So I stood and fidgeted in the cold as he parked his salt-stained, ugly truck a few slots down from mine. His indistinct shadow moved inside as he shuffled about, finally getting out and slamming the door with an intensity that I knew wasn’t directed at me but necessary to get the worn latch to catch.

“Ray-ray,” he said as he held his phone up and strode around the front. His lean height looked good and his pace was quick. A smile was on his face, its once-gauntness muted into a pleasant, rugged severity. “Did you just call?”

I nodded, letting my arms fall to my sides. Obviously he wasn’t prepared to run, as he was dressed in faded jeans and boots. A thick fabric coat was unzipped to show a bland, flannel button-down shirt. It was neatly tucked in and his long face was clean-shaven, but he still managed to look mildly unkempt, with his short black hair a shade too long. He had a bookish mien instead of the hint of danger that I usually liked in my men. But maybe I found Nick’s danger to be his intelligence.

Nick was the smartest man I knew, his brilliant jumps of logic hidden behind an understated appearance and a deceptively mild temperament. In hindsight, it was probably this rare mix of wicked intellect and harmless human that attracted me to him. Or possibly that he had saved my life by binding Big Al when he tried to rip out my throat.

And despite Nick’s preoccupation with old books and new electronics, he wasn’t a geek: his shoulders were too broad and his butt was too tight. His long, lean legs could keep up with me when we ran, and there was a surprising amount of strength in his arms, as evidenced by our once frequent, now distressingly absent, mock wrestling, which more often than not had turned into a more, er, intimate activity. It was the memory of our once-closeness that kept the frown off my face when he came around the front of his truck, his brown eyes pinched in apology.

“I didn’t forget,” he said, his long face looking longer as he tossed his straight bangs out of his way. There was a flash of a demon mark high on his brow, gained the same night I had gotten my first and remaining one. “I got caught up in what I was doing and lost track of time. I’m sorry, Rachel. I know you were looking forward to it, but I haven’t even been to bed and I’m dead tired. Do you want to reschedule for tomorrow?”

I kept my reaction to a sigh, trying to stifle my disappointment. “No,” I said around a long exhalation. He reached out, his arms going around me in a light hug. I leaned into the expected hesitancy of it, wanting more. The distance had been there so long that it almost felt normal. Pulling back, he shuffled his feet.

“Working hard?” I offered. This was the first time I had seen him in a week, not including the odd phone call, and I didn’t just want to walk away.