She took a breath, as if to deny it, but let out a long exhale. “Perhaps,” she said. “But … this is the best I can do, Sam. This moment, right now. I can’t give you a happy ending. Only the meantime.”

“The meantime,” he repeated slowly. “And if I don’t want only the meantime?”

“There will be no hard feelings,” she said. “And no regrets.”

Could he do it? Could he have her now and bedamned to the future? His gaze ran over her, remembering the night before. He could still feel where her body had fit against his, hear her unguarded laughter.

“No,” he said, standing. “You’re using the wrong construct.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The options, as you’ve laid them out. You’ve decided that lasting affection, lasting love, isn’t in the cards for you. That the only thing you can have is fleeting physical connection, and you’ve only barely granted yourself that. Well, with all due respect, that’s nonsense, and I’m not going to be made a party to it.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” she said, standing too. “You can accept my proposal or decline it, nothing else.”

“I decline it,” he said. “I want to have more nights like last night, too, Alva. I could make love to you every night of my life and still not be satisfied. But I can’t—I won’t—do so with a bunch of ridiculous strictures hanging over my head. I won’t be told what I can and can’t feel for you.”

She nodded, looking at the floor. “I understand,” she said. “Then—This is it, I suppose.”

Her expression almost broke his heart—lonely, bereft. “You can have more,” he said softly. “It’s all out there. But you have to reach out and take it.”

“No,” she said, and laughed a little. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You can have more. Do you know what happened the last time I reached out and took something? It was two years ago, I left my husband, and within weeks I was a monster on the scale of Medea. I like you, Sam, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It hurt, those words. He wanted to defend himself; he wanted to take her in his arms until that horrible expression left her face; he wanted to show her how wonderful the world could be; he wanted to build her a tower she never had to leave.

“Maybe I don’t,” he said. “But I know you. I’m in love with you, damn it. And so I’m going to keep believing you’ll get a happy ending, and maybe if I believe it long enough, you’ll start to, too.”

“You’re—you’re—”