“This is you, I’m guessing.”

“It was me. Living the American dream, on my way to two-point-five kids and a thirty-year fixed mortgage.”

“So what happened? One day you just decided a life of crime was sexier?”

His eyes went somewhere else. “I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Told I had eight months to live. Maria-Maria Kilborn, my bride to be-she and I were…right. Like we were supposed to be together. You know? When someone is just perfect for you?”

I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. “I know.”

Phin focused, smiled sadly. “But she wasn’t strong, Jack. She was strong in some ways. But not emotionally. She cared about people. A lot. Maybe too much. I remember driving home from the doctor’s office, thinking about how I was going to tell her, seeing it in my head. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt her like that. Not only the telling her, but thinking about her watching me die…”

Phin cleared his throat, then scratched the back of his neck.

“So I didn’t go home. I rented a hotel room, called an escort ser vice, and fucked my brains out while Maria was going crazy wondering where I was. She tracked down our credit card usage, came to my room, saw me with the whore. There was screaming, crying. She told me she never wanted to see me again. And she kept the promise.”

I made a face. “Do you think that was noble, what you did? Breaking up with her instead of being honest?”

His gaze was intense. “You tell me, Jack. Is it easier to hate someone, or to miss them after they die?”

I thought about Alan, who left me, and Latham, who left me in a different way.

Phin was right. Losing Latham hurt more.

So was he a coward, or was he being strong?

When I met Phin, on the Job, I’d immediately liked him. He’d been involved in a gang fight, three against one. They were armed. Phin wasn’t. All three wound up in the hospital.

During the arrest Phin was compliant, polite, even jovial. Like he didn’t have a care in the world. I bumped into him accidentally sometime later, at a local pool hall, and we began playing eight ball on a somewhat regular basis. He was attractive, sure, but I think the thing that drew me to him was his attitude. He seemed free. Even bald from the chemo, taking breaks between games to go throw up, he seemed more at ease with himself than anyone I’d ever met.

I wondered what it would be like to live in the moment like that. To not worry about anything other than the now. Was it liberating? Or empty? Brave or weak?

“This was a few years ago.” Phin turned on his side, propping his head up on his hand. “I had surgery. Had treatments. Still kept getting worse. Nine to five didn’t really seem that important anymore, so I quit. Eventually I ran out of money, lost my insurance. Lived on the street, day by day, getting by. But something funny happened. I didn’t die.”

“Remission.”

He shook his head. “Not really. Cancer’s still there. Pain is still there. I’m going to die from it. But it isn’t killing me as fast as the doctors have hoped. I thought I’d rob a few gangbangers, hustle a little pool, spend a few weeks partying like a rock star and then die in a gutter somewhere. But here I am. Still alive. Here. With you.”

He touched my back again, and this time I didn’t flinch. But since I’m cursed with the burden of overanalyzing everything, I ruined what could have been a romantic moment by asking, “Why are you here, Phin? Why are you helping me? This isn’t your fight. Am I a diversion? Any port in the storm? A way to kill some time so you don’t have to think about your life?”

Damn my big mouth. If he walked out the door right then, I couldn’t have blamed him.

But he didn’t walk out. He just stared at me. Not angry. But patient. Understanding. And I filled in the blanks. He wasn’t with me because he wanted a little action, or because I helped him take his mind off his death sentence. He actually cared about me. I saw it in his face. Here was a guy who divorced himself from life, packing his feelings away like winter clothes in the summertime. He worked to keep people out.

And he let me in.

And the least I could do in return was live in the now.

In one quick motion I billowed up the sheets and cast them off the bed, exposing Phin in his red boxer briefs. His body was long and lean and cut, and I wasn’t sure where I wanted to touch him first. I chose his abs, running my hand along his six-pack while sliding alongside him and hooking my leg up over his thigh.

The kiss could have been morning breath bad, but all I tasted was heat. Heat and passion and possibilities that I promised myself would be explored.

His arms encircled me, fingers of one hand running through my hair and tingling my scalp, the other wandering over the back of my sports bra.

I smiled while his tongue probed mine, then pulled slightly away.

“Sports bra,” I said, “no clasps.”

I dug under the elastic, stretched it up over my arms, and he helped me pull the bra over my head and arms. I paused, letting him look at me, drinking in how much he seemed to like the view. Then I grabbed his wrists and put his hands on my breasts.

He rubbed the flat of his palm over my nipples, rolled one between his fingers, tugging on it gently, making it stiffen. Then his arm was around the small of my back and he tugged me next to him, urgent, his mouth on mine.

His lips trailed down past my jaw to my neck, and I locked my legs around the side of his thigh and ground against it, feeling my first jolt of full-on arousal, building inside me like a wave.

Right then I was ready to go at it. I wanted him in me. Wanted to wrap my legs around his hips and ride him until I made him moan.

Phin had other ideas.

He kissed his way along my neck, sliding his body down next to mine, breaking my leg-lock on him. His arms encircled my hips, hands grasping my ass, and his mouth found my nipples. He caught one in his teeth, held it between them while bathing it with his tongue. I tried to open my legs but he held them together, which drove me a little crazy as he switched from one breast to the other. He was too low for me to touch anything other than his head and back, so I locked my fingers in his blond hair and held on.

His head moved lower, licking my rib cage, my navel, and then slowly, maddeningly, to the top of my red pan ties. He rested his mouth there, letting me feel his hot breath through the fabric, and then began to kiss.

I moved my arms down, trying to help him tug my pan ties off, but he held my wrists and wouldn’t let me, continuing to move his mouth and jaw over my pubic mound, up and down and in small circles until it felt ready to catch fire.

I tried to fight him, wanted to end the foreplay and flip him over and straddle his face and let him devour me. I pressed up against his mouth, but he moved his face away each time I did.

Even though the pan ties stayed on, even though he deliberately avoided hitting the right spots, I felt the orgasm welling up. And then I understood what he was doing, other than teasing me.

It was okay to not be in control.

I moaned, turned my head to the side, took a corner of the pillow in my mouth, and let him have his way.

His way was torture. He licked my thighs, all around my panty line, his tongue slow and lazy, his hands cupping my bottom and raising me up to meet his mouth. Then, like it was tissue paper, he tore my underwear off, his warm wet lips directly on me.

Again I tried to open my legs. Again he held them together.

“Please,” I said.

But there was only more teasing, to the point where I couldn’t endure it anymore, and I was going to come even without any direct stimulation. My hips began to pump, moving without my control, and my hands clutched the mattress and a scream welled up in my throat and then…oh my God…then he finally opened my legs and his tongue found me and the tiny orgasm became a monster, plea sure so intense it almost hurt, building up and multiplying until I was nothing but pure sensation. I grabbed his head and ground against him as my whole body shook, captured and helpless in his beautiful mouth.