“Do you want me to be honest?” he asks softly, looking at my face again.

I nod. “Always.”

“I’m not sure why I’m here.” He shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, not here, here,” he clarifies. “I invited you, after all. It’s the motives behind the invitation I’m a little confused about.”

“Motives?”

“I’m not making much sense, am I?”

“Not really.”

“Shall we go for a walk? Burn off some of the ninety million calories we just consumed.”

“You consumed, you mean. I was lucky to get a few chips.”

I joke to try to relax him, but there is a stiff set to his shoulder as he walks next to me that suggests he is still mulling over our brief conversation.

“Cold?” he asks, when I shiver.

“No.” I shake my head. “Just someone walking over my grave.”

He doesn’t smile. “I’ve never understood that saying.”

“Me neither,” I admit. “It’s just one of those things you say without thinking. Like ‘Bless you’ when someone sneezes.”

He stops walking suddenly, but it takes me a moment to realize, so I stop a couple of steps ahead of him and turn, puzzled as to why he has stopped.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says earnestly. “Or upset you in any way.”

“You haven’t.”

“I know. I mean in the future. You know, if there was a…if we were to…”

“OK.” I step back toward him, realizing that whatever it is he is trying to say will need to be coaxed out of him. “Take a deep breath.”

He frowns. “I don’t need—”

“Take a deep breath.”

He sucks in air quickly, his eyes big as he waits for my permission to exhale again.

“And release.”

He blows out noisily.

“Better?”

“Not really.”

“Then you didn’t do it properly.” I move to his side and place a hand on his chest, at the bottom of where I think his diaphragm would be. I pretend I don’t hear his sharp intake of breath as I touch him. “Right, breathe in again,” I tell him. “A proper, big breath. Right down to here.” I apply mild pressure to his chest. He turns his head to look down at me as he follows my instructions, and the expression in his eyes almost robs me of my own breath. I quickly look back at his chest and tell him sternly to breathe deeper.

“You’re something special, Ava, you know that?” he says quietly after he exhales. “I’ve never met anyone else like you.”

“A worldly traveler such as yourself?” I chuckle nervously. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true,” he insists. “I wouldn’t say it otherwise.”

“You’re pretty spectacular yourself. You know, for a city guy.” I fall back on humor because I don’t know what else to say, or do. The way he’s making me feel is new to me.

“Ava,” he says. “Look at me.”

I can’t. I’m scared of seeing something in his eyes that reflects what I’m feeling. I’m more scared, though, that I won’t see it. My phone rings with a text alert and, relieved, I fumble in my back pocket, pulling it out to check the screen.