“I love you,” he says into my mouth, and I wish I could swallow it, like that would let me keep that sound forever, this moment forever. My nose burns. My voice crackles. “Don’t say that.” “Why not?” he whispers. “Because,” I say, “those words don’t belong to me anymore.” “Of course they do,” he says. “They belonged to you before I ever saw you. They belong to you in every universe we’re in, Harriet.”
