“Will you come with me?” I ask and she just smiles. Then I look at Viktor. “Cheryl is going to be here in five minutes. She runs the meeting, and she is amazing.”

“I’ll wait here,” he says and looks at Parker. “You better tell Zoe that you decided to leave me and not that I just dropped you off.”

Parker laughs and goes over to him. “You’re my favorite,” she says. “Don’t tell the others.”

“You know that we talk, right?” Viktor tells her. “Last week, you told Evan he was your favorite.” Parker gasps.

“He was not supposed to tell you that,” she says. “I really mean it with you.”

“That’s what you told Max,” Viktor says, and Parker throws up her hands.

“I’m ready to go.” She turns to me. “We’re leaving.” I walk out, and she gets in the car and puts her seat belt on. “So where are we going?”

“I have a couple of things I have to do, and I would like for you to be there,” I say, and she just smiles. When we pull up to my old apartment I turn off the truck. “This is my place,” I say, and she looks around.

I walk out, and she follows me, and I wonder if she is scared. When we get to my place, we walk up the five flights of stairs. I turn the key and when I walk in, the smell of fresh paint hits us right away. The windows are closed, and the air is thick. I see that the futon is gone, and the mattress is not there either. “This is my home,” I say, turning in a circle. “Not much to see,” I say, laughing with all the nerves. She smiles at me and has tears in her eyes. “Wow, this is harder than I thought,” I say and now it’s me who’s scared. “I love your son.”

“I know,” she says, and she holds her hands together.

“I met Andrew when I was sixteen, and I thought he hung the moon and stars.” I try to swallow, and I’m suddenly sweating. “And at seventeen, I got pregnant. I’m not going to lie. You think that at that age nothing can touch you. It’s never going to happen to you.”

“It takes one time.” She laughs.

“My family kicked me out. I basically had to choose between my child, who I loved with everything that I had even though he was just a little pea”—I brush a tear away—“or my parents.”

“Oh, Caroline,” she says.