Sara felt it the second Gabriel’s hands touched hers. It was a tingle, a static shock, the sensation of electricity rushing up her arms and vibrating in her shoulders. She would have jerked back, except that his grip on her was tight, and his deep brown eyes were drawing her in, holding her in place, mesmerizing. It should have frightened her, the intensity, the gleam, the depth in his eyes, but instead, she was reassured. This was Gabriel. This was the man she had fallen in love with.

And he was letting her into his thoughts. She could see and feel them, wrapping around her, whispering in her ear, his fear that she might have been hurt by Marguerite, his desperate relief that she wasn’t. His powerful and honest love for her, the surprise he felt at the depth of his emotion. She felt the struggle it had been for him to not touch her, how much he had wanted to make love to her fully and completely, and how torturous his restraint had been.

She would have spoken, would have questioned why he couldn’t touch her, share the pleasure of their bodies together, but he put his finger on her lips. The shhh reverberated in her brain, as clear as if he’d spoken it, but he hadn’t. Just watch, he said into her consciousness, and she barely had time to register the wonderment of having him inside her mind, his thoughts blending with hers, when she saw it.

It was the years clicking backward, like pages in a calendar, until she saw Gabriel in the same apartment, wearing clothes with an odd seventies cut, quiet and alone, resigned but in control, the French Quarter outside him dirtier than what she had encountered. Lonely, both the man and the street, shabby and knocked around a bit, bleak, but calm. It shifted, blending and blurring until he was writing on a typewriter, and walking dark streets crowded with mid-twentieth-century cars, women in voluminous skirts and bright lipstick rushing by in pumps, Gabriel’s demeanor cautious, brittle, a residual hardness lingering as he refused to make eye contact or speak with anyone. Then she saw him in a smoky bar, women with short capped hair and straight dresses laughing and dancing, the atmosphere secretive, seedy, seductive. Gabriel was watching the piano player croon to the crowd with a longing to touch the keys himself. But mostly he watched with loathing. There was a drink in Gabriel’s hand, several empty glasses in front of him, and his mood was bitter, dark, desperate. He wanted to fling the glass at the piano and make the halfhearted, unimaginative music stop.