When We Had Forever

After

AFTER

While I wait for Grayson, the hum beneath my skin returns full force. I try to work it off by pacing, then, when that doesn’t work, by downing more wine. As a last resort, I take the hottest shower I can tolerate. I decide I need to wash today’s dirt off regardless, though I have trouble explaining why I put makeup on afterward.

I pace some more. The buzz rises to a fever pitch.

I am not , I think, even remotely prepared to face a clone of my dead husband .

But after sixty-seven minutes of agonizing anticipation, when a knock cuts through the percussive burble of the fire and I swing the door open to find six feet and three inches of man on my doorstep, my first thought is not that he looks like Michael.

Nope. He’s even more attractive.

Grayson props one elbow against the doorframe and looks down with drawn brows. His hair is longer than Michael’s ever was, the rich gold waves feathering against his cheekbones. The scar on his eyebrow glints in the firelight, and that, coupled with the leather jacket and dark jeans, gives him a faintly dangerous air, as if I’ve opened the door for a battle-worn tiger, already coiled and ready to pounce.

A tingle sweeps through me. Too late, I question the wisdom of allowing a stranger to drive out to my remote cabin in the middle of the night.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi.” The furrow between Grayson’s brows deepens. “Are you okay?”

I fiddle with my hair, tucking the ends behind my ears. “Should I not be?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. I wasn’t sure if you’d throw up. Or pass out.”

I feel myself out. Neither seems imminent. “Do women often vomit when they first meet you? Or lose consciousness?”

The ghost of a smile touches his mouth. “I haven’t gotten those reactions yet, no. But it’s not every day that your husband’s identical twin shows up.”

I smooth down my sweater with both hands. “You know, I think I’m okay. You don’t actually look like him. I mean, you do. But not as much as I expected.”

He gives me a skeptical look. “People always say the opposite.”

“No, really. Compared to Michael, you’re much more...” Raw , I want to say, because a single glance tells me Grayson’s past contains something cataclysmic. Unlike his brother, he wears his pain openly. It glitters there in the blue-green ice of his eyes, buried in plain view instead of behind a locked door.

“Good-looking?” he says hopefully.

The corners of my mouth curl. That, too, but I don’t give him the satisfaction. “Wounded.”

“Oh.” He abandons his lean against the doorframe. “Well, shit. That’s not what I was going for at all.”

I step back. “Do you want to come in?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He ventures over the threshold, his eyes sweeping the room. I can’t tell if he’s cataloging the kitschy coziness or scanning for bears hiding behind the wicker furniture, but when he flips the lock and draws the latch chain, I suspect the latter.

“I don’t think that’s going to stop her if she really wants to get in,” I say.

“Can’t hurt.”

“I guess not.” A flush creeps into my cheeks. With him here, I suddenly have the urge to hide. He’s so big, and so close, and... God, I’d forgotten how tall Michael was.

“Even if you’re not going to puke,” he says, “you do look like you could use a drink.”

I wonder if that’s code for him needing a drink, but decide it doesn’t matter. My years of abstention with Michael were all about moral support, and I’m not the booze police. With a nod, I go to the kitchen and pour two cups this time.

I return to find Grayson standing by the fire.

The sight of him glaring down into the flames like he’s contemplating some life-or-death decision stops me in my tracks. He’s laid his jacket over the daybed, revealing a body that’s honed and carved in ways even Michael’s never was. I already knew from those photos, but seeing it in real time astonishes me. His dark green T-shirt accentuates his musculature and reveals two tattoos—a lion on his upper arm, inked in black except for sapphire eyes so vibrant they seem to glow, and some kind of Celtic knot work adorning the inside of his opposite forearm.

I shake myself and hand off the wine, which he reduces by half in a span of moments. “Cabernet,” he says. “Nice. I always was a fan.”

“Me, too. Sorry about the paper cups. It’s all I have.”

“No problem. Wine is wine.”

“True.” I nod at the tattoos. “What do those mean?”

He shrugs. “Nothing in particular. I just liked the way they looked.”

I study the lion, which stares right back. Michael didn’t have any tattoos. Neither do I, so I can’t say from experience, but I’ve always assumed people have some deep meaning in mind when they get one. “None of your tattoos have any significance?”

“I didn’t say that.” His eyelids flicker. “One of them does.”

I know without asking which one he means. The one he doesn’t let anyone see.

My eyes stray to his chest. A few buttons adorn the neck of his shirt, only half of which are done up. The inky end of something oblong and pointed—a stylized leaf, maybe?—peeps at me from the curve of his pectoral muscle.

I tell myself to stop staring, but the urge to know more pushes questions against my lips. And from the way Grayson’s watching me, intently and with half-hooded eyes, I have the strangest sense that if I asked, he’d strip off his shirt right now and let me see for myself.

Something flutters in my throat. I break from his gaze and carry my wine toward the daybed, then pause, realizing we can’t both occupy it without touching. I turn back, at a loss.

Grayson’s mouth quirks. “It’s okay. I don’t have any problem with the floor.” He takes a cross-legged seat on the rug and gestures at my abandoned pillow nest. “Looks like you’d already gotten comfy down here, anyway.”

I reclaim my earlier place, grateful for the four feet of empty air between us. “I can’t believe you drove all the way up here in the middle of the night.”

“I can’t believe you let me.”

I turn my cup around but don’t drink. Maybe I shouldn’t. I already seem to be making decisions I normally wouldn’t. “It sounded like it was important to you.”

“It was,” he says.

“Why?”

He heaves a breath. “I already told you. I need to know you’re okay. And I couldn’t stand the idea of you getting mauled by some wild animal with no one around to help. I mean, I get why you came, but have you really thought this through? The wilderness isn’t the kind of place you should go wandering in alone. At least not at twilight.”

I glance toward the fire. Of course I haven’t thought this through. My entire mission here has been borne of desperation. Of a need to do something other than take the same painful, lurching steps I’ve been attempting for months, none of which seem to have gotten me anywhere.

Best to be honest with myself about that. And with Grayson, after the way he’s bared his soul.

“I don’t have any kind of plan,” I say. “And maybe I shouldn’t have come. But I just couldn’t spend another minute in that house.”

“Look, I’m not saying this was a mistake.” His tone softens. “I’d just feel a lot better if you had someone watching out for you. At least until you go back home.”

Back home .

The words immobilize me. I can’t imagine returning to Seagrove—sleeping in the same bed Michael and I once shared, reimprisoning myself among the trappings of a life that might never have been what I hoped for. I can’t picture myself ever plucking those divorce papers off the floor without wanting to throw up.

I screw my eyes shut, blocking out the thoughts.

“Hey.” Grayson’s voice fills with smoky concern. “Where’d you go?”

“Somewhere bad,” I say.

“Yeah. I can see that.”

I open my eyes. He looks worried. Maybe because he’s already emptied his cup.

“Here.” I push my drink his way. “This is the last alcohol in the house. You can have it. I’ve already had two, anyway.”

He doesn’t look down. “I don’t care about the wine.”

“But you care about me.” I mean it as a question, but somehow it comes out like a statement.

“Yes,” he says.

“Because I’m your brother’s wife?”

He hesitates. “No.”

I give a faint shake of my head. “Then I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“This.” I wave a hand. It hardly seems real. Grayson Drake —famous photographer, eternal bachelor, love-wrecked Romeo who outlived his Juliet—is sitting on my living room floor, watching me with a potent combination of vulnerability and concern.

But I haven’t done anything to earn it. Not one thing to justify this level of interest.

“Why did you come, exactly?” I say. “You’ve driven all this way to make sure I’m all right, but... Well, it shouldn’t matter to you. I shouldn’t matter. There has to be something more. Some reason you’re looking at me like that.”

He stares, then drags a hand through his hair. “Wow. You really don’t pull any punches, do you?”

“Do you ?”

“No. So I can respect that.” He picks up my wine without breaking eye contact and gulps half of it down. “You’re really going to make me tell you?”

My heartbeat flickers faster. “I think I have to. Otherwise I’ll just be dissecting everything you do, trying to figure it out.”

He still doesn’t look away, so I don’t, either. Finally, he reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his cell phone, and flicks a few buttons. “This is the reason. What made me come.”

I take the phone. The room retreats, the snap of the fire fading.

It’s a picture. Of me. Standing on a beach in Hawaii, freshly emerged from the ocean, four years younger and four years happier. I remember the moment with perfect clarity—Michael and I had just gone swimming with sea turtles off Laniakea Beach. I’d never done anything like that before.

And haven’t again since.

I cradle the phone close. It’s not a terribly flattering photograph, even if thirty-three-year-old me does look pretty damn good in a bikini. I’d just pushed my snorkel gear onto my head, and a red mark from the mask indents my face. My hair pokes out around my ears, hopelessly in need of brushing after its encounter with the sea.

Yet I have to admit there’s magic there. Joy shines from my face like light. I’m laughing, exploding with celebration over being alive, and somehow the feeling rises from the pixels in a way that hits me square in the chest.

Okay, so maybe Grayson did know who he was talking to. Except...

“I don’t look like this anymore.” I stare so long my throat thickens. “I don’t feel like this anymore, either.”

“You could,” he says softly.

“No. That was another life.”

“Bullshit. That was this one. And that girl? She’s you. And the truth is...”

In the pause, I glance up.

He looks terrified, but keeps going. “The truth is...the woman in that picture takes my breath away. She’s radiant . She isn’t thinking about how she looks, or whether her photo’s going on the internet someday. She doesn’t care about getting her Christmas bonus or what’s going to happen next year. None of that crap. She’s just relishing a moment. She understands a secret other people don’t, about how to live, and I want her to share it with me. I want her to whisper it in my ear.”

I can’t move. I can’t even breathe. My attention dives to the photograph again—anywhere but the naked supplication in Grayson’s face. The snapshot wavers, a taunting reminder of the person I used to be. The person I could have been.

Then I notice the heart icon at the bottom. It’s filled in, meaning he’s saved this to his favorites.

I pray for my voice to hold steady. “How many times have you looked at this?”

“A thousand,” he rasps. “More.”

I fight back my tears and swipe a button to display the picture’s metadata. There’s a date from four years ago and a line showing it was saved from a text message from Michael’s phone number.

“I don’t understand. Why would Michael send this to you?”

He laughs, low and humorless. “So I could torture myself with what I don’t have.”

“No. He would never—”

“He would.” His voice is hard. Final. “He absolutely would.”

I press my lips together, then decide to let that go. For now. I thrust his phone back. “Fine. So now you’re here to...what? See if I’m still her? Because I can tell you right now I’m not.”

“But you could be. In the right circumstances.”

“Really? And what circumstances would those be?”

“With me,” he says quietly. “At least, I think. Or not. That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“With you ?” I try to absorb the enormity of that statement and fail. “You mean you came here to try and save me? Or is this about saving yourself?”

Something heated and steady burns in his gaze. “Both. I never said I wasn’t a selfish bastard.”

I shake my head, a wobbly denial. I have no idea what to say.

“The point is, Michael’s the one who died, not you.” When he glances down at his phone again, the unguarded tenderness in his face makes my lungs ache. “And even though you said on the phone you’re okay, I could tell you were lying.”

I fidget, but don’t confirm the obvious.

“So,” he continues, “you’re right. Me coming here is about more than just making sure you don’t get eaten by bears. It’s about the fact that I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try to find the girl in this picture. If I let her fade away without even attempting to bring her back.”

“Okay.” My voice is rough. “Let’s say you have a point. What exactly do you want from me? Right now?”

“In this exact moment?”

“In this exact moment.”

His attention slides to my neck and downward, where my sweater cups the curve of my shoulder. “I don’t think you want me to answer that.”

A jolt shoots through me and settles low, pooling into something liquid and fiery.

Try as I might, I can’t deny that his interest does something to me. I knew it on the phone, and now that he’s here, it’s like a living thing, curling and crackling between us.

Shaken, I scoot backward. The distance helps squash my traitorous response. Not that it’s real, anyway. It’s just my stupid brain getting confused, because of who he looks like. Or doesn’t look like, as the case may be. “Aside from that. What do you want from me that I can actually give?”

“Just for you to spend time with me. We can go into the woods. Or not. Whatever you need.”

“Spend time with you? As what? A friend?”

“Anything you want.”

I weigh that. “How much time, exactly?”

“I’ve got a week. that, I have to go out of the country, on assignment. I’ll be in New Zealand for a while.”

A bolt of longing joins the heat in my belly. I wonder if he has any idea what that statement means to me, that he managed to end up with the life I once dreamed of for myself.

He doesn’t seem to. He just awaits my answer with innocent eyes, as if it’s perfectly normal to drop into a grieving widow’s life and ask her to get to know her late husband’s estranged twin brother.

Then again, it’s not like I have much to lose. But a week is out of the question.

“Three days,” I say.

“What? No. I can’t work that fast. A week.”

“ Three days . Take it or leave it.”

He thinks for a moment, then extends a hand. “Fine. Three days. During which time I’ll do my best to make you smile like that again.” He nods down at his phone. “And if I can’t, you can tell me to get lost.”

I hesitate. I’m afraid to touch him. Afraid of what it will mean, of what it might do to me. But when I tuck my palm into his grip, it turns out it’s just a handshake. “Deal.”

We break apart, him looking like he wants to say more, me wondering what I’ve just gotten myself into. The sensation of having walked this path before ties my gut in a knot.

“What?” Grayson says. “Why do you look so skeptical all of a sudden?”

“I just...have the craziest feeling you’re about to say we should have a rule about no sex.”

“No sex?” He somehow makes the words sound foreign. “What? Hell no. I’ll gladly fuck you right now, here in front of the fire, if you want. It’s not like I haven’t imagined it enough times.”

The knot of tension within me only ravels tighter. “Oh. You...have?” Shit. I sound like I’m dying of thirst. Like I haven’t had a drop of water in three days.

Or six months.

“I can guarantee you’d enjoy every minute,” he says. “And that there’d be a lot of them.”

A squeak comes out of me. “Do me a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t say that again. Please.”

His mouth turns down at the edges, then up, as if he can’t decide whether to frown or smile. “So that’s a no?”

“Definitely a no.” I’m not foolish enough to think that sleeping with the twin of the man I’m still grieving wouldn’t open a Pandora’s box of problems best avoided.

I break from his gaze and focus on the battered red lantern, trying to banish the mental image he’s conjured. Its flame glows, a steady star, and I force myself to think of the nights spent playing board games by its light, how I dreamed of doing the same thing with a partner, someday. “To be honest, I think I’d rather...”

Grayson leans in, his lips parted. “Yeah?”

“Play Monopoly.”

He blinks, as if waiting for the punch line. “Play...Monopoly?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Not what I thought you were going to say.”

I shrug. “You said we could do whatever I wanted.”

His expression turns sly. “Okay. But I should warn you, I’m not a gentleman. I won’t just let you win. And I call dibs on the shoe.”

A smile stirs. “Perfect. I like the dog, anyway.”

“Great. Just one condition. We play for more than money.”

I brace myself for something sexual. “Like?”

“Secrets. Well, not secrets . I won’t ask anything invasive. But every time you pay me rent, you also have to answer a question. Same goes for me.”

I process that. “Like Truth or Dare? But without the dares?”

He grins. It’s open and boyish, affording a glimpse of the man he might have been if Lily had never died, if he and Michael had never had a falling-out that burned so hot it left them both blackened and scarred. “Exactly.”

“Huh,” I say. “That sounds...surprisingly fun, actually.”

“Sometimes I manage to come up with a good idea.” His tone plays at modesty, but he looks profoundly pleased with himself.

Thankfully, the cabin’s Monopoly board hasn’t gone the way of our other belongings. I find it wedged in the bottom of the TV cupboard, right where it’s always been. blowing a layer of dust off the top, Grayson and I stretch out on our stomachs and dole out the prescribed stacks of colorful paper money.

He indeed proves ruthless, buying up one property after another, building houses the second he’s able, mortgaging and unmortgaging like a pro. Still, I win the first question.

I rest my chin on fisted hands and watch the firelight play over his face. “How about...where’d you get that scar on your eyebrow?”

He looks startled, but recovers in moments. “That’s easy. Riding a bike.”

“Oh. That’s it?”

“Yep.”

I deflate. I’d imagined a bar fight. Or maybe a jilted husband taking a golf club to him after finding him in bed with the cheating wife.

Not that I would’ve preferred that. But my mental image of six-year-old Grayson cartwheeling over the handlebars of a bicycle doesn’t have quite the same impact.

“My turn,” he says, when I land on Tennessee Avenue. “Tell me about your first kiss.”

I freeze. Damn. Why is his question so much better than mine? “That depends,” I say.

He frowns. “How can it possibly depend?”

I fidget with my token, turning the dog around on its orange rectangle. “Do you want to know about the first time my lips touched someone else’s lips? Or the first time a guy meant to kiss me?”

“Well, now I really need to hear this.” He ponders. “First time your lips touched.”

Old habit makes me clamp down on the answer, but the curiosity on his face soon frees my tongue. God, I haven’t thought about this in years. I doubt Michael would have approved. “It happened when I was fourteen. Margo dared me to pretend to drown in the town pool, and the lifeguard pulled me out.”

He stares. “The... Wait, what?”

I duck my head. “Yeah. The lifeguard. He was in the grade ahead of us, and I’d had a crush on him for like, three years. Margo was so sick of hearing about it that she came up with this cockamamie plan to get him to kiss me. Which, looking back, I realize was not even remotely okay. But Margo had this...effect on people. Being around her made you braver than you really were.”

Grayson’s eyes slit like he’s trying to decide whether I’m joking. “So this kid pulled you out of the water and gave you mouth-to-mouth? I thought that only worked in movies.”

Heat scalds my cheeks. “Yeah. I’m ashamed of it now. I probably scared him half to death. I even found out later that he’d had a crush on me, too. He was trying to work up the nerve to do something about it, but after the pool thing, I was so embarrassed that I took off running every time I saw him in the hallway. So I guess, in the end, I got what I deserved. Which was nothing.”

“Well, damn. That still might be the most badass first-kiss story of all time.”

My lips spread into a startled smile. Not the reaction I was expecting, but I’ll take it. “Your turn.”

Minutes slide into hours. When the fire dies, we play on by lantern light. I learn that Grayson’s favorite country is Egypt, that he used to be penniless before he started working for National Geographic and hated being poor because it made him feel like a failure compared to Michael, that despite his many conquests, he’s never slept with a married woman—“Come on, I have some morals”—and has a lifelong phobia of injuring himself and not being able to climb mountains anymore.

“Really?” I say. “Why’s that so important?”

He glances sidelong at the dying embers. “I think it’s because mountain climbing is one of the only things I can actually control. I mean, look at me.”

I do, though I’ve been doing little else all evening.

“I’m somehow forty years old,” he continues, “entirely against my will.”

“You’re thirty-nine.”

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, almost forty. A number I never imagined I’d actually reach. I especially never imagined being forty and lonely, but I can’t seem to fix that, either. So the mountain-climbing thing, it’s kind of like a consolation for me.”

“Because it’s the only battle you can actually win?”

“Yeah. Exactly.” He dips his chin affirmatively. “You get it.”

“I think so. It sort of sounds like me and running.”

A line appears between his brows. “How so?”

I hesitate, but the evening’s honesty permeates the air. “When I was with Michael, running was a way to...distract myself. To convince myself I was happy when sometimes I really just wanted to scream.”

His eyes flare. He looks more than a little disturbed by that confession. “Why on earth would you have wanted to scream? And more importantly, why wouldn’t you have?”

“Because,” I say, “half of being married is just keeping the peace.”

“That...doesn’t sound right.”

“What would you know? You’ve never done it.”

He doesn’t flinch, but the look on his face gives the impression that he has. “Is that what you’ve spent the last fourteen years doing, Mina? Keeping the peace?”

I pick at my fingernails. The question worms its way into my gut. My first instinct is to shy away, but something about the way Grayson’s watching me makes me wonder.

Did I spent the entirety of my marriage so in love with what could’ve been—with what I’d only touched in those first heady weeks, and then in the briefest of snatches—that I never stopped to examine what I actually had? Have I spent the last six months mourning a man who ceased to exist long before he died?

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. It won’t help to reiterate that I’ve always blamed Grayson for Michael’s distance, that I devoted an enormous slice of my life to trying to undo the damage he caused.

Because I have the sneaking suspicion that he might be right. He was never responsible for that. Michael was.

“I don’t know much,” Grayson says. “But I do know you shouldn’t tame yourself for other people’s sake. If you want to scream, scream. And if you want to do something else...do that, too.” When his attention drops to my mouth, I suspect we’ve strayed onto an entirely different subject.

Heat shoots across my cheeks. “Maybe you’re right,” I say hurriedly. “But if so, that also means you shouldn’t have to climb mountains just to feel like you have some say in your own life.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t call my bluff on the subject change. “True. But you know it’s a lot easier to dispense sage advice than to take it, right?”

I snicker. The crisp tension in the air softens.

“Besides,” he says, “mountain climbing keeps me fit. And I’d prefer not to dislike what I see in the mirror every day.”

“Well, that sounds impossible.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

Okay, maybe this direction isn’t any better, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “Come on. Look at you over there, with all your muscles. You look like sin. You could probably spend the next year being a couch potato and still drive women crazy.”

I swear his chest puffs out, even though he’s lying down. “You think I look like sin?”

“I do.”

“Is that a good thing?”

I pause. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s the exact opposite of a good thing.”

He cracks a smile, and what could be the most awkward of moments instead turns into us trading goofy grins. “For the record,” he says, “I think you’re gorgeous, too. In case you hadn’t realized.”

“Well, thanks. Not as much as I used to be, though.”

“Every bit as much as you used to be. Based on that picture, I mean.” His eyes heat. I don’t know why I compared them to ice at first. Warm, tropical waves tickle at my toes, inviting me to step in. “Maybe a little too skinny right now, but we can fix that. I’ll bring you a cheeseburger tomorrow. Two cheeseburgers, if you let me win.”

My self-consciousness dissolves. We laugh, and then I roll and land on Park Place, setting my dog next to one of his hotels.

“Damn.” I inventory my assets, but even if I mortgage everything, I don’t have enough.

“Game, set, match,” he says. “And now I get one last question. The one I’ve been saving.”

I push all my money across the board. He takes it, his fingers brushing mine.

I snatch my hand away. “Um... Yeah. Shoot.”

“I want to know what your favorite moment is. Ever. In your whole life.”

My eyes widen. What a question.

Memories clamor over one another, mostly involving Michael—the moment I walked up to his car and first saw his face, the time I opened my eyes in that underground cave in Canada. The first time I had him inside me. The night we lay in midnight waves in Hawaii and just talked, every word a thread stitching us together.

But none of those quite measure up.

I clear my throat. “Once, when me and Michael first met, we drove out to this mountaintop observatory. Not too far from here, actually. When we got out, he looked at the sky and said something about how tiny we are, but how our smallness also makes us everlasting. I remember holding his hand while this indescribable feeling came over me.”

Grayson studies my face. “What feeling?”

“Like”—I chew at my lip—“one of those Magic Eye pictures I loved as a kid. The whole world seemed to snap into focus, and life made sense in a way it never had before. I could feel how us standing there was a gift for us alone, forever until the end of time, never to be experienced by anyone else. In that moment, I knew life wasn’t about tomorrow or yesterday, because those aren’t real anyway. It’s just about what we do with our right here, right now.”

He draws a shaky breath.

I do, too. “God, I haven’t felt like that in so long. But I did then, and it was intoxicating, and illuminating, and...and...”

My voice withers in the face of Grayson’s fierce frown.

“Shit,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

I look down. A few tears glisten on the pale green game board. I sit up, scrubbing at my cheeks and making fervent wishes for more wine. “Sorry. It’s just... The truth is, I felt like my whole life was decided right then. And then it turned out so different from what I expected. So very fucking different.”

“I know the feeling,” he says gently.

I nod. I don’t doubt he does. I’ve intentionally avoided questions about Lily all evening, but for a moment, it’s like her ghost is here with us, a silent ship passing in the depths of his gaze.

“Would a hug help?” he says.

I gather my knees to my chest. “No. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Skepticism weights his voice. “Just tell me what you need.”

“Some sleep, I think. It’s almost four, anyway.”

He nods, then starts packing everything away.

I watch, struck by how competent he looks just cleaning up a board game. I wonder if his hands move with that same swift confidence when he takes a picture, and if he wore this same determined expression when he photographed that tornado.

“But maybe,” I venture, “you could tuck me in?”

When his fingers still around the stack of yellow hundreds, I rush to clarify.

“I don’t mean in a naked way, just that it would be nice if you laid down with me for a minute. Maybe tell me a story about one of the places you’ve been to.”

“Sure.” He clears his throat, though it doesn’t do much to smooth the roughness there. “I can do that.”

“Thanks. And hey. Looks like you turned out to be a gentleman, after all.”

Long seconds pass. “That’s definitely not the word I would use.”

In my bedroom, I close my door to change into my pajamas, then let Grayson in and crawl under the covers. He flips off the light, plunging us into the freedom of darkness. When he lowers himself onto my bed, the mattress dips, but somehow it feels more like a weight lifting than settling.

I consider scooting against the wall, but after that Monopoly game, I feel closer to him than I have to anyone in a long time.

Screw it, I decide. Life is short.

So I cuddle into his side, nestling my cheek against the hard plane of his chest. I try not to notice how well I fit. I do, however, note the arm that curls around me, the fingers that play shyly with the small of my back.

“Which country do you want to hear about?” he asks.

I wonder whether I’m imagining the quaver in his voice. “How about your favorite? Egypt.”

“Egypt.” His tone turns reverent, like he’s tasting each letter. I am imagining it, clearly. “Good choice.”

My lashes drift against my cheeks as he paints me pictures with smoke-soaked words. He talks about bright, dusty plazas and the organized chaos of men herding goats across barren, sandy roads. About the particular sweetness of the way water smells in the desert. He tells me about stone temples glowing pink at sunset and the impossible awe of tracing millennia-old hieroglyphics with bare fingertips.

I drink it up. I can feel the weight of history, the majesty of the pyramids, the kiss of a Saharan breeze against my skin.

“I’d like to go,” I say in the darkness. “Someday.”

“You should.” He rolls toward me, cupping one hand against my cheek, and I coil tight, knowing I don’t have the strength to refuse him if he tries to kiss me right now.

But he just tucks my hair behind my ear and says, “Good night, Mina.”

“Good night,” I whisper back.

“Will you be all right by yourself?”

I know what he’s asking—about my safety, but also whether I want him to stay. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” He swallows audibly. “Is there a way to lock the door behind me?”

“Yeah. The key’s under the grizzly.”

The mattress springs back, and he goes without another word. A minute later, the engine of something throaty and powerful ignites in the driveway.

Long after the sound of gravel beneath tires fades away, I lie in the dark with open eyes, wishing I’d asked him to stay.