still true.

James had grown mulish. Stubborn. Maybe he’d always been that way. He frowned more. At the fields. At the stars.

“This is a life,” he told Anna, with his eyebrows furrowed. “Whatever comes next, this is real.”

She didn’t argue.

She held his face in her hands and let him kiss her as urgently as he wanted.

She wondered if James still felt it pulling at him. His story. He must—he seemed so restless sometimes.

Anna imagined taking the scissors out of the kitchen drawer—there were scissors in the kitchen drawer—and cutting the ties that bound him to his book.

But that might be worse. If she decided not to use him in a story, he might fade away. Anna couldn’t bear to watch James fade away.

People didn’t fade when they got called in.

It was more like they unraveled. Like they were slowly being taken apart and put back together somewhere else. It was a joyful moment usually. Ecstatic. Anna had watched it happen before. She’d hugged someone as they came apart in her arms.

The day that James unraveled, Anna was standing with him on the porch. They’d just come back from a walk.