I lower my hands and press myself back against the wall as he makes another approach. This time he does not touch me, simply presses his palms against the wall on either side of my head.

I take a breath and look around, trying to avoid his stare.

“Now, answer. Do you think I came in. Found you drugged and unconscious. Bleeding from your head.” He flicks his fingertips along my stitched wound, and I wince. “Cared for you.” His voice lowers at this. It’s barely a whisper. “Cleaned you up. Sewed you back together. Dressed you in the sweetest things I could find in your meager assortment of clothing.”

I swallow hard as I picture this in my head. His hands on my body. His eyes on my body. Choosing my clothing and dressing me.

“And then wrapped you up in a blanket and slept next to you for forty-eight hours as you came out of your pathetic overdose of benzodiazapams—”

“I didn’t overdose, I’m just not used to taking them anymore!”

He places a hand over my mouth. “Shush! That was the second crazy thing you did that day,” he stresses. “So you think I came and did all that, and then raped you?”

I look away, embarrassed.

“Is your cunt sore?”

I snap my attention back at the vulgar language.

“Is it?”

I shake my head no.

“Well, then you can be sure, Harper. I did not f**k you. Because I don’t do anything half-ass. And if I was gonna f**k you, believe me, you’d feel the effect of my c**k in your pu**y for a week and the only thing on your mind would be when I’d come back and do it again.”

Oh God! I’m throbbing from his words. I turn my head to hide the blush but his fingers slip under my chin and force my attention back to him.

“Look at me.”

I raise my eyelids and take a hitched breath from the crying. He stares back at me for a moment and then he leans down. Slow this time, not the crushing madness of heat we had under the pier the other day. His lips graze against mine, just a soft flutter of a kiss, and then he pulls back before I can react. “Did you think about our kiss under the pier afterward?” I blush and try to look away, but his fingertips are back on my chin, urging me to look him in the eyes. “Answer me, Harper.”

“Yes.”

“Was it good?”

I can’t help myself, I laugh. This makes him smile and those dimples appear.

“Was it everything you dreamed? Because I can do better. I can do so much better if I disappointed you, Harper.”

I blush again. “No, it was fine.”

“Fine? Kissing you should be so much more than fine.”

I look him in the eyes this time and tell the truth. “It was… spectacular.” I get more dimples at that admission. When I look up at his eyes, I’m entranced. He’s… hypnotic. “I’d like another,” I whisper, not even sure where that just came from. It’s true though, so I don’t take it back. I just stare at him.

He leans down into my neck and nips my earlobe. “Would you?” he breathes into me.

I can only nod this time. My capacity for speech has left. My whole body erupts in chills, and not the creepy kind. The kind I’ve never experienced before.

“Right now?” he whispers.

“Yes,” I answer back, just as soft.

“Well,” he says in his regular voice as he pulls away, “I think you have an appointment at the beach, maybe we can reconvene this”—he laughs—“whatever this is, afterward?”

“What?”

He takes my hand and leads me towards the door. I grab my key off the floor where I dropped it when I came in, and stuff it in my pocket. I’ve never left the apartment with another person before. It throws me off my safety routine.

He holds my hand all the way to the wooden gate and then guides me through with a pat on my ass. I close my eyes and gasp at that move, but I don’t say anything because his unauthorized touch is gone a moment later. He resumes holding my hand. Like we are boyfriend and girlfriend just out for a Friday night walk.

“This is weird,” I say under my breath.

“What’s weird?” he asks back.

I look up at him as we walk and he absently grabs the dark shades hanging off the collar of his t-shirt and slips them over his eyes. I miss his eyes immediately, but it’s almost sunset and we’re heading west, so the orange glare of the sun blasts down on his face, illuminating his skin like some bronzed god in a muscle-hugging t-shirt and holey jeans.

He raises our clasped hands. “Holding hands is weird?”

“Yes, but…” I trail off and he lets it go because we’re at the light at PCH and Main now. We wait with a crowd of people heading to the steps for the sunset and it dawns on me. “My appointment is with the sun?”

He looks down at me and smiles. “Is it? I always figured it was with the dusk. And the one in the morning is with the dawn. But it’s the sun, huh?”

“You’ve been watching me.”

He nods as the light changes and the crowd of people shuffle forward together, taking us up in a wave of momentum.

When we reach the steps in Pier Plaza, there’s almost nowhere to sit. Friday night sunset-watching is very popular in the summer. I usually get here at least a half hour early on the weekends.

“We’re late,” my new partner says as we approach. He bolts off to the right, tugging me behind him as he goes. And then he finds a seat for us, squished up against a pillar. He sits down first and I look dubiously at the small space left for me. He pats his knee. “Sit, Harper.”

He draws me towards him until I plop down in his lap.

As if I had a choice?

When he wraps his arms around me and leans against the concrete pillar, I tense up immediately. I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to act right now.

He leans into my neck. “Relax,” he says softly.

“I can’t help it,” I say back. “I don’t even know your name and you’re hugging me in public like we’re engaged or something.”

“Later, Harper. Just enjoy the show. It’s about to start.”

I give in. He makes me want to give in. And the inner independent and strong-willed girl inside me wants to object.

But I don’t. Because I like it. He feels so familiar. He feels like an old friend instead of a stranger. For the first time in over a year, I feel safe. And since the one lesson I learned early was that safety was a gift, I decide to accept it.