It seemed to Olivia that every few weeks she was discovering a new area of the city that she’d had no idea existed. She’d driven by the tall, rectangular redbrick homes surrounding Tower Grove Park once in February when she’d met a sixth-grade history teacher for a Saturday walk through the park but had had no idea how expansive the area was. The actual park was massive, stretching well over a mile long. Having grown up in the midst of the flat, fertile farmlands of southern Missouri, she couldn’t recall ever before visiting a park that had been designed for the purpose of being an arboretum, and she’d never walked among such exotic-looking trees as she had that afternoon.

Now that signs of spring were showing—flowers blossoming and many of the trees beginning to bud—Olivia was determined to walk here again. And with any luck, it’ll be with Gabe. Her heart did a thump and a skitter. She could perfectly envision walks with Gabe under the fresh blossoms, holding hands and laughing and tossing a ball around for Samson. Suddenly, Morgan popped into her daydream. She wondered if the shelter might give her permission to take him for walks here too. The thought of how challenging that would be brought a smile to her face. There were probably so many birds around here that it would be more of a stop and stalk than a walk.

Most of the homes they were passing as they drove to Gabe’s apartment seemed to be single-family, but she followed him to a side street near the park that had an equal number of multifamily units. When his brake lights lit up, her pulse began to race. She knew that having followed him here could open the door later to something a part of her was really craving.

He’d said that bit about there being no pressure tonight, and she’d seen that he meant it. Asking her to park here wasn’t an attempt to get her into bed at the end of the night. But what if she was the one applying the pressure later? Where she came from, girls weren’t the ones who initiated sex. And they didn’t say yes on a first date. But she wasn’t a girl anymore, and she wasn’t in the Bootheel any longer. And the fact was that the rural mind-set of girls needing to be chaste mixed with a “boys will be boys” attitude needed some major revamping. Maybe it was the extra decade and maybe it was the city versus country mind-set, but she saw a refreshing bit of progress in the students she was teaching.