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“Connor!” he snapped, pulling me more into myself.

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled weakly.

“None of the sir shit, Connor. I think . . .” His voice grew thin, uneven, like he hated to admit this. “I think we need to ask someone for help, you think?”

“Oh God.” A shrink? A grief counselor? “No.” I collapsed against him. “Please. Just . . . just you.”

“I’m not enough,” he said. “Not enough.”

“You are.” I stopped sucking in air, my chest stopped heaving, and my mind freed itself from that crippling lock. “It’s not . . . It was a panic attack. It’s . . . I just need to think about it. I need to be
home
, where I feel like
me
—the me who’s with you, and not the Hollywood me.”

“Connor, you’re an actor—”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“You need to come to Hollywood sometimes.”

I sagged against him, too limp to pretend anymore. “Yeah. But next time I’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“Vinnie’s house will be brown.”

We got back to the beach house and made our way upstairs. I was wearing high-end jeans and a button-down shirt, and it all got chucked in the hamper. I stood in the darkened room after that, staring blankly through the sliding glass door at the ocean.

Noah walked in behind me, also in his boxers, and put his hands on my shoulders. In the sudden quiet, we could hear a raucous celebration down on the beach. I focused on the bright spot down below my deck.

“Look,” I said quietly. “A bonfire. Think that’s coming from next door?”

“Yeah,” Noah said. “There were still a lot of cars out there. Did Vinnie’s family have reunions?”

“No,” I said. “It’s . . .” I closed my eyes. “What day is it?” I wasn’t great with dates regularly, but conventions—forget about it. I couldn’t remember to link the number with the day during the best of times.

“July twenty-second.”

I started to laugh, a humorless sound that hurt me to make.

“Oh Jesus,” he muttered. “You think that would be worth mentioning?”

“How do you even know what I was going to—”

“It’s his birthday, isn’t it?”

Images flashed behind my eyes—long walks on our beach, stupid, kitschy little gifts like Bundt pans with plants in them and Hummel figurines. Giant lime-green bathroom rugs, and wreathes of teddy bears. All of it given in the darkness after Comic-Con, which had been our real gift to each other.

“Yeah,” I said, and oddly enough I was reassured. “But . . . you know. That . . . that explains a lot.”

“But not all of it,” he said soberly. “Please, Con? Would you—”

“We leave the day after tomorrow, right? We have a week’s break, and then we start shooting again. Right?”

He palmed the outsides of my arms, and I melted into that touch.

“Right.”

“Let’s go to the other ocean, okay? Where he’s not . . .”

“Right next door,” Noah murmured. “I get it. I’ve gotten it since the very beginning.”

“I didn’t,” I told him seriously. “I didn’t have any idea. I thought . . .” What? That I could skate along on the surface of the ten-year hole?

There’s not even ice on the surface, dumbass!

I sighed.

“What?” Noah touched his lips to the back of my neck.

“Even Vinnie thought it was a bad idea.”

Noah’s chuckle sounded strained. “Well, good that me and your dead boyfriend could agree. But now tell him that you’re going to be unavailable.”

He dragged his knuckle down the xylophone of my spine, and I shivered.

“Yeah, sure.”

I’m outta here.

Noah turned me in his arms and kissed me softly, tentatively, and I chased him, holding him still and
making
him stay.

That was his cue right there, to take over, and he did but . . .

Softly.

There was no playing at boy and sir here. His mouth on mine was firm—but not commanding. His hands sliding along my arms and torso were warm and hard—but not painful. I arched into him, wanting harder, and he gave me back . . .

Himself.

I tilted my neck back and gave him access to my throat, the hollow of my shoulders, behind my ears, and he nibbled. I shivered, and for a moment, I wanted to arch against him, greedy, and beg, but he pushed my hair from my ear and licked along the outer shell. His voice—deep anyway—grew huskier, and he whispered, “Stay with me here, Con. Stay with me.”

It was all the strength I needed.

We made love sweetly then, and every touch, every kiss, was a blessing.

My body was his. I gave it to him as a prayer.
Oh Noah, please let me stay.

He thrust his way into me, and I heard his response.
Yes. Oh God, Connor, stay.

And I was his then, in the moment, under his fine, rangy body, pulled into the warmth and comfort of his dark skin.

Our climax rolled through us, starting small inside me and gaining power and complexity, until it rocked his entire body, sent him shaking and sobbing into the hollow of my shoulder.

I comforted him, stroking his neck and chest, while we whispered stupid promises I wasn’t sure I could keep.

Shh . . . It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.

I’ll stay.

I’m not sure if he believed me. I fell asleep with his weight pushing me into the mattress, his erection still nestled inside me. I felt complete that way.

He and Viv were scheduled to go down to San Diego together the next day. They hadn’t had a chance to cruise the vendors’ floor, and I had earmarked all sorts of things I wanted them to get for their gran and their father and their little sisters. Kitschy crap? Of course. But I could picture their house, every rainbow-painted room of it, and I wanted something from me in each one.

So I’d written a list out specifically, and their job was to get as much of it as they could.

Noah woke me up early, smelling like shower gel and kissing me softly on the temple.

“You’ll be okay?” he asked.

I yawned and tried to remember what he was talking about. “Yeah, sure.”

He scowled. “Con, this is not a ‘sure’ thing. You—”

Oh, yeah. I
was
falling apart. There was no denying it.

“You’ll be home at four?” I asked, because that way I could schedule. I could do paperwork and stuff, maybe go for a run on the beach, and have dinner started for them before they got home.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “But if you need—”

“Cell phones,” I yawned again. “That’s what they’re here for.”

He growled in his throat, and I patted his cheek.

“I promise I’ll call you and not Vinnie. He probably doesn’t get cell service anyway.”

“That’s not even funny, Con.”

“It is.”

“No, it’s really not.”

“Little bit, yeah.”

“Con, I will—”

“Go have a nice day,” I mumbled, suddenly too tired to even play-argue. “Come back and show me all your fun things. I really want to see them, okay?”

He sighed. “Yeah.” He kissed my forehead and then my mouth. “Remember who loves you, okay?”

“Noah Dakers. Can’t miss him. Tall black kid, with the most beautiful eyes in the world.”

“Flattery helps—I can’t deny it.”

“Good, now go before traffic gets worse than shitacular, ’kay?”

One more kiss and he left, and I did what any actor did after a premiere and two days at Comic-Con. I went back to sleep until noon.

I did finally bestir myself to get out of bed and answer some emails. Jilly wanted me to narrow down my script options, and I told her I’d read them on the plane.
Vogue
wanted my okay on the photo layout, which I gave, and someone had slipped a ball past Jilly and wanted me to do a commercial for condoms that would probably make me a lot of money. But they’d slipped the ball past Jilly, and nobody did that to Jilly, so I told them no.

When I looked up, it was three, and I figured better to do my run now and then shower than the other way around. I grabbed my iPod and my sleeve and put on my running shoes, liking the idea of a crashing ocean instead of a still one.

And I have to admit that as I took the path from my backyard to the steps down to the beach, I was in decent spirits. I’d gotten used to the brown paint on Vinnie’s house, and Noah’s lovemaking was still bright and dark and lovely, etched in my head.

I had faith right then, hope that I’d figure out how to live with my ghosts, and that it would be all okay. I took off going north, running for about fifteen minutes before turning back around. My time got better on the way back, so as I passed the back of
my
beach house, I decided I’d run down past Vinnie’s.

A woman had come out as I’d been running, and she was walking a bucket with water back and forth from the ocean to the remains of the bonfire that had been built the night before.

I slowed as I neared the fire, recognizing the skeletons of some of the things in the pit.

Oh.

Oh, oh no.

I didn’t realize I’d made a sound until the woman trotted around the remains of Vinnie’s turquoise recliner, bucket in hand.

“Connor?”

I glanced at her, and then back to the charred remnants of ten years of my life.

“Oh,” I said, my voice small.

“You are Connor, right? I mean, we spent Christmases with you and Vinnie. I’m Christine, Kevin’s wife?”

“Ohhh . . .” I moaned. There, in the corner, reeking like burnt rubber, was the remains of the big furry lime-green rug he’d kept in the bathroom.

“Connor, are you okay?”

“Our stuff,” I whispered, seeing a multicolored scrap of what must have been the Hairy Otter blanket flying off down the beach. I sat where I stood, the hugeness of the destruction too big for me to comprehend. “Why would you burn mine and Vinnie’s stuff?”

I’d had it so perfectly outlined in my head, that house on the island. Vinnie waiting there, all of our stuff, the life we’d picked out and laughed over, the time we’d spent creating something whimsical and adorable that only
we
would ever understand. We’d lived in our own world—it had been our magic bubble. We’d decorated it like petty gods, and here was our sorcery, immolated and charred, toxic ashes in the wind.

“Your stuff?” she said, sounding surprised. “I mean . . . we went sort of overboard. We were . . . You know . . . It was his birthday. We just . . . all missed him so bad, you know? We wanted to sort of . . . you know. Closure.”

“You burnt our home for closure?” I couldn’t get mad—there was no strength in me for mad.

“Vinnie’s house is still up there,” she said kindly.

“He painted it blue for me.” Nobody knew this. “I like . . . I like blue.” So the furniture had been blue, and the living room rug had been blue, and the trim had been yellow. “It was . . . so I’d look over at his house and know he was really living in
my
house. Just . . . just a backyard away, right?”

“Connor?” She sounded confused. “Why would Vinnie paint his house blue for you?”

“Because he loved me,” I keened. “Oh . . . oh God. Vinnie, you loved me . . . and look. It’s our home . . .” I reached into the ashes and pulled out a plate, the veneer peeling from the pottery, but I was pretty sure it had once been a raw piece of steak. “It’s our life, Vinnie,” I moaned. “Oh, Vinnie, it’s all gone. Our home is all gone. It was . . .” I looked up at his brown house, the truth slamming into me so hard I could barely breathe. “It was never mine. Oh Vinnie, how could we have built that home and it was never mine? Ten years, and it was never mine. You were never mine . . .”