Big Salmon Lake cutback

He looked down at her, then, wondering what decision she spoke of even now. To be here at all? To consider him? He didn't know, ad the question of it gnawed at his belly in a way that was only slightly less difficult to ignore than his want for her.

"Our parents wait for us to marry," he corrected, gently, "But I cannot marry her. Now that I know what it is to want something — I know that it is not her. Perhaps it could be if I tried, but a woman deserves better that this, don't you think?"

Anyone did.

"The choice is not whether I stay here with you or go home to her," he went on. "It is what I do now that I know it's not that. But I do not know what those choices are. And it is frightening to act without knowing what my actions might cost me."