I’m caught in my imagination when he breaks the silence. “What else do you want to know, Lucky?”
“About?” I ask absently.
“Me. Before. Whatever.”
“Now you’re dying to tell me the truth.” I take a deep breath. “It’s late. I’m tired. It can wait.”
“It can’t wait!” Patient, gentlemanly Sterling vanishes in an instant. His eyes storm with barely suppressed frustration. His hand lashes out like he’s going to grab me, but he thinks better of it. Instead, he rakes it through his hair, leaving a tousled mess behind. I hate myself for liking this primitive version of him.
That doesn’t change our fundamental problem, though.
“You came here with a plan!” The words claw out of me, each one as painful to say as the truth. “You can’t change that. You can say you’re sorry. You can come clean. But you planned this. So tell me, why should I forgive you?”
Sterling steps closer. My body reacts to the proximity of his, and I want him to touch me. I want him to find some magic words that make this okay. Because I want to forgive him. I just don’t know how I ever can.
“I love you. I didn’t plan on that,” he says in a soft voice. “I can’t take back what I did. Five years ago. Yesterday. Those moments are gone. I can’t change them. I can only stand in front of you and offer the moments I have left.”
“How many of those are there? Between the FBI and god-knows-who-else after you?” I ask. He looks frustrated again, which sends my pulse racing. “How many of those moments do I get?”
“All of them.” Confidence radiates from him. He believes what he’s saying. He means it.
But I know how time has a way of changing people. “Until you tire of me. Or you meet another woman.” I think of my father. I think of Malcolm. My whole life has been a parade of ending marriages. “Everyone believes in forever when they say it, but I don’t actually know anyone who understands what it means.”
“You want to know what forever is, Lucky? Forever is built on moments. This one. The next. Love means never living another second without you. Love is you and me—now, tomorrow, and every day after. That’s forever.” He dares to brush the back of his hand across my cheek. His touch scorches me to my core. “I’m not giving up on our forever.”
But even I can’t deny the budding hope inside me that he will. “Honestly, I hope you don’t.” I shake my head, backing away from him and his white-hot touch. “But saying something doesn’t make it happen, Sterling. Action does.”
“Then I’ll prove it to you.”
23
Adair
The Past
The flight takes a little over two hours, and when we arrive at LaGuardia airport, it is through a bank of gray, foggy clouds that seem to sit just fifty feet above every building. The terminal is old and still yellow from decades of cigarette smoke, but somehow this adds to the charm. In my mind, things here are supposed to be ancient, because no one can stop using them long enough for them to be replaced. I have no idea if it’s really true, but I look forward to finding out. I’ve seen New York in movies. I know it’s where the heart of publishing is in America. My father hates it. I already know I love it.
Sterling holds my hand as we exit the gangway, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Does it feel good to be home?” I ask.
“A little. Not the going home part. I’m excited to show you things.” Guilt is written plainly on his face, and when he sees my quizzical look he explains, “Everything is still open today. Tomorrow, half of everything will be closed, and on Christmas we’ll have our choice of bodegas and food carts, but not much else.”
“Gotcha. So what’s the plan?”
“Francie is at work. We’re already in Queens, so it won’t take long to get there and drop our stuff off. After that, we’ll go into Manhattan and start eating.”
“Start eating? How much eating are we going to be doing?” My stomach grumbles audibly, as if it agrees with Sterling.
He chuckles, his stubbly chin rubbing against my temple as he folds me into the space under his arm. “Don’t worry, it’s less than we’ll be walking. In here,” he says, pointing at a tram with a sign above it showing various transit symbols. “New York is an incredible food city. And I don’t mean haute cuisine, although there’s a lot of that, too. Food carts, pizza parlors who sell by the slice, literal holes in the wall. Every immigrant who comes here brings their food along with them, and if you’re adventurous enough, you can have stuff from all over the world.”
“And you’re adventurous?” I ask, letting him take my rolling carry-on bag as I get on the tram.
“I want it all,” he says simply, and I wonder if I can convince him to screw my brains out before we leave the apartment in Queens.
We end up taking a bus to a subway line marked with purple, then go a few stops west, getting off somewhere marked 40th Street - Lowery Street. When we climb the stairs to street level, I’m surprised to see that most of the buildings are small, about 10 stories at most, with most quite a bit shorter than that.
“I always thought everything in New York was a skyscraper,” I say, turning slow circles as I trail along the sidewalk behind Sterling, trying to take everything in.
“I guess that’s normal. It’s what all the movies show. Most of
