I wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe that he’d whisk me away to some underground jazz club or to his favorite tailored suit shop. Maybe just to some hole-in-the-wall burger joint that nobody had ever heard of. With a guy like Jackson, I could never be sure.

But, as we sailed down the avenue, I had a few guesses.

“The M&M store in Times Square?” I asked, grinning at him.

“Nope,” he said, squeezing my hand.

“What about, um, the Ferris wheel in the Toys ‘R’ Us?”

“Not there either,” he said.

“I’m running out of guesses,” I complained.

“Good news for me.”

“Hey!” I popped him lightly on the shoulder, but he pressed on, turning the corner and trying to hide his ever-widening grin.

“So no place touristy?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that either.”

“You haven’t said much of anything. At all.”

It was true—from the moment we’d left my apartment, he’d barely uttered more than a few words, though most had been in answer to my never-ending questions about where exactly he was taking me. But as much as I was peppering him with constant questions, I was walking on air.

He’d come to my apartment building, and not only was he concerned for my safety, he’d whisked me off on a date.

A real, relationship-style date, complete with the breakfast of champions and handholding. My heart felt like it was going to explode. I hadn’t had this kind of male attention in a long while, and while screaming orgasms were nice, I had missed this casual comradery more than I had been aware.

“I want it to be a surprise.”

We turned a corner and walked past booths of street vendors selling pottery and scarves. Jackson barely looked at them, but I paused, my eyes wide, and inspected the cute creations.

“Come on,” he said.

“Fine, fine, I’m coming.”

In front of us stretched the vast, wide steps of the Museum of Modern Art, though the street in front of it was flanked by vendors and lines of tourists.

“We’re here.”

“What do you mean?” I looked around. “The food trucks? We’re going to wait in this line for an hour.” The food did smell delicious, but I’d just scarfed down a plate-sized Danish and was hardly ready for lunch yet.

He shook his head and then gestured to the huge, pillared museum. “You told me to take you to my favorite place in the city. Here it is.”

“The Art Museum?” I blinked at the building and the flood of families coming and going through the wide-open doors. Of all the places I’d expected him to choose, this wasn’t even on the list.

Keeping me on my toes, aren’t you, Jackson?

He considered me for a minute and then said, “Let’s go inside.”

Placing his hand on the small of my back, he led me up the wide marble steps until we reached the atrium. On a sunny Saturday like this, it felt like almost every person in the city was trying to get inside the place, and we waited as the queue in front of us thinned and people took up their walking-tour headphones and joined still more groups. To the side, a bunch of kids were assembling for what looked like a church field trip, and I grinned as one of the little boys lightly pulled a girl’s pigtails.

I almost pointed them out to Jackson, but then his hand found mine and he was giving me a small blue button to pin to my shirt.

“Thanks,” I murmured and affixed the little circle to my clothes before stepping into the first room.

I had to admit, it was a good showing from Jackson. For the next ten minutes, I strolled around the room in awe, marveling at the paintings and sculptures.

“So this is your favorite place in the city,” I said again, and Jackson gave me a solemn nod.

“What’s your favorite part?”

“There are so many.” He shrugged. “The exhibits change all the time, and then there’s the exhibit with the old sixties and seventies furniture that looks impossible as a functional piece in someone’s house. There was an Andy Warhol exhibit I liked here once.”

“Andy Warhol? Really?” I raised my eyebrows.

He nodded.

“Affinity for Campbell’s soup?”

“Just the tomato,” he shot back.

Taking my hand again, he led me toward the newer exhibits, expertly weaving through each of the rooms like he really had been here many, many times before. He knew the place by heart.

Finally, we reached a room filled with huge canvases with swathes of colors. Some faded from one color to another while others were blocks of colors that seemed to exist independent of the rest of the canvas. They were so simple, but the simplicity in and of itself was oddly intriguing, and I found myself moving a little closer, taking in the brushstrokes and the sheer craftsmanship.

“A favorite of yours?” I asked.

“Rothko. He’s a classic.”

I nodded. “I can see why. His stuff is…”

“Incredible,” he filled in, and no part of me wanted to argue. “You like art,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I do. It was my major in college.”

“College wasn’t on your résumé,” he said, his head cocked in my direction.

“No, well…it wouldn’t be. Didn’t graduate.” I shrugged.

“Why not?” he asked.

I glanced at him from over my shoulder, lifting one eyebrow. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Why won’t you tell me for real why you love this place so much?”

I was going on pure instinct, but something told me there was more to his affinity for art than he was letting on.

He hedged again and then glanced around, almost as if he was making sure nobody could overhear us. “I used to come here a lot growing up.”

I didn’t say anything and waited for the rest. With the look he had on his face—full of uncertainty totally at odds with his usual personality—I wasn’t about to press him. Not right then, anyway.

“So, uh, I grew up in the system. Not many people know that,” he added, his gaze locked on the painting in front of us. “Some houses weren’t so bad, but a lot of my foster parents just had me around for the government check. During the day, I was left to my own devices, and more often than not, I found myself here.”

My heart squeezed, and I had to fight the desire to close the gap between us and squeeze him until the sadness in his eyes faded away.

“Why here?” I asked softly.

“Because it was free. For school-age kids back then, anyway. I used to look at the paintings and imagine a day when I could have my own house to put up something so beautiful. Or, to be completely honest, to have enough money to spend it on something as frivolous as art. Even if it was a print from a big box store, that was more money than I ever had back then. But, you know, as time went on, I got a little more enterprising. There was an architecture exhibit, and I thought, well, I couldn’t paint, but I knew how to use a hammer and nails.”

“So you did,” I said, fighting a mix of sad tears and a deep, soul-aching pride in him and the man he’d become, despite such terrible odds.

He nodded. “So that’s what I did. When I was eighteen, I moved to the shittiest area I could find outside the city and used all my saved money to buy the worst house in town. I flipped it and used the money to buy two more houses. Then four.”

“Then you built an empire.”

He grinned. “Empire is one way of putting it.”

“I didn’t know. They should put you in some sort of magazine. You could inspire kids like you.”

His face darkened. “It’s not exactly something I like to talk about. Those are the highlights, but growing up in the foster care system, at least back then, isn’t something I care to think about or relive. Your turn now.”

I wanted to ask him why, to understand the ripple of pain that passed over his expression, but the tone of his voice was clear—the time for discussion was over. Now it was my turn to spill.

“I didn’t go to college right away. When I got out of high school, I traveled around to find myself.”

“Ah, one of those girls.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Yep, that’s me.” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, when I got home, I decided the place for me to go was school. It was always something that had mattered to me. I was a straight-A student—”

“I had no doubt,” he said.

“And I had a knack for learning, so I threw myself in. Then, you know, I met this guy, and he wanted to run away with me, so I dropped out and he…dropped me.” Shame bubbled beneath the surface, and I tried to push it aside. “I still decided to run away. Just, this time, it was by myself.”

“And that’s how you ended up here,” he concluded.

“That’s it in a nutshell.” I nodded.

“Could have been worse,” he said, and though I knew this was his way of trying to soothe me, I couldn’t help but poke at his logic.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Well, you could have married him or had his baby and then had him walk away. That would’ve been worse.”

“I guess so, yeah.” I shrugged.

“Or worse, you could have never met me.” The mischievous glint returned to his eyes, and I gave him a playful punch on the arm before taking his hand in mine again. I let out a breath, relieved to have things on a lighter note but also somehow soothed that we’d shared some of our darkest times with one another. I finally was starting to feel like I was seeing the whole man instead of just one piece of him. And I liked it.

A lot.

“Come on, Mr. Modesty. Show me your other favorites. I’m interested now.”

Next, he took me to another room filled with paintings of single words like love, honesty, and respect. He studied each of them closely, mentioning the font and pointing out the brush strokes. In the next room, he showed me things he’d noticed about oil painting, explained the difference between the mediums, and then took me to the room full of old sixties’ vacuum cleaners and wildly shaped coffee tables.

“I can see why you’d find this place inspiring. I want to write the great American novel just walking around this place,” I said.

“Me too. Bad news is that I’m a terrible writer.” He took me by the crook of the arm and led me back out to the vendors outside, stopping to grab me a cupcake from one of them before we leaned back on the steps and watched the hordes of people coming and going.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” I said when I’d finished my cupcake that I hadn’t even realized I was hungry for.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“If you had such a terrible time in the system, why did you stay in New York?”

“Would you believe me if I told you it was because this is the center of the world and I needed to be part of it?”

“Not for a second,” I shot back.

“You know me well,” he laughed. “I’ll warn you, though, it’s not a happy ending.”

“Don’t you end up meeting me?”

He rolled his eyes. “I was dating a girl who went to Columbia, and she got pregnant. I moved back here to be with her and the baby, and I bought an apartment building so she could keep going to school.”

“Oh,” I said, my mind spinning.

“She was nice enough, but she miscarried in the third month, and then we decided it wasn’t worth staying together if we’d only been doing it for the baby.”

“That’s devastating. You must have been heartbroken.”

“Yes and no.” He pursed his lips and then looked me deep in the eyes. “Would you think I was a bad person if I told you that I was sad for her but a tiny part of me was relieved? Not that I would’ve ever wished for it, but I didn’t love that girl and I don’t want children. I did it because it was the right thing to do, of course. But ever since then, I’ve been careful to make sure there was never a repeat.”

“You’re not a bad person,” I said, but my heart gave a little squeeze.

“Thanks. I guess if you’ve lived through everything I have—if you saw the pressures and the stresses of people trying to raise children—it’s just not for me.”

I took a deep breath. “I can understand that.”

We spent the rest of the day roaming the city, and as much as I loved his company, a little part of the joy inside me had faded. Both at the thought of a young Jackson, alone and confused and unloved—and at the realization that he didn’t want kids.

I shouldn’t have minded. Hell, this one date was more than I’d ever expected from him, but I couldn’t help it. There was a part of me that felt a little heartsick at the thought.

Later that evening, we walked back to my apartment, and all the while he lectured me on the importance of locking my door and making sure I knew what was happening in my neighborhood. In truth, though, I was only half listening. A part of me was still back on the steps of the museum, thinking over everything he’d said and trying to understand the reason I’d been so affected.

It hit me right as we walked through the door of my building, and it was like a slap.

I was falling for him. Wrong. I had already fallen. Hard. Quirks and stern lips and all, I was head over heels.

Which, when it came to Jackson, was way, way too deep.