True to his words, Luca knocks on my door in the morning.

He’s acting weird, though. He stands at least two feet away from me, and he only gives me grunts or one-word answers, no matter how hard I try to start a conversation. This is like the reverse of what happened right after the funeral when he tried to keep our conversation going long after I wanted to end it.

In his car that smells like cherries and musk, I try harder, starting with essential questions I’m pretty sure he’ll answer.

“What time are you going to pick me up tonight?” I ask.

“Six.” He doesn’t even take his eyes off the road, even though we’re stopped at a red light.

Still, that counts as an answer. Let’s see if I can get him to say more than one word at a time.

“What if I’m not ready by then?”

“I’ll wait.”

Ooh, two words.

“How long are you going to wait?”

Luca grunts.

Okay. No points for that one. Maybe my question was too open-ended.

“If it gets too late, are you going to sleep in the clinic?”

“No.”

One word. Damn. Let’s try a different one.

Oh, actually there’s something I do want to know.

“You said the clinic was dangerous because there were junkies who wanted to steal drugs from us. Was that true, or were you just trying to get me to move in with you?”

“That was a lie,” Luca admits.

Four whole words.

Luca doesn’t know we’re playing a game, but I’m totally winning.

When I thank him in front of the clinic, Luca just grunts. As soon as I close the car door, he drives away.

It’s like he hates me and can’t wait to get rid of me.

Jesus. How am I going to live with that ball of grumpy energy spreading gloom everywhere?

I have just enough time to shower and put on some actual clothes on myself before the vet tech, a teenager named Brian, shows up.

“I’m deeply sorry for your loss, and I wish we met under more pleasant circumstances,” the freckled kid says. No doubt he got some coaching on what to say from his mom before coming here. “Mr. Ellis was a great boss. I’m really going to miss him.” Brian drops his gaze as his eyes redden and fill with water.

“Hey . . . Uh, come on, now . . .” What do I say? I didn’t get any coaching from my mom—not that she’d know what to say in this situation.

Brian wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Sorry. I know we have a lot of work to do.”

“We do?” I’ve been getting a feel for the work my brother had been doing when he died, and I think I get the big picture, but I’m still fuzzy on the details. Luckily, Brian’s happy to show me what happens on the day-to-day level.

Because we were closed for so long, we now have a full day ahead of us. As it turns out, Brian had been scheduling appointments by phone from home.

“I just want to help out as much as I can,” he says.

“Are you a Boy Scout, Brian?” I ask as I rummage through one of my dad’s messy drawers, looking for a stethoscope.

“No. Why?” He shows up beside me, holding a black stethoscope in his hand.

How does this kid know I was looking for this? I’m liking him already.

“You’d make a good one,” I say.

* * *

When Luca picks me up, he quietly drags my wheeled luggage to the car, quietly puts it in the trunk, and quietly opens the door for me.

After a few minutes, I can’t take it anymore. I break the silence with another round of the Q-and-A game from this morning, starting with a silly question.

“When Peter asked you to ‘take care of her,’” I say, drawing air quotes with my fingers, “are you sure he meant me and not, let’s say, one of the cats spending the night at the clinic?”

The corners of Luca’s lips curl up. “He said your name.”

“Why do you hate me?” I ask.

Luca seems taken aback. He glances at me. “I don’t hate you. Why would you think I do?”

Ten words. At least he’s actually trying to convince me, which means he cares what I think about him.

“Because you haven’t said much to me since this morning.”

“I’m just not in a chatty mood. I’ve got a lot on my mind,” he says. “But if you have any questions, let me know. I’ll answer anything.”

“Anything?” I ask.

“Anything.”

He’s going to regret that.

Because once I’m at Luca’s home—a cute house with dark green siding and a glossy black front door—I get kind of bored. Luca hides away in his studio, playing terrible music loudly and painting his convoluted thoughts on canvas.

At dinner, I ask him, “Luca, what’s the distance between the Earth and the moon?”

He shrugs without even taking his eyes off his food.

I’m ready for this reaction. “You said you were going to answer anything. Or are you a liar?” I challenge him.

“I don’t know the answer.”

“You can Google it.”

I keep bugging him until he puts down his fork and pulls out his phone to find the answer to my question.

After dinner, Luca goes back to his studio, which I’m forbidden to enter. So I come up with a master list of questions to ask him during our rides to and back from the animal clinic, as well as during dinner.

The next morning, I get Luca to tell me where he lived before coming to Ashbourne (“San Francisco”), what he was doing there (“doing tattoos”), and why he moved here (“I just needed a change”).

Over the next few days, I compile Luca’s short answers together and try to piece together a blurry, incomplete picture of Luca’s past. Luca does verbally answer every single one of my questions, but sometimes he gives me vague non-answers.

Luca grew up with a family of uncaring parents and cruel siblings. As soon as he turned eighteen, he walked away from the family farm and never looked back.

“Ooh, a farm?” I ask on our third dinner in the house. “Did you ever bring a girl home from line dancing and do it on a pile of hay in the barn while your favorite horse looks away in disgust?”

Luca stares at me like I just said I saw UFOs. “I didn't live in a cowboy romance novel. How do you think farmers live?”

Sure, it's a stupid question. But it gets Luca to give me a relatively long answer and ask me a question, too. If something works, it's not stupid.

On the fourth day, when Luca drives me home from work, I ask him, “Why did you need a change when you decided to move here from San Francisco?”

“I was just tired of the city life,” he says. Another vague answer.

“What was so tiring about it?”

“Have you seen homeless people casually shitting on the streets there?” Luca asks.

Fair enough. But hundreds of thousands of people live in the city, and presumably, they don't care where the homeless choose to defecate.

It's a believable answer, of course. I just can't shake the feeling that there's something more to the story. Still, it's clear Luca’s not going to just tell me what happened, no matter how many questions I ask or how I phrase them.

By the fifth night, I’ve abandoned that line of questioning.

But it's not because I’ve decided to respect Luca’s privacy or something equally noble. It's because I keep hitting a wall with the one thing I want to know most about Luca’s life, and I’m growing bored of this lame game that I invented just because Luca doesn't want to talk to me.

Maybe Luca's right. Maybe I am an addict. Because as soon as those questions and answers cease to be a distraction, my mind goes back to thoughts about letting a man use my body for his pleasure.

My pussy tingles so hard I have to rub myself into a frenzy to fall asleep. When I dream, it's about Luca as PuppetMaster. He's manhandling me, throwing me around, making me suck his thick, hard cock before he shoves it up my ass.

When I wake up, I wonder why I didn't realize it before.

The way Luca treated me the moment he found me in the alley that night, there's no way he wasn't into it.

His movements were too precise; hard enough to immobilize me, but not hard enough to hurt me.

The way he spoke his lines, the dirty things he whispered in my ears . . . Yeah, I’m starting to doubt it was all just an act.

I was under the impression Luca was just putting on a persona and I was going to embarrass myself by showing any more of my kinky side.

But at this point, I’m not so sure anymore. In any case, I’m willing to take the risk in case my guess is incorrect.

Fantasies aren’t enough to occupy my mind anymore. I need something stronger to dull the pain. I need to put a wall between myself and the tsunami of grief threatening to swallow me whole, and I suspect Luca would make an excellent wall.

So on the sixth morning, I pick a new game.

“Luca, why did you have to take me to a hotel first?” I ask, starting with an innocent question.

“I didn’t want to cause a scene if the neighbors saw me. They already hate me enough,” he says.

Two whole sentences, and I didn’t even have to try too hard. I may be growing on him.

“What kind of a scene?” I ask.

I tear a small, bite-sized piece from my croissant. We both have the day off, and we can afford to take our time this morning.

“I don’t know.” Luca shrugs, then he takes a sip of his black coffee. “Maybe you were going to catch someone’s attention somehow. I don’t want to give you ideas.”

I laugh. “Were you really about to bring me back here, kicking and screaming?”

“Well, no. Because I would’ve gagged you and tied you up.” The moment the words leave his mouth, Luca reddens.

Have you ever seen a big, tattooed, scary-looking man blush? It’s scary and adorable at the same time. Scadorable.

When he meets my gaze, I see a glint of desire behind his sheepishness.

That’s all the confirmation I need.

Luca wasn’t pretending to be PuppetMaster. He was PuppetMaster, whether he knew it or not. He was the real deal.

“I would’ve let you tie me up and gag me,” I say across the small, wooden dining table. Slowly, I add, “In fact, you can do it right now if you want to.”

Luca tightens his jaw. Is he . . . angry? Whatever. At least I’m getting a reaction. Maybe I’m waving a red flag in front of a bull, but at least something interesting is happening.

“Relax. I’m just messing with you.” I giggle to melt the tension. “I think it’s adorable that you care what your neighbors think.”

“I don’t. But I also don’t want anybody calling the cops on me.” It seems Luca’s had enough because he gets up and leaves me alone.

But for the rest of the day, whenever he comes out of his studio, I ask him questions like, “What were you going to do if I refused to move in with you? Were you going to hold me down and tie me up? Were you going to overpower me and make me do whatever you want?”

These questions bother him, but not in the way a friend would be bothered by them. (You know, like, “Ew, TMI!” kind of bothered.)

No, Luca’s getting hot-and-bothered kind of bothered. I can tell by the way his muscles tense and the faraway look in his emerald eyes, like he’s trying hard to imagine himself somewhere else so he doesn’t give in to the temptation I’m putting on a silver platter for him. Whenever I manage to catch his gaze, I see a flame burning with both anger and lust inside those green depths.

That night, I lie in bed, devising my plan while my fingers slip inside my panties. Tomorrow’s another day off for both of us. Seeing as I’ve managed to disturb Luca’s calm surface today, I should act now before he recovers and goes back to being a grump.

In the same way, I know what he needs, too. We’re two sides of the same coin, after all.