Max wanted to tell her to come sleep in his bed with them, that they could have a big slumber party, but of course he didn’t. But damn. He wanted to . . . cuddle her. Her dog, too, fine, but mostly her. It wasn’t a sexual thing. Well, that wasn’t true. But it wasn’t only a sexual thing. He couldn’t turn off the constant simmering awareness of her. She was gorgeous. Her face and her brain and her everything. But he accepted that the feeling wasn’t mutual. He accepted that the feeling was profoundly ill-advised. So, in the spirit of taking what he could get, he was happy to carve out the garret of her dreams and just . . . be near her.

They spent the walk up the mountain talking, as was their way, about nothing and everything. It was snowing, but the trail was shaded so they didn’t have to tromp through much accumulation. Usually when Max went up the mountain, he could feel himself relaxing. It was probably a combination of the objectively calming effect of being in nature and a conditioned response from the days when he and Seb would literally escape up the slope, leaving the tension and dysfunction of the house behind for a while.

But add in the presence of Dani, and he was extra relaxed. Though perhaps relaxed was not the right word. All the banter and crackling of wits that occurred in Dani’s presence required him to be on his toes, necessitated a degree of concentration that should have been the opposite of relaxation but somehow was not. He felt as if he were in “the zone” that athletes sometimes talked about, that there was a flow and order to the universe he was tapped into, that perhaps his destiny wasn’t going to be as oppressive as he’d always thought.

An hour into their hike, Dani dropped a little bomb he hadn’t seen coming.

“Okay, I’m going to tell you something a little shocking.”

“I am bracing myself even as we speak,” he said to her butt. In his defense, they were walking up an incline, and she was ahead of him.

“It’s about the mystery project. I think I want to try to write a novel. That’s what I’ve been working on this fall—the research for it.”

“Yes.” Of course she should write a novel.

“Yes?” She laughed, stopped, and turned. “That’s all you have to say?”

“Well, obviously you’re going to be brilliant at it.” He tilted his head to look up at her—the slope was such that she was taller than he was. “What’s it going to be about?” He pointed up the path, signaling that they should keep going.

“Remember I told you about that Gertrude Stein–Pablo Picasso project I worked on with Vince?”