car and step out. After six months of intermittent texting and the occasional wistfully sexy dream—okay, also the occasional wistfully sexy daydream—her mind had smoothed the edges of his looks. It remembered that he was tall and dark-haired with mossy green eyes, and it remembered the shape of his shoulders and the tilt of his hips. But as he approached with a sloping smile, she realized it had discarded the mole on his cheek and the fact that he walked with a slight hitch in his step.
They stood on opposite sides of the door, both smiling. And then he held up a black baseball glove with pink laces. Taped to the palm was her note. In big black letters, she had written: I MISS YOU.
“You lose your glove?” he asked.
She bit her lip. “I thought you’d text me. Or call. I didn’t expect you to come all the way up here. I’d have come to you.”
He didn’t often smolder at her willfully, but he did in this moment. He met her eyes, and he said, “This was faster.”
Her face got hot, her knees got wobbly. “You should come in,” she said, opening the door.
IT FELT SO FAMILIAR HAVING him pass her in her new doorway, as she again encountered that shoulder, as she showed him into her house. As soon as he was inside, he turned around and pulled her in, his hands linked across her back. “I hope it’s okay I showed up. I got home last night from a tournament where I was coaching, and it was too late to call. I was going to call you today, but I woke up at four in the morning, and once I figured out I could be here by lunch, I just…left.”
She nodded, smiling. “It’s okay you showed up.” He leaned over and kissed her, and at first, she floated in it, putting her hands on his arms, remembering what it felt like, hearing her own heart. When she felt him pull her in tighter, she dug her fingers into his back. In the months without him, she’d forgotten and somehow not forgotten at the same time; it was like hearing the first lyrics of a song and realizing you can sing all the rest.
Suddenly, Webster yipped and jumped up on Dean’s legs, inspecting him for signs of danger, hot dogs, or past encounters with cats. “Webster, Webster,” she said as Dean pulled back from her, crouched down, and scratched Webster’s ears, rendering any security function instantly moot.
“So this is the dog,” he said.
“Yes. This is Webster.”
“Because?”
Evvie laughed. “When I showed him to Andy and Monica, she asked me what kind of a dog he was, and I said a shepherd mix, because that’s what they told me at the rescue. But Andy said, ‘He looks like the dog who’s in the dictionary under “dog.” ’ So I named him Webster.”
“You also got a house.”
“I did! You want to see? I mean, can you stay a while?”
He pushed a bit of her hair behind her ear. “Yes.”
“Okay. C’mon.” She led him through the kitchen and showed him the new table in her combined living and dining room. “Big enough for my dad and Kell and Andy and all his people to come over for family stuff. Over there, I have a woodstove.” They walked into the room with the huge picture windows, which were now offering a limited view of a few of the nearest boats. “And this is my view.”
“Holy shit,” he said softly. “This is great.”
“Yeah. I love it. My realtor heard me say that I had always wanted a house on the water, so she brought me out here. The carpeting’s all old, and the appliances in the kitchen are, you know. More ‘charming’ than ‘modern’? But I love it. I’m willing to work on it.” She hugged herself at the elbows. “How’s New York? Should we sit down?” He nodded, and they sat in the two club chairs that were very much like the ones he’d had in his apartment.
“New York is good. I’m back in my old place in my old neighborhood, and a lot of my friends are around. I’ve gone back to being able to see guys I knew before without feeling fucking terrible, so that’s a good thing. I do some coaching sometimes, I do clinics.”
“How’s…everything else? Are you happy?”
He was quiet, and then he said, “Are you? You want to tell me why you sent me your glove?” His words