She will take him, because he is enough. He is not what she needs, not what she craves, and he will never say a word about her silence between the sheets, the breath that leaves her swollen lips as they shape another name.

He doesn't imagine her face, doesn't impose scars and curves and calluses on this untouched body - God, who could be inhuman enough to wish even the ghost of her past on anyone else? - but kisses up the arc of her ribs, counts each slender bone, learns the hollow between her scapulas and the crease under her chin, knows the woman he makes love to is seamless and blameless and loses himself in her innocence.

They sleep with weapons and secrets and other people, lying awake knowing somewhere out there the one they want is thinking of them.