But she was refusing to live with those choices, because this man in front of her now, looking at her with downcast eyes, was too special to lose. He was not just the one she wanted to sleep with every night. He was the one she wanted to wake up with every morning.

“How are you, Fire?” she asked.

He shrugged again.

“Is it going to be like this?” she ventured, looking at his locks and wondering if he’d changed inside as well. “Me talking and you not saying anything in return? I hope not … because I think there’s a lot for us to talk about … I know that you and Ian were very close. Maybe this isn’t a good time.”

Fire rubbed his palms together and looked away from Sylvia toward the sea. She followed his gaze through the thinning crowd, past the street lamp and the rubbish bin at the corner where the street curved around the park, over the top of the low seawall, through the gaps in the line of silhouettes. In his disengagement she saw a bit of herself at their first meeting, when he wore her down, charming her into his trust. Turning his strategy against him, she pointed to the program that was idling on his lap and paraphrased something he’d said to her in the kitchen at Claire’s gallery: “Okay, before I go, I’d like to leave you an address and phone number so you can get in touch with me … so we can be in touch only at your convenience. Can I use that paper there?”

He handed her the program and she asked for his pen. In the exchange, their fingers touched, and, ignoring for a second the restraint of the arms to which they belonged, curled around each other in a brief embrace. Fire, who had been feeling disconnected from Sylvia until this moment, felt her life force race through him—the hydraulic pressure of her blood, the electric pulse of her thoughts, the heat from the chemical reactions that fueled her emotions. And as he felt her filling him up, he found the room within his heart to temporarily displace his guilt over how their affair had contributed to Ian’s demise. It was in this new mood that he received her note, which she creased like a greeting card and placed on his shoulder like an epaulet, holding his gaze as he removed it.

Fire had been too deep in his own thoughts to see the moment when Sylvia wiped the paper against her neck to infuse it with the scent she had dabbed there. She had bought the almond oil from Winston’s Roots Apothecary when she stopped to get a remedy for the headache that had worsened as the time drew nearer to meet him.

Reining in the smile that played across his lips, Fire unfolded the paper and found there a drawing of a cookie and an aroma that evoked in him the memory of the night in New York when he’d sought refuge in her house and arms after spending thirteen hours at the hospital with Phil, and she indulged him with almond cookies. As he sat there flashing through the memories—their lunch under the cherry tree, their walk along the Promenade, the reading at the warehouse—he felt something leap in his throat, a roar shaking his ribs, claws raking his stomach. It was hunger, he knew—the kind that could not be quelled by food. Shrugging to loosen the tension in his bones, he stood up, and stretched his neck, and rolled his head in languid circles. He settled his gaze on her, demanding through his posture that she show him a sign. Anxious that he might not see it, he looked toward the sea again, his face serene with contemplation. She saw something new in him now, a maturity accented by his meditative gaze. And there was power in the muscle that pulsed at his temple that reminded her that his was a mind unafraid to embrace serious issues. No, he wasn’t just Fire. He was A. J. Heath.