I sighed. “Honestly, I lost track of time until I just came out here to grab a cup of coffee. Bud is so entertaining. He really knows how to tell a story.”

Donovan shook his head. “I’m guessing some of those stories made me out to be a little shit.”

I smiled. “Did you really get arrested for having sex in a police car?”

Donovan dropped his head. “I wasn’t having sex. We were thirteen and making out. That’s what we did back in the day for privacy. We’d find a car left open and fool around in the backseat for a little while. It was sort of harmless, usually. In my defense, the cop car was unmarked and parked in an empty parking lot. And the cop who caught us turned out to be the uncle of the boy the girl I was making out with was going out with.” He held up his hands. “I also didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”

I laughed. “The story was much more animated when Bud told it.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“They just took Bud for a scan. He had a little blood in his urine tonight. The nurse said that happens after a trauma, but they want to make sure there isn’t a tear they missed the first time.”

“Yeah. I checked in with the nurses’ station a few minutes ago. They said it will be an hour or so before he’s back in his room. I’m going to stick around. You want me to walk you to your car?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait and make sure everything with his scan turns out okay.”

Donovan smiled and tilted his head toward the hallway. “You want to go grab a real cup of coffee, then?”

“Sure. But I’ll be the judge of whether it’s the best coffee in the state or not. I’m a coffee snob, even though I really can’t afford to be.”

We walked across the street to a small store that I probably would have passed right by on the way to a Starbucks and not given it a second thought. But Donovan was right; the coffee was incredible.

“I can’t believe this big cup was only a dollar fifty. This would be six bucks at Starbucks and not half as delicious.”

Donovan sipped his own cup. “Told you it was good. It’s a different world here than in Manhattan. Most people in Soho or Chelsea wouldn’t step one foot into that place to give a mom-and-pop shop a shot because they don’t have fancy signage and leather couches.”

I bit my bottom lip. “I know, because I am one of those people. Or at least I was. This stuff might’ve changed my mind though.”

“Good. You miss out on a lot in life if you only judge a book by its cover.”

My eyes caught with Donovan’s as he opened the front door of the hospital for me. “That’s a good reminder.”

Inside the elevator, I pressed number seven to go back up to Bud’s floor.

“He’s going to be a little while still. It’s nice out. You up for getting some fresh air?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Donovan lifted his chin to the elevator panel. “Hit ten, then.”

My forehead wrinkled. “Ten for fresh air?”

He winked. “It’s my secret spot.”

On the tenth floor, I followed Donovan down a bunch of mostly empty corridors until we came to a set of double doors with a red sign that read Employees Only.

Donovan looked around before he pushed them open. “After you.”

“Umm…are we going to get in trouble for going in here?”

He smirked. “Not if we don’t get caught.”

I shook my head. “Is that what you said to the girl who climbed into the back of the unmarked cop car?”

Donovan grinned. “Come on, live a little. I promise you free legal counsel if you get arrested.”

“Uhhh… Can you do that from the cell next to me?”

We laughed, but I walked through the door. After another series of turns, we came to a steel door that led to a set of concrete steps. At the top, Donovan opened yet another door. Turned out that led to the roof.

“How the heck do you know about this?”

Donovan walked over to a bench and dusted it off for us before I sat. “I can pretty much tell you the layout to every hospital in the five boroughs.”

“Why?”

He sipped his coffee as he sat down next to me. “My mom spent a lot of time in them when I was a kid. Sometimes a John would rough her up instead of paying; other times she’d overdose. I didn’t like to leave her alone, but they don’t let an unattended kid stay, so I’d find a place to hang out in the building overnight. Often it was the roof.”

“And no one ever noticed you?”

“Sometimes a doctor or nurse would say something if they found me up here alone. But they come up here to hide and smoke cigarettes. So if they said anything, I’d ask them if their chief and patients knew they smoked. That usually made them leave me alone. A few times they called security and had them chase me out.”

I laughed. “Oh my God. That’s insane.”

Donovan shrugged. “That’s life.”

“Believe it or not, I actually got escorted out of a hospital once.”

He raised one brow. “This I gotta hear.”

I felt sort of proud of my badassery. “Well, I guess I was about sixteen at the time. I lost my mom at twelve to cancer, and I’d grown close to my dad. One night I was staying over at my friend’s house when I got a call that my dad had had a heart attack. I went to the hospital and asked in the emergency room where I could find him. They said they were still working on him, but to have a seat and they’d let me know when I could see him. A woman in the waiting room named Candy walked over and introduced herself as my dad’s fiancée. My dad had just gotten divorced a few months earlier, and I’d had no idea he was even dating anyone. So I was confused. But honestly, my father lost his mind after my mom died, so I didn’t put it past him to get engaged again. A little while later, the doctor came out and spoke to us. He said my dad was stable but needed some surgery and asked if he’d been exerting himself when he started to get chest pain. Candy then proceeded to describe, in detail, how my father was a bad boy and had just finished doing fifty pushups after being denied orgasm during sex as part of his punishment.”

“Shit.” Donovan chuckled. “Did you smack her or something?”

“No. I was kind of shell shocked after hearing that. I smacked her after the doctor walked away because she said she didn’t like her engagement ring—it was too small. I looked down and saw she had my grandmother’s ring on her finger. She acted like I’d stabbed her, making this dramatic scene, so security escorted me out.”

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Red.” He smiled. “There’s a badass hiding in there after all.”

I bumped my shoulder to his. “Well, I am up here illegally on a roof, you know.”

“That’s true.”

A little breeze blew, and Donovan stood to take off his suit jacket. He offered to wrap it around my shoulders.

“No, that’s okay. I’m fine.”

“I’m warm. Plus, if you don’t take it, I’m going to make us go inside, and I like it out here with you.”

Our eyes met. I really liked it out here with him, too. Even though we were outside in the middle of Brooklyn, it felt like our own secret place. So I accepted the jacket. “Thank you.”