Liam wanted—desperately—not to do this alone. And he wanted more time with Daniel than the past few days had offered, this tempestuous boy who always seemed to be at war with the music in his heart. But this was no picnic in the woods. And he knew Daniel’s brand of chaos—the kind with no regard for his own life.

“Tonight begins the day of atonement. Erev Yom Kippur,” Daniel said. “I promised Rebeka we’d eat together beforehand. We’ll be ready to leave after that.”

“Sundown, then.” Liam nodded.

“What was your life like before?” Daniel asked suddenly. “What was it like back home for you? Was it really so bad that coming here seemed a better choice?”

Liam slumped backward with a tired smile. “Before? I pretty much lived at Princeton. The library and the physics lab. Always working.”

Daniel arched an eyebrow at him. “You don’t say.”

“I, uh . . . I have a hard time letting go of things. I get something in my head, and I have to burn it out of me. I’m either all fire or cold ash—don’t know how to be any other way.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Daniel smiled, hiding it behind his knee.

Another smile earned. Liam wanted to store them all up, wrap them carefully and tuck them somewhere safe. He wondered what Daniel might be like in a world where he could smile all the time, where he could walk down Fifth Avenue in clean clothes and laugh at something stupid Liam had said, smile because they’d stopped to pet a dog, frown over nothing worse than missing the IRT train headed downtown and so they had to linger on the station platform, nudging each other and sharing secret grins. He wanted Daniel’s mouth to hurt from smiling and his sides to ache from laughter. He wanted his heart so full he had nowhere else to put it all except to funnel it through his viola’s strings.

But it was no use imagining Daniel in New York with him, when Daniel couldn’t see past the tip of his own knife.

“I wish I weren’t this way,” Liam confessed. “But I get these ideas in my head, and I want them so badly. I—I don’t know how to want things less.”

“But if you weren’t so determined, then you wouldn’t be here.”

They held each other’s gaze for a minute. Liam’s mouth was too dry, too unwilling to cooperate; he drank the rest of his coffee to cover it up.

“You’d—you’d love New York,” he finally managed, the words tripping over themselves with sudden urgency. “It’s like its own symphony. There’s always a new melody to pick out.”

Daniel’s smile fell. “Berlin used to feel that way, too.”