I faintly remembered waiting around and sitting on a bench next to these two teenage boys who were trying to stay as far away from their parents as possible.

“An elderly couple arrived—do you remember them? The Canadians celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary?” he asked but didn’t wait for me to answer. “You got up the moment you saw them, said a thing or two to those boys sitting with you, and they got up as well. You invited them to sit down. You went and sat on the ground right next to them and talked to them the whole time. Well, until the sammies.”

I remembered all that. Or, at least, I remember talking to the older couple on and off all day. Frederick and Basil had been their names, from Toronto. But a question lingered in my head over what Jonah said. “I got under your shy shield because I talked to them?”

“No.” If anyone else had given me the smile he did, I would have thought they were mocking me, but his was too sweet. “Because you were nice to them and the way you smiled at them made you look so much more beautiful. It made me forget all about how good you looked in those shorts. You know Akira gave me such a hard time afterward for talking to you. He was so disappointed it wasn’t him you helped. He talked about you in those shorts all the way back to the flat until I told him to stop.”

Why did I feel embarrassed? “I just like older people,” I explained, knowing that probably lost me points. “They’re honest and easy to talk to. It’s why I liked working at the retirement home.”

Those long fingers curled over mine, covering my entire hand, his thumb sweeping up the side of my hand directly below my pinky finger. “Lucky for me my French is awful, eh?”

My whole heart soared a little bit.

Okay, alotta bit.

And I’d be embarrassed to think that my fingers almost twitched under his, because I had touched hands with a lot of people before. Men and women. His. But never… never like… this. With someone looking at me the way he was, so openly.

Jonah held my hand. With his rough thumb sweeping up and down the bones under my pinky finger, being all honest and Jonah and heartfelt.

And fuck me.

At some point, Jonah looked over so sharply, I almost lost my train of thought. “How could you think I didn’t care about you enough? I wrote you… so many times. I couldn’t bear to look at my own face in the mirror, but I wrote you because I wanted you to know I didn’t forget about you.”

My stomach soured a little bit as I frowned. “You mean four times?”

He frowned. “I sent you thirty-two postcards, Len,” he claimed. “One every other week just about. I missed a few right after… and before I came, but I sent them. My nan bought them and put them in the mail for me while I was with her. I bought the rest. I sent half to the box on your website.” His gaze was bright. “I didn’t know what to say in them at first, but I meant what I wrote about missing you.”

Missing me? Something thick and sneaky went down the center of my chest and into my stomach. “I only got two to my address in France, and my friend who was staying with me forwarded another two. There wasn’t anything on those.” I squeezed my hand into a fist, thinking about what he’d said. “And the… the PO Box? On my website? I let it close a long time ago. More than a year. Maybe even closer to two years ago.”

Jonah’s face went soft, his forehead scrunching.

He’d kept sending me postcards? I did the math in my head even as my heart pumped and pumped like I was doing something strenuous. Thirty-two, one every two weeks, would be… the whole time we’d been apart. He’d kept on sending them to me?

And he’d still come?

If he would have just tried a little harder to give me a smoke signal or something….

Thirty-two?

“Jonah….”

His hand gave mine another squeeze.

“What are you doing?” Grandpa Gus whisper-hissed out of fucking nowhere, honestly scaring the living shit out of me so bad that I jumped.

The hand on mine didn’t go anywhere—mine didn’t either—but I felt Jonah’s fingers tighten in surprise for a second just as we both looked over our shoulders to find the man I had seen a million times in my life standing at the doorway with his hands on his hips.

“What are you doing?” I fought the urge to take my hand from under Jonah’s.

I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I had been the first one to slip my hand into his about two weeks after we’d met. After that he’d been the one to initiate it. He’d been the first man to ever hold my hand like that. In public. Other than my gramps and Peter. But I’d think about all that later.

Even with only the side lamp on, I could see Grandpa Gus frowning from where he stood, his beady little eyes narrowing as he glanced from Jonah to me and back again, like he’d caught us having sex right on the floor.

“I came to check on my pal,” Grandpa whispered, still looking like he was trying to figure out what the hell was happening, not knowing and still disapproving.

“We were putting her to sleep,” I replied, glancing back inside the crib to see that the little body under my hand had stopped squirming. Maybe as soon as she’d felt the evil presence coming up the stairs.

Grandpa’s mouth went flat as he hummed under his breath.

“I’m not giving him a hand job or anything,” I whispered, feeling Jonah’s fingers jerk on top of mine at the same time he hissed out, “Len!”

But what did the man at the doorway do?

He snorted. “If you get pregnant one more time—”

That had Jonah choking.

“—I get to name the baby,” Grandpa Gus finished. “And the fight is starting if you’re still planning on watching it and not standing there making kissy faces at each other.”

All I managed to do was shake my head as he turned around and disappeared down the hall, having fired his shots and done his damage, aka ruining one of the most intimate moments of my entire life.

God.

Was I that easy? I’d never been deprived of attention or affection. I didn’t regret for a second not having a steady romantic relationship at any point. I wasn’t used to relying on people who weren’t Grandpa Gus or Peter or even Luna.

But now all of a sudden, I wondered…

I wondered what it would be like to have someone hold my hand and smile at me and for me to be there to do the same for them in return. To have an… extra special friend that was only mine. To have a… partner.

Not just anybody, but this one right here, with his biceps touching mine. His bare skin over my own. A person who claimed he’d sent me thirty-two postcards over the last seventeen months.

This one whose smiles made me feel better, whose playfulness seemed so attuned to me, who I could look at all day every day.

“I wonder how long it will take me to get used to the way you two are with each other,” the softly voiced man noted a few seconds after my grandpa disappeared down the hall.

“A few years at least, I bet,” I told him, still holding on a little to that piece of me that was suddenly way too curious.

I didn’t move my hand and neither did he.

“Lenny,” he said quietly.

I looked away as I pulled a blanket over Mo with my free hand and swallowed up every inch of that sweet, sweet face. “What?”

“I meant to tell you before my mum arrived….”

My stomach churned. Why did I always have to expect the worst?

“I want to start sharing Mo’s existence.”

Oh. I had a feeling I knew what he meant, but…. “What does that mean?”

“I know my mum. She would have already called my dad and told him. Word will get out sooner than later. There will be questions, there’s no stopping that, but I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hiding her. She’s no secret, and I’m thinking we should front foot, that way we can control it so the journos don’t.”

I wanted to wonder why the hell people would care if he had a child or not, but I knew better than that. I had been on his social media accounts. His Picturegram account alone had four hundred thousand followers. I’d read some of the comments, his followers even got into arguments over his hair when he got it cut.

Of course some people would care about him having a daughter. He still sold papers. Magazines. Ads on websites.

“I’d like to keep the details as vague as possible, and I’m sure there will be criticism—on me—but this is between us. The whole story, at least. People will ask questions and look you up. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I don’t want to put you into a situation you wouldn’t want to be in either. I’ll try to protect you from the media as much as I can.”