He points—to the dumpster and then up.

“From my living room,” he says.

There’s a window above the alley. His window. Which meant that Gabe watched me duck behind a trash can to avoid him. Watched me crouch there like an old-timey burglar all because I couldn’t have an adult conversation about an adult decision without my flight impulse kicking in.

Teddy isn’t in the truck, so I imagine her in the apartment, looking out the window.

My face and neck are so hot that I have to unzip my jacket. This whole thing keeps getting more and more embarrassing and stupid.

“Ollie texted you,” I say.

“I texted him,” Gabe says. “When you left.”

I nod.

“Déjà vu,” he says.

“It’s not the same,” I say.

“I know.”

I keep futzing with my scarf, scrunching it into a ball so it fits in the palms of my hands and then releasing it to expand in my lap.

“I didn’t want it to happen this way,” he says. “When I said we’d have time, I thought we would. I thought that I could do what I’d done with my father—that I could keep you, that I could keep this, out of the watchful eye of the press. That this could be something I didn’t have to share. At least not right away.”

I know it’s not his fault.

“I never thought I deserved Bond,” he says. “Even before I found out about Ollie.”

Outside the truck, snow has begun to fall—fat, fluffy flakes caught and buffeted around by the chilly air.

“Every article, every think piece about how ill-suited I was for the role, how wrong I was, I could have written myself,” he says. “Even in rehearsals, I was always two seconds away from quitting.”

I hear him shift, hear the squeak of the seat as he turns toward me.

“ ‘I can say with all confidence that Gabe Parker is the Bond we need. He might even be the Bond we deserve.’ ”

I start crying.

“I thought you hated the article.”

“Not all of it,” he says. “And I never hated it.”

My hands are open and my tears are gathering there, in the curve of my palms.

“You were good,” I say.

“You were right,” Gabe says.

“You had Dan Mitchell fired?” I ask.

His jaw tenses.

“I’d like to think I would have done it no matter what,” Gabe says. “That if I heard him saying things like that about any woman, I would have done the same thing—would have thrown all my weight behind getting him fired.” He lifts a shoulder. “But it was you he was talking about.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Why what?”

“Why me?”

He takes a moment.

“I think it was the short story,” Gabe says.

“The story?”

“I think that’s where it started,” he says. “When I read your story.”