She put a hand on the back of his head and pulled him down, touching her forehead to his. “I’m sorry, Ángel. I don’t think that. But we’re snowed in. The roads are closed. It’s seventeen degrees out. You can’t leave if you need to.” She smiled a little through her tears. “I’m worried about you. Even though I’m not your mother.”

That made tears start in his eyes too. This was crazy. “I’m okay,” he said. “I promise.”

“You don’t have anyone here to protect you.”

“I don’t need protection. He’s not a monster, and I’m not a victim.” He squeezed her. “And you’re a lot nicer than my mother.” He bumped her forehead with his. “I’m just hungry.”

Lily didn’t look convinced, but he knew that she was incapable of letting him go hungry. She wiped the tears from her face and made him toast and a poached egg. As he ate it, he said, ostensibly to her but also to the listening air around him, “I sure hope the security team isn’t getting ready to swoop in and rescue anyone this morning. Because it’s fine.”

He took the tablet and sent a quick text-like email to Marissa.

Thanks for sending me the link to Con’s most recent masterpiece.

After several minutes, she responded, I thought you’d find it interesting. Would you like me to fly to Nashville and punch him in the throat?

Por favor.

He finished his toast and sipped coffee, then wrote, It made me regret my life choices. I definitely should have dated Taylor Swift. She, too, would have dumped me and then savaged me in a song, but it would have been a much better song.

Long pause. He heated milk for another cup of coffee.

True, wrote Marissa. Taylor Swift would never have perpetrated “you took my heart but you just wanted some.” On the other hand, judging from the caliber of Tay’s ex-boyfriends, she’s unlikely to have ever looked twice at your narrow Balsero ass.

He grinned.

O suggests that I write a song in response calling Con “feeble and sexually inept,” and that is a direct quote from the cultural envoy from the Otherworld. I’d like to work in “my narrow Balsero ass” too.

You shared this with O?

Carefully, he typed, All of the above, yes.

Another long pause. Maybe she was texting Chandler for confirmation. Feeling a little nervous, like he had just come out to her, Ángel finished his coffee, rinsed out his cup, washed the moka pot, and put it away. When the tablet pinged again, it said:

Don’t do anything dumb, Ángel.

When have I ever given you cause to call my personal life dumb?

You are hilarious, she sent. Remember the pool has a lifeguard.

No need, he replied. I can swim.