In my dream, Oliver and I stood out on the balcony of the one bar in town, sipping beers and looking out over the quiet streets below. “I’ve missed you,” Oliver said quietly, smiling over at me.

I felt a fluttering in my chest, and I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him. Oliver groaned and turned towards me, wrapping his arm around my waist. The kiss was tender and gentle, not the frantic kiss borne out of weeks of frustration and chastity that I might have expected. Oliver’s hand gently rubbed at my lower back but made no move to slide up under my shirt—which was probably for the best given our current location.

After a long moment, he pulled away and nuzzled against my cheek. For a moment, I stayed close to him, drinking in his masculine scent. His warm touch, that spicy aftershave, it was the same no matter where I met him, whether we were in New York or Africa. It made it feel as though time had stopped, as though I could just stay here in this moment—or there in the moments that we’d had before—for as long as I wanted. Forever, if it suited me.

My eyes slowly drifted open, and I shifted uncomfortably, embarrassed by the dream even though no one knew about it but me.

Oliver was gone. He had vanished just as suddenly as he had arrived, carried away in his helicopter. The only sign that he’d even been there, really, was the flattened grass where the chopper had come down.

I hadn’t gotten the chance to talk to him, to apologize.

The truth was, I wanted to be interested in someone like Javier. He seemed like he should be perfect for me. But he just . . . wasn’t. Maybe the kind of person you expected you should be with wasn’t the one that you should really end up with.

Maybe, somehow, Oliver could be the perfect person for me, even if he wasn’t a perfect person all around.

I stared up at the tent above me. I knew what I needed to do, but I wasn’t sure that I would be able to. Chasing after Oliver, leaving behind this project and Africa, tarnishing my reputation—all so that I could chase a man—was nothing like me.

But I also knew that it was my turn to chase Oliver. He had put up with my back and forth for so long. And he had admitted that I’d changed him, that I was the reason he had gotten so involved in these aid projects.

It was time for me to prove to him that I could change. That I could be less judgmental, less of a perfectionist. That I could love him for who he was and not who I wanted him to be.

Wait—Love? Could I really be in love with Oliver Lewin? Could that be why this whole relationship with him has been tearing me up inside? Why I couldn’t seem to shake him no matter what I was doing or where I was—even if it was on the other side of the world.

I swallowed hard and then rolled off my cot, grabbed my duffel and packed quickly. There was no time to waste.

* * *

As I waited for the plane to take off, I stared down at the address that Oliver’s secretary had given me. I had actually been surprised that the information was that easy to get—but apparently Oliver had put me on some list that meant I had access to information that the press and other random people didn’t.

I wondered if that had been before or after Oliver had realized a relationship with me wasn’t going to work out. I swallowed hard, still wondering if maybe he had left so quickly because of the confrontation that he and I had had. I hated to think that I had driven him off. He’d seemed so excited, so invested in the project.

But then again, I knew that I hadn’t driven him off. I remembered the phone call during our date, the way that he’d run off when we’d gone antiquing. He had probably gotten some call and he had run off. Again.

I hoped so, anyway.

Either way, I was frustrated that he had disappeared, even if he had finished up everything that he had come to Africa to do. I tried to tell myself that it was always the same with him, no matter how much I thought he might be changing. He always disappeared, let himself be drawn back into business over everything else.

But I knew it wasn’t fair to make that assumption. For all I knew, he had a reason for disappearing like that.

Now the question was, what did I want?

The more I thought about it, the more I knew that I didn’t want Javier. I had known that for a couple weeks now. I didn’t even want the life that I was building there in Africa—always nomadic, always lonely. I was helping people, but I wasn’t having the same impact that I’d had when I worked for Le Monde Ensemble. I didn’t feel satisfied with this in the way that I’d expected to.

And that—I supposed—was why I was on a flight back to New York.

It felt like giving up, I couldn’t deny that. I hadn’t even been gone for two months, and here I was. I wondered what people would think about me. To my credit, this wasn’t my first aid project—it wasn’t even the first aid project I had worked on that year. I had still done more than a lot of people managed to do, in terms of helping people. And I would do more.

For now, I thought maybe I’d give myself a little personal time, but I needed to go back to New York first. I wouldn’t be able to focus on myself until I had figured out whatever it was that was happening between Oliver and I.

The truth was, I felt silly for running off around the world to go find Oliver. This wasn’t like me. But that was exactly what made me think that maybe Oliver was the right guy for me. I remembered how different my parents had been; Oliver was certainly my opposite. That was what made things fun between us. He brought out a side of me that work never did—a side of me that wasn’t so serious, that wasn’t only focused on the future. He made me want to forget about other people for a moment and try to make myself happy.

It had been a while, I realized, since I was really happy. My work was fulfilling and, objectively, I had everything that I wanted in life. But there had always been something missing.

Javier hadn’t been happy, either, when I told him that I was leaving. He’d accused me of running after Oliver, of turning my back on my commitments. But I’d known that I wasn’t able to give my all to the project the way that I needed to. I couldn’t seem to focus in the week since Oliver had left, and everyone had noticed it. Of course, no one really knew what to make of it—most people just assumed I must had some sort of bug, that an illness must be affecting my enthusiasm.

When I’d explained that I had something back home that I needed to take care of, people had been surprisingly supportive. I wondered what they thought I was going back for. It was no secret that I had no family to head back to, but no one asked any questions.

I took a deep breath and leaned back, letting my eyes slip shut as we took off.

* * *

When I arrived in New York, I hailed a cab and asked him to take me the address that Oliver’s secretary had given me. I felt kind of silly, not even knowing if Oliver would be there. But I just had to know what the address was, why it was apparently someplace that Oliver went so frequently.

When I got out of the cab, I was standing in front of a public hospital. I grew even more intrigued, wondering if maybe Oliver was continuing his humanitarian streak back home by volunteering at a local hospital. I walked inside and to the reception desk.

“I’m looking for Oliver Lewin,” I told the secretary.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You and everyone else, sweetheart,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What are you, the latest in tabloid journalism? They sent you here to bother him even at the hospital?”

“No!” I told her. “I don’t know what he’s doing here. He just asked me to meet him here.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at me for a moment and then called someone on the phone. She gave whoever was on the other end a brief description of me, including my name when I handed her my ID. Then, she hung up, nodding at me. “Room two eleven,” she said.

I thanked her and headed upstairs. When I poked my head into 211, I found Oliver there, sat at the bedside of a young woman who looked strikingly similar to him.