It was like someone pulled a plug and all the fight drained out of the boy. He blinked those amethyst eyes and sagged in Shaw’s grip. “You came,” he whispered. “You came.” He started to slide down the wall, but Shaw dragged him close, wrapping both arms around him, and felt Matty’s arms tighten around him in return. The boy was shaking.

Some of that was the adrenaline cooldown. Some of that was probably shock. But some of it was the chill humidity of the April night that soaked both of them, so much moisture in the air that it hazed the security lights like fog, and the only warm thing, the only real thing in all that haze was Matty’s body.

That heat seeped into Shaw. It seemed to find every crack, every break, every tear, and it flooded into those fissures like napalm, a liquid blaze that trickled through all the defenses Shaw had built for himself since the night a stranger with a knife had cut open Carl’s stomach. The same night someone had dragged a blade down Shaw’s abdomen, across his thigh, and across his balls. For the first time since that night—that’s a lie, a part of himself admitted, that’s a lie because you’re not willing to think about North—for the first time since that night near the end of his freshman year of college, Shaw felt powerful. Needed. Desired. He was hard, and he hadn’t been this hard since he was fourteen and had just discovered porn. He arched his body away from Matty, embarrassed by his hardness, unwilling to reveal his reaction to Matty. Not now, you idiot. Not now when he’s been running for his life, not now when he’s scared shitless.

But another voice in his head said, if not now, when? If not now when you’re both wired with hormones, when he’s alive and he’s so fucking happy to be alive, if not now, then when? Sex, that little voice insisted, sex is the ultimate response to a brush with death. Sex is about affirming life. So if not now, when?

Shaw broke the embrace, staggered back, and slipped on a slab of wet cardboard. He caught himself on the dumpster, banged his funny bone, and the electric zing ran all the way to his shoulder.

“Ouch,” he mumbled. “Damn it.”

Matty shambled after him, but he paused when he saw Shaw nursing his zinging elbow. Then he smiled.

“It’s not funny,” Shaw said. “I’m wounded.”

Matty’s smile grew. “My knight in shining armor.”

Shaw tried to shake out the tingle.

“Aren’t you supposed to sweep me off my feet?” Matty said. There were still little tremors running through him, but his breathing was so much better. He was smiling; he actually looked human and not like somebody who had been scared half to death. “Aren’t you supposed to put me on your white steed and ride off with me into the sunset?”

“My white steed threw a shoe,” Shaw said, still massaging his elbow, “and it’s way past sundown. I’m not waiting a full day for another sunset. Will you settle for a Mercedes and a guy with a banged-up funny bone?”