He tried to focus on good things. North was coming back. That was a good thing. North was going to keep working with him. That was a good thing. Pari would smile. She’d make some comment about a post-1990s Sino-Russian rapprochement, and she’d do something that would put North into the red—like the time she’d burned a hole in North’s jacket with an iron, claiming she was just trying to help. And things would go back to the way they had been.

With Matty in the picture now. Shaw squeezed his eyes shut and turned face-first into the water. That was a good thing too. Shaw had waited so long for North, spent so much of his life in a fantasy that would never come true, and now, against all odds, he had someone in his life who cared about him, who wanted him. Matty was smart and hot and vulnerable. He needed Shaw. He’d had a horrible life, and Shaw could help make some of that, a little of it, right.

But all of the sudden, Shaw couldn’t breathe, and he propped himself on the shower’s window sill with his elbows and worked the clasp and threw up the sash. Cold air whipped into the bathroom, catching handfuls of steam from the shower and spinning them out into the night. Benton Park was quiet; from the second-story window, Shaw could look out over the rusted fire escape at the amber bubbles generated by the streetlights. He could see Matty’s car—the boxy blue Volvo—parked right in front of the building and the houses on the other side of the street that had been subdivided into apartments and, a few streets over, the arc of Gravois stapled with the red-yellow-green traffic lights, and the soot-stained brick and the verdigris steeple of the Saint Francis de Sales oratory. St. Louis was a river city, a low sweep of city with a few needles of high-rise construction. Shaw could see a long, long way, and that’s why it didn’t make any sense why he still felt trapped, why he still felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Forcing himself to stand upright, without resting on the sill, Shaw told himself he was being silly. But part of him was thinking about how easy it would be to slip down the fire escape—quietly, of course—and circle around to the garage, where the door could be jimmied easily, and get into the Mercedes and drive to the Chase Park Plaza and stay for a night or two until Matty cleared out. If Shaw kept the shower running, if he left right now, maybe Matty would never even notice.

Shaw grinned. He wiped a wet hand over the sill, and his fingers came away reddish-orange. Matty would notice. And Shaw knew he was being silly, knew he was being stupid even. He was just falling back into old habits. He was reading too much into how things had gone with North at the hospital. He was working himself back into all those stupid fantasies. And then Shaw groaned. Jesus Christ. That kiss. Why the hell had he kissed North on the cheek? It was like . . . it was like something a grandmother would have done. Jesus. Shaw stuck his hand under the shower’s spray, letting the hot water scour the rust from his fingers. That kiss had been classic Shaw—that was what North would say. Classic, fucking Shaw.