He wakes me up with a gentle shake. His strong hand grips my shoulder, and the smell of coffee hits my nose.

My eyes jolt open. How long has it been since I had coffee?

I look up and see him holding a cup. I grab it from his hand.

“Hey,” he says. “Weren’t you at least going to ask me if that was for you?”

I take a big sip, just in case he’s seriously going to take it away from me. I swallow it down and let out a big, satisfied sigh.

“Is it for me?” I finally ask.

He grins and laughs. “Yes, it was.”

I bite my lip and kick his thigh with my heel. “Then why make me think it wasn’t!”

“Now you can enjoy it more,” he says. “Because you thought for a moment that you couldn't have it.”

I take another sip. He’s right. Not that I’ll tell him that.

“Where’s yours?” I ask.

“Had mine an hour ago,” he says. “I wanted to let you sleep in, but it looks like if I didn’t wake you up, you’d sleep in until 9.”

I give him a weird look. “9:00 is barely sleeping in.”

He shrugs. “Prison gave me a warped perspective on that, I guess.”

I smile. “I work weird hours, but when I do have a day off, sleeping in means I’m not even out of my pajamas until 11.”

He glances at the clock on the nightstand. “Well, for the surprise, we need to get going now.”

It’s 8:15. I can’t believe he considers this sleeping in, but at least he got me a coffee. I sit on the edge of the bed and sip at it while he paces back and forth, fully dressed.

“Looks like your limp is gone,” I say.

“Want to drink that in the car?” he asks, glancing at the clock.

I smile and shake my head.

“Alright,” he says, “You win, I’ll sit down.”

I put my cup down on the nightstand and stretch out. I’m fully naked, but after the shower, we did it two more times last night. I think even Alex is finally spent. For the moment at least.

I hop out of bed and start getting dressed. I feel his eyes on me as I dress. It’s a good feeling. I look over my shoulder to confirm he’s watching me.

He smiles up at me. “Happy? I’m getting ready so we can go.”

“I can’t say I’m ever happy to see you getting unnaked.”

“Getting unnaked,” I say. “That’s a good way to describe getting dressed.”

I pick up the coffee and slurp up almost all of it. It burns my throat a little, but the taste and smell of coffee filling my nose is worth it. I’m already feeling the jolt of caffeine too.

“Let’s go!”

* * *

He doesn’t tell me where we’re going until we’re there. We pull into a parking lot near the river. We drove 20 minutes or so away from the city.

I look around the parking lot and see no buildings at all.

“Where are we?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, just gets out of the truck and opens my door for me. He holds the door as I step out.

I squint and look out along the river. I see some boats in the distance. There’s some nondescript buildings, but they’re all too far away. There’s a pier, and–

“We’re going fishing, aren’t we?”

He reaches into the bed of his truck and pulls out two fishing poles. New ones. Not the rusted crap that we got when we bought the truck.

“You wanted to go,” he says. “Now we can.”

“Are you sure you can risk being out like this?” I ask.

“I’ve been checking the paper. I checked yesterday when we got to the hotel, and I checked again this morning. There’s nothing out there with my face on it. Napier and the local cops still have it out for me, and I still wouldn't want to use a credit card or do anything to raise a flag for my ID, but going fishing ain’t gonna hurt anyone.”

“Except the fish,” I say.

He frowns with the poles in hand. “You’re gonna make us throw the fish back?”

I stand on my tippy-toes to kiss him. “No, we can keep them. How are we going to cook them though?”

He reaches into the truck and holds up a bag of charcoal. “Park nearby has grills we can use.”

I take one of the poles, and he grabs a tackle box–this one looks new too.

“So you bought all the girly stuff,” I say, “And the fishing stuff last night?”

He nods, and I run my hand through his hair. “Your hair is silky smooth, Alex. It’s gotta be the conditioner.”

He laughs. “Feels the same to me.”

We reach the pier, and it’s mostly empty. Not many people want to fish in this kind of weather. After being cooped up in the cabin for so long, the cold won’t stop me from enjoying a day of fishing.

“You fish much?” he asks me after setting all our stuff down on the pier.

“I used to,” I say. “Before my Dad died. He used to take me fishing all the time from as early as I can remember. My mom told me years later that he hadn’t been able to go at all for years after I was born, so as soon as I was old enough to, he’d take me with him almost every weekend. I remember thinking it was boring at first, but at some point I started enjoying it.”

“Maybe when you caught your first fish,” he says, opening the tackle box.

“I think it was actually the first time we ate a fish I caught,” I say, smiling. “It was a red snapper. One of my dad’s friends let us go out on his boat. Normally my Dad and I just threw the fish back, but his friend insisted we cook these up, and I guess I was hooked after that.”

“I knew you were ruthless,” he says.

I grab some of the live bait from the tackle box and thread it onto my hook. I cast my line.

“I saved that rabbit,” I say. “Two rabbits.”

He casts his line in another direction from mine, keeping a decent distance between both our hooks.

“But no mercy for these poor fish,” he says.

“I guess I’m not innocent either then,” I say.

“Not after last night you’re not.”

I smile at him. We set our rods onto the end of the pier, and I grasp his forearm. I rest my head on his shoulder, and his wide frame shields me from the worst of the wind. As I lean against him there with his arm around me, watching the river flow past us below, I forget completely that we’re in danger. We’re in danger in more ways than I can count, but it’s the danger of separation that scares me beyond all else.

Just because his face isn’t plastered all over the news anymore doesn’t mean we can just live like this. We can go fishing now, or we can do whatever we feel like tomorrow–but in the back of my mind I know it’s all on borrowed time. I desperately want to be with him as much as I can, but each new day increasingly has the feeling of trying to squeeze out whatever moments we can before reality hits us both hard in the face.

I push the thought away as best as I can, but I know that we’ll need to cut this happiness short. Sometime soon. We’ll need to voluntarily pop this blissful little bubble we’ve created so that we can attack our problems head on.

One of the rods bends.

We both grab it at the same time.

“You’re grabbing my rod,” he says, grinning.

Then he lets go. “Why don’t you show me how well you can handle it?”

I smile at him. “Prepare to be impressed.”

I start to reel it in. It’s heavy, and from the way it moves it’s definitely a fish and not just a jumble of weeds or some other garbage. I jerk on the rod to dig the hook in, in case it’s not already hooked deep. I don’t even have to think about what I’m doing. It’s been years since I’ve actually gone fishing–it’s been hard since Dad died–but my muscle memory takes over. My hands and arms reel when they need to, and they let the fish tire itself out when needed. After several minutes of struggle, I have it just under the pier. I go in for the final push–or in this case the final pull.

I yank it up as the fish breaks the water.

“It’s big,” Alex whispers.

It flops around as I reel it up. My arms are tired and my muscles are burning. The fish glistens as it rises up to meet us.

I get a close look at it once it’s nearly up. “It’s a Walleye.”

I hoist it up over the pier and let it drop down in the middle. I don’t want it near either of the edges. I’ve lost too many fish from carelessly letting them flop right back into the water.

“I showed you what I can do now,” I say, grinning. “Your turn to show me what you’ve got.”

I partially want to see how he handles it, but I’m mostly just exhausted. Everything Alex and I did together last night took a lot out of me, and I don’t exactly have energy to spare.

He grins and steps on the fish. He bends down and works the hook out as the tail flops. “This thing is at least three feet long. It will barely fit in the cooler.”

He drops it onto the ice, and its tail nearly doesn’t fit, but he shuts the cooler and gets it all in. He locks the cooler by lifting the handle. “What do you say we hit the grill now? I think this is plenty for both of us.”

“Are you mad that I provided for us?” I ask him, pushing up against him.

I slide my hand up his jacket and shirt, running it against his hard abs. He leans forward, his white teeth gleaming.

“No,” he says. ‘I’m going to clean it and grill it up. Then we’re even.”

* * *

Alex tosses my fish onto the grill. The coals are white-hot, and we both huddle around the grill for warmth.

“This is very much a man’s style of grilling,” I say.

“How’s that?” he asks.

“Well,” I say. “Look at the grill, what do you see?”

“A delicious filet. The filet is expertly done, not a single bone left in there, nice and clean and appetizing looking.”

“What else?” I ask.

He shrugs. “What else you need?”

“Maybe some vegetables,” I say. “But men never think of that.”

He laughs. “Didn’t have time. Once things have cooled over…” he hesitates a bit. I can tell he doesn’t quite have faith that things will cool over. “Then I can do it right. Some brown rice, asparagus, hell, some nice dark beer. Trust me though, it’s been so long since we had real food, this fish alone will taste better than all that.”

“Hunger is the best spice.”

He shakes his head. “No, salt is.”

He runs over to the truck and pulls out a grocery bag. He removes a bag of salt, some paper plates, and plastic silverware.

He tears the bag open and pulls a big pinch of salt out between his thumb and forefinger, then sprinkles it all over the fish on the grill. My mouth starts to water.

Alex puts the fish filets onto two plates, and I nearly inhale mine. I didn’t think the canned food was so bad when I was eating it, but now that I’m eating a perfectly cooked and fresh fish, the canned food feels so depressing in retrospect. The skin left on the bottom is nice and flaky, and the charcoal flavor has gotten into the meat just enough to push the taste to the next level.

“It’s delicious,” I say, trying not to drool as I speak.

“It’s the salt,” he says, shooting me a sideways smirk as he chews on the other side of his mouth.

I kick his shin under the picnic table, and he smiles wide at me after he swallows.

“I need to go back to work, Alex,” I say suddenly.

I’d been thinking about it, but I think it’s time to actually tell him.

He puts his fork down and reaches across the table, squeezing my wrist. “Not a good move.”

I shake my head. “I told them I’d be off a few days. If I disappear suddenly, it gives Napier even more reason to look for me.”

“If you’re at work,” Alex says, staring me down, “Then he doesn’t have to look for you. He’s found you.”

“He can’t harass me at work,” I say. “Not without good reason.”

“At home then,” Alex snaps. “He will question you, and you are many things, Angel but you’re no liar.”

“Teach me then,” I say.

He cocks an eyebrow at me. “You saying I’m good at lying?”

“You told me you were a con man. How do I con Napier?”

“You don’t,” Alex says, crossing his arms. “You stay with me until I take care of this.”

“What’s the plan then?” I ask, feeling suddenly annoyed. What are we going to do to fight back? We can’t hide forever, can we?”