Alfred’s brows furrowed. “Of course you are,” he answered at once, honestly surprised by the question. He had never, in all of his pondering and fretting over the situation since Thursday, thought this reflected in any way whatsoever on her. It was all about him, in his mind. He’d screwed everything up, he’d betrayed her, he’d failed Jo. He’d slipped and he wasn’t sure if it was a stupid thing that had happened once or if it was something that had been buried inside him for the past year, just waiting to be recognized. He didn’t know if he’d ever know, was the thing. He wasn’t going to have any normal interactions with Jo again, because even if she hadn’t been holding him at arm’s length, emotionally, he didn’t trust himself to relax around her any more. And all of that depended on her surviving on her own, out there in the snow, which — wasn’t a given.

He squeezed Zelda tighter to his chest. “I love you,” he said again. “I’m not going anywhere. Jo knows that. It was just — I’m sorry,” he continued. “I’m sorry about it, and I’ll probably be sorry about it forever, but it’s never going to happen again. It’s over,” he said, which had become almost like a mantra at this point. “I know you weren’t ever going to ask me to choose, but I’d choose you. I love you.”