"Remi," he said.
"Mm."
"I'm going to tell you something and I need you to not analyze it," he said.
She looked at him.
"Occasionally," he said, "I look at you and feel something that I cannot quantify and I have stopped trying to quantify it. It doesn't resolve into a category. It's not admiration and it's not desire and it's not the word love, though it contains all three." He held her gaze. "It's the specific thing that happens when the person you would choose, again, every day, every morning, out of every possible option in every possible world, is sitting next to you on a beach looking at your daughter figure out a shell."
Remi looked at him for a long moment.
"You said you needed me not to analyze it," she said.
"Yes."
"I'm not analyzing it," she said. "I'm sitting with it."
