I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even realize when he enters the room. He grabs me by my waist from behind. His hands are warm against my bare skin as they skim over my waist, until he has his arms wrapped around my stomach.

“What are you looking at?” His mouth presses against my neck.

“I…I was wondering if there are any more letter boxes.”

I hear his snicker before he turns me around. “You think I have a habit of collecting letters from teen girls.”

My eyebrow shoots up. “Teen girls?”

“You were then.” He fails badly at hiding his smile.

Lukas turns me around once more before gently nudging me forward to open his closet.

And with his permission in place, I waste no time.

I pull the door open.

What?

After a moment of initial shock, I burst into laughter. The closet is divided into three sections.

Denim. Leather. Cotton.

“What the hell is this? It looks like a lost part of a store’s menswear section.” I’m still grinning when I turn around. “How is everything so neatly lined up?”

“I’m a neat person,” he says seriously, making me laugh a bit more.

“I get that, but this is…too neat.” I push around the hangers holding the leather jackets and then his multiple jeans, which look almost exactly the same, and finally the cotton of his T-shirts.

My curiosity for this foreign organizational system of Lukas’ is unleashed as I open the next door to find a few formals hanging, again, perfectly.

“What kind of bachelor are you?”

“The clean kind.” One side of his lips curl up, but when I don’t laugh, he knows I want to know the real reason. Lukas swallows. “My mom… She had to… I mean, she liked things in order. Everything in the house had a place.”

My chest squeezes hearing him talk about his mother. I know how much he misses her.

“But once she was gone, I was living…in a boys’ home for some time, until my grandparents found me.” Lukas grabs his neck while I stand there, unable to understand the connection between his perfectly stacked clothes and his tragic childhood. “I did things I’d seen my mother do, hoping the reward would be affection. I never lived in a mess. I never complained about anything. I put others above myself, above my safety. I just wanted everyone to like me.”

His words hit my chest hard, and I throw my arms around his neck. He crushes me into him and then whispers, “These past weeks with you are the only times in my life I’ve felt like there’s someone, someplace, that is…just mine.” The raw anguish in his voice is like a thousand knives thrown at me. His heart pounds so fast under my hand that I worry he’ll have a heart attack.

“It is,” I whisper.