"My first husband did something similar to me."
Caleb frowned.
"He didn't cut me."
"He didn't hide me in mountains."
"But he convinced me that my body was something I owed apologies for."
Caleb's eyes changed.
Eleanor looked down at herself.
Her full waist beneath the nightdress.
Heavy arms.
Broad hips.
The body Henry had turned into evidence.
She looked back at Caleb.
"So I know something about believing another person's disgust is truth."
"I am not disgusted by you."
The answer came instantly.
Eleanor almost smiled.
"I know."
Caleb's expression shifted.
She continued:
"And I'm not disgusted by you."
He stared.
The second pulse moved beneath her hand.
Caleb whispered:
"You don't have to say that because we're married."
"I'm not."
"You can sleep behind the locked door."
"I know."
"You can leave when the pass opens."
"I know."
His voice broke.
"Then why aren't you afraid?"
Eleanor gave the only honest answer.
"I am."
Caleb flinched.
She kept her hand on his chest.
"I'm afraid because I don't understand it."
"I'm afraid because we're trapped in a cabin while a blizzard tries to remove the roof."
"I'm afraid because I've known you for three days and married you this morning."
A tear slipped into Caleb's beard.
Eleanor continued.
"But fear is not the same thing as rejection."
He looked at her.
No one had apparently told him that before.
For nineteen years.
Caleb sat.
Suddenly.
As though his legs had forgotten how to hold him.
Eleanor sat opposite.
He covered his face.
She waited.
His shoulders began moving.
At first she thought he was laughing.
Then she realized he was crying.
Quietly.
With the restraint of a man who had spent most of his life with no one around to hear.
Eleanor did not touch him immediately.
She understood too well what unwanted comfort could feel like.
After a minute she asked:
"May I sit closer?"
Caleb nodded without uncovering his face.
She moved to the chair beside him.
"May I touch you?"
Another nod.
She rested her hand on his shoulder.
Caleb cried harder.
The blizzard raged.
The cabin shook.
And the giant mountain man who could split oak with an axe leaned forward while his nearly three-hundred-pound wife rubbed his back as gently as though the entire world had never taught either of them shame.
They did not share a bed that night.
Not because Eleanor was frightened of the scar.
Because neither needed marriage to become proof.
Caleb slept near the fire.
Eleanor took the bedroom.
Before closing the door, she looked back.
"Caleb."
He sat beneath a blanket.
"Yes?"