[ Hearing him say so makes her soft, makes her close her eyes and curl a little closer around him, her hand stilling in his hair so she can simply hold.

This is where she leaves things, so often; with the assumption that the way her body responds is enough truth told about her heart, a relic of the time when words and promises meant nothing.

But her body had meant nothing too. It had been as schooled, as crafted— a doll she moved to tell stories with down to the flush in her cheeks, the pound of her heart. Artifice, all. If her body can be salvaged her words can too, and she thinks perhaps he is as starved for them as she so often is.

So, quietly: ]

You cannot know, I think, what it means to me to hear so. How high I hold the value of your heart. How well I know how fearful it is to hold it out for someone else to touch after a life of learning nothing comes of that but breaking.

It is everything to me, [ she says, quieter still, a catch in her voice that she does nothing to remedy. ] You are everything.