POV: Kesley

I was almost asleep when he moved.

Not the restless shift of someone settling, the deliberate repositioning of a man who had made a decision and was arranging himself to carry it through. He sat upright against the headboard and gathered me against his side, his arm around my shoulders, his hand warm at my arm, and the particular quality of the silence he created told me before he spoke that whatever came next was not small.

"I have something to tell you," he said.

I lifted my head from his chest.

His face in the dim light was the version I saw least often, stripped of the...