I listen as Evie talks. I watch the way her fingers start to pick at her bread. When our food comes, she delays her first few bites until I prod her. Then she goes on, telling me of how her parents hid my letters from her. How they told her if she went to Cambridge and stayed with her aunt and got her head screwed on straight, she could come home and reach out to me again.

“I guess they thought I was obsessed with you or something. I don’t know. They thought I needed time away.”

I search my memory for impressions of her parents. This makes sense. They weren’t unfair. I was never given the impression that they hated me or that they thought she shouldn’t see me again.

“They were worried, you know? I guess to them…it seemed excessive.”

Her soft words make my throat ache so much I have to swallow. “Was that what it was?”

“Of course,” she says. She smiles and shakes her head. “What’s the point if not? I wouldn’t want something that seemed like it was just barely enough to hold my interest, you know?”

She tells me about going to Harvard, how she missed me the two times I was on campus there, the way she freaked out after she saw my name in the program for an organic chemistry keynote. My mentor, Dr. Ryn, from UNC, where I did undergrad, was speaking, so of course I’d gone with him in hopes of glimpsing her.

“When I realized that you might have been there at the keynote, but I missed you, I really lost it,” she says. She takes a small bite and chews. My gaze holds her face the way I want to hold her body up against me. “I had a hard time not finding out what happened to you. When you ran away…” her eyes tear up. “I felt so helpless.”

Guilt thickens my throat. I open up my mouth to inhale, feeling my chest tighten like it does from time to time.

“I didn’t want to leave,” I manage. All I really wanted was to be near Evie, but… “I couldn’t stay there. That place was a hell hole, Ev.” I struggle to find words, to say enough but not too much. “I wouldn’t have survived it. Not on top of missing you.”

She doesn’t know what I mean, and that’s okay. The bastard didn’t get to me—I fought him off that night I left—so why tell her? Not now. If she ever hears me dream about it, maybe then.

“I hitchhiked, out of state, because I thought I would be safer that way. I wound up in Knoxville, with a bunch of college students. Stayed there long enough to read the papers—” I wiggle my eyebrows, smirking— “and see that the group home I was at got shut down. Then I came back to North Carolina to apply for college, for the scholarships. They’re pretty generous with foster kids, at least if you have the right kind of grades.”

“You went to UNC.”

I nod, hesitating a moment before I make my next confession. “I looked you up, Evie. I followed you. I liked to know what you were doing, so I saw you didn’t graduate from Creekside.”

“I stayed up in Cambridge,” she whispers. Her eyes are full of regret.

“Did you like it there?”

She laughs, and it’s a small, sad sound. “I don’t know,” she hedges. “Did you enjoy UNC?”

“I fucking hated it.”

“You did?” I see her sadness on her face, and want to take back what I said. I shrug, trying to play it off. “That was dramatic. It wasn’t that bad. I worked and studied. It was fine. I finished in three years.”

“You did? Then how are we…” She means how are we in the same class now.

“I did a year of research between undergrad and med school, saving money. Did an internship at Pfizer in New York. The science side.”

“Oh wow, that’s cool. Did you like it?”

“Hated it.” I grin. “Too tedious.”

“So you wanted something medical, but not research. How did you get from there to surgery?”

“At Hopkins they were pretty good at guiding us. My adviser took one look at me and knew, I think.” I laugh. “Hungry little asshole, loved competing, nice chip on the shoulder. Surgeon—right?”

She smiles. “You’re not a stereotype, Landon Jones. You won’t fool me.”

I press my lips together. “No. I guess I won’t. Anyway…” I have a bite of my eggplant parm, “it didn’t take much for me to realize—surgery.”

“You always did cut like a surgeon.”

I laugh at that memory. “I remember how you used to say that.”

She shrugged. “I could spot one.”

Could she, though? What did Evie think became of me? I’m almost scared to ask, but I do. “Did you know what I was doing…before now?”

She shuts her eyes, then blinks down at her lap. “I don’t know the right answer,” she confesses. “No, I never cared to look…or yes, I knew, but didn’t reach out.”

“Yes, you knew.” I swallow, looking into her eyes. Fuck, they’re sad.

“I knew. One time my sister thought she saw you jogging near the house in Asheville around Thanksgiving time. I rode around for hours looking for you. Couldn’t find a Maryland plate.” She gives a sad smile. “It was you, though, wasn’t it?”

“How do you know?”

“She saw you in a Hopkins T-shirt. I don’t think she knew then that you went to school there.”

I nod once.

“It was?”

I nod.

“What were you doing down in Asheville?”

“What do you think, Evie?”

Her face softens.

“I thought about going by to see you.” Instead I told myself she wouldn’t want to hear from me, and focused on the other purpose of my trip south: to try to find some information on my birth mother.

“Why didn’t you,” she breathes.

I shrug.

“Too chicken?”

“Yeah.” I look down at my lap. I’d saved up what little money I had, and hired a PI to find my Ashe Ville. I thought if I found her, maybe then I’d go to Evie. As if knowing my birth mother’s name would make me braver. I didn’t, and it probably wouldn’t have. “I was worried it would do more harm than good.”

“Seeing me,” she whispers.

“Yeah.”

Her foot moves over mine, and after that, she gets into the booth beside me, her cheek resting on my shoulder. “Tell me more,” she says.

I tell her everything I can afford to: all about my schooling, undergrad and med school. About all my jobs, my roommates, how I came to Denver. “I applied for you, and because the program is so involved. When I got accepted, it was one of three.”

She gapes. “Three?”

“I took this one the first day.”

She grins, and I feel like my lungs have finally returned to max capacity. Ten years after I left her, I can breathe again.

We finish dinner and go back outside. We walk back to my car and Evie holds my hand as I steer back onto the road.

“I want to talk all night,” she says.

“But you should sleep.”

“I can’t. Landon…”

“’Fraid you’ll miss me?” I wink.

“Yes.” Her eyes glitter with tears, and I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss the back of it. “Ah, Evie. Don’t worry. We’re both on tomorrow, right?”

She nods.

“We’ll find a second here and there… I want to touch you.” Not her pussy—though I want that, too—but just…her hand or cheek or neck or hair. Now that I’ve found her, I can’t get enough of Evie.

“Is this okay?” I hear myself ask as I head toward her place.

“What?” she whispers.

“This.” I inhale deeply, blow the breath out. “If this bothers you, Evie, I hope you’d tell me.”

“This, as in hanging out again?” she asks.

I nod. The word choice “hanging out” makes me feel slightly ill—as if we’re just acquaintances.

“Landon, of course not. Don’t you know me?” She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “I’m proud of this hand.” She smiles broadly. “I hear people talk about you sometimes, saying that you’re really great.”

“I’m only kind of great.” I smirk, and Evie leans to rest her forehead on my shoulder.

“Can we see each other again?” she asks me softly.

For a long moment, I can’t even answer her. I nod, then find my voice. “Of course we can.”