5:40 A.M.

He kisses you against the door you just locked.

Slowly this time, like he's learning the shape of something. His hands frame your face, and when you tug at his collar he laughs, low, surprised, the first laugh you've heard from him, and it goes straight through you.

"Your jacket's soaked," he murmurs.

"It's my dad's. It's always soaked."

He eases it off your shoulders like it matters, hangs it on the back of a chair, and then he looks at you. Just looks, in the dark, with the harbor lights moving on the ceiling. Your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it in your fingertips.

"Still sure?" he asks.

"Nathaniel."

"Say it anyway."

"I'm sure."

He takes your hand and walks you toward the bedroom, and at the threshold he stops and kisses your knuckles, one by one, the ones still rough from the throttle, and that's the last thing you'll let yourself replay later in public places.

The door swings shut behind you.

You wake at 5:40, because you always wake at 5:40. Twelve years of tide tables have set the clock in your body like a ship's bell.

The bed is warm on your side and cool on his.

For one bad second you think he's gone, that he's done the gentlemanly vanishing act men like him do, that you're about to find a note on Harbinger stationery. Then you see the balcony door open a few inches, and a shape out there against the gray.

You pull on the hotel robe. It's enormous on you. You pad out barefoot.

He's dressed already, dark trousers, a fresh white shirt, sleeves rolled, sitting in the same chair as last night with a newspaper he isn't reading. On the little table beside him: a silver coffee pot, two cups, a pitcher of cream, and a dish of raw sugar.

He looks up, and his face does something you weren't ready for. It softens.

"Good morning."

"Hi." You sit down. You're aware of your hair, your bare feet, the robe slipping at your shoulder. You're aware of every inch of last night, and from the way his eyes move over you and then deliberately away, so is he. "You ordered coffee."

"Cream, two sugars." He pours. "You said so last night. Somewhere around two."

You don't remember saying it. You take the cup with both hands and look at the river. The sky's turning pearl over Mount Pleasant. A tug's going out, one of the competitors', running lights still on.

"So," you say.

"So."

"I don't really know what people say. After."

"Neither do I, as it turns out." He folds the paper. "I'm not going to pretend last night was nothing, Ava. I'm not going to make a speech about it either. You had a terrible night and I was there, and then it stopped being terrible, at least for me. That's the truth. What it means, if it means anything, is yours to decide."

You look at him over the cup. Silver at his temples catching the first light. That still, careful face.

"It wasn't nothing," you say. "For me either."

He nods once, like you've handed him something heavy and he's putting it somewhere safe.

Then your phone buzzes on the table where you left it last night, and buzzes again, and keeps buzzing, skittering across the glass.

Trevor (31).

Lenora Crofton.

Blakely (7).

You open Lenora's, because the dragon is always worse if you make her wait.

Trevor tells me there was a little scene last night. Brunch at Vesta's at eleven. The party will go ahead as planned this evening. Couples quarrel, darling. We don't cancel three hundred guests over nerves.

You read it twice. The second time you laugh out loud, a short, disbelieving bark.

"Lenora?" Nathaniel asks.

"She says couples quarrel." You turn the screen to him. "She's not canceling the party."

His expression doesn't change much. A muscle in his jaw goes hard and stays there.

"Do you want to go?" he asks. "To brunch."

"No. Yes." You set down the coffee. "I have to. If I don't show up, Trevor tells it. If Trevor tells it, I'm the hysterical fiancée who had a breakdown the night before her party. My father did business with these people for thirty years. I'm not slinking off."

"Then you go." He watches you. "Alone? Or not?"

It's a real question. You can see that. He isn't offering to rescue you. He's asking.

"Alone," you say. "I think. I need to do this one myself."

"Understood."

He says it like he means it. He doesn't argue. Somehow that's what makes your throat tight.

You get dressed in last night's jeans and your father's jacket, still damp at the cuffs. At the door you stop. He's standing in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, and it occurs to you that you have no idea what he's going to do with today. You know where the Crofton family's container ships dock. You know nothing about the man who runs them.

"Thank you," you say. It sounds stupid.

"Don't thank me." He crosses the room, and for a second you think he's going to kiss you again. Instead he unlocks the door you locked, opens it, and holds it. "You walked in here with your back straight. Walk out the same way."

You walk down the hall to 1806 with your back straight.

The real keycard is in the envelope he gave you back. Your room is small and pretty and full of gift-bag tissue paper and a bottle of champagne with a card that says To the future Mrs. Crofton! You put the bottle in the closet and shut the closet door.

You're in the shower when the pounding starts.

"Ava! I know you're in there. Prosper said you never picked up your bags." Trevor's voice, hoarse, angry, frightened underneath. "Open the door. We need to get our story straight before Mom... Babe. Please."

Our story.

You stand under the hot water with your eyes closed until he gives up. It takes nine minutes. You count.

When you come out wrapped in a towel, there are four new texts from Trevor, two from Blakely, one from Lenora that just says 11:00 sharp.

And one from a number you don't know.

Your heart does something embarrassing. You sit down on the edge of the bed, hair dripping on the carpet, and open it.

This is Nathaniel.

The typing dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.