“I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn’t an unhappy man.” He kept his eyes on hers as his thumb brushed lightly over the back of her hand. “Then, one day I felt something—a prickle at the back of my neck, a heat at the base of my spine. And standing at a memorial for the dead, I turned, and there you were.” He turned her hand over, interlocking fingers. “There you were, and it all shifted under my feet. You were everything I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want or need. A cop for Jesus’ sake, with eyes that looked right into me.” He reached out, just a whisper of fingers on her face. And the quiet touch was somehow wildly passionate, desperately intimate. “A cop wearing a bad gray suit and a coat that didn’t even fit. From that moment, the hole inside me began to fill. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop what rooted there, or what grew.

The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. “She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it’s that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to.”