My heart hasn't quite settled back into its normal rhythm since the kitchen, and every time her arm brushes mine as she reaches for a glass, I feel it in my fingertips. That low electric hum that's been getting harder to ignore.
"Should we talk about it?" Nora asks, drying a bowl.
"About what?"
She gives me a look. "About the sprinkles."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Tyler."
"I really don't know what you mean."
She almost smiles. "Okay."
We finish cleaning, and she heads for the sleeping bags.
I stand in the kitchen for a moment, looking at the dark backyard, the kitchen light making a warm square on the grass.
I need to talk to Emma.
Not because I want to. But because I have to, before I can talk to anyone else.
She's still up when I knock on the door frame of the kitchen around eleven. Chase and the kids are asleep, but Emma has come down for water and is sitting at the kitchen table with her phone.
She looks up and puts her phone down.
"I wondered how long," she says.
"How long, what?"
"How long before you came to find me. We've been here two days, Tyler. You haven't taken your eyes off her for more than ten minutes at a time."
I sit. I don't know where to start, so I just say it.
"I'm in love with her."
Emma's expression doesn't change. She just nods once, like this isn't news.
"How long?" she asks.
"I don't know exactly when. It crept up on me." I look at my hands on the table. "I kept telling myself it was the proximity, the situation, the fact that she's been here for all of it. But it's not that. It's her."
Emma is quiet for a moment.
"Does she know?"
"She knows something. I've been—not hiding it very well, apparently."
"Tyler, everyone who's been in this house for two days knows." Her voice is gentle. “Ethan asked me yesterday, ‘Why does Uncle Tyler look at her like that?’”
I press my face into my hands.
"What are you scared of?" Emma asks.
I look up at her. This is the part I've been carrying for as long as I can remember, the thing underneath everything else.
"I ruined your life," I say. "I hurt Jackson. I nearly got Chase—" My voice breaks. "And now I'm here, and I'm in love with someone who doesn't know any of that, who thinks she's falling for a good man. And I'm not—I'm not sure I'm a good man, Em."