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“I don’t have time for games.” Red-hot anger swims in my veins because this man hasn’t bothered to come see me once. I see him at Christmas and Thanksgiving and maybe he shows up when one of Paul’s kids has a birthday party.

Now, here we stand in an alley because he broke into the shop to leave a stupid note.

“Am I wrong? Would you have come if you didn’t want to?”

I don’t answer because the smug ass knows he’s right. I would not have. I would have tossed the note into the trash and forgot about it, but that’s the thing about Danny. I’ve never forgotten.

I cross my arms. “So, what do you want then?”

He narrows his eyes, not saying anything for a moment. He steps closer to the wall of one of the buildings we’re between. Leaning back against it, like a dark shadow, he tilts his head to look at me.

“You happy?” he asks.

I blink. I was not expecting that. Am I happy?

“Define happy.” I shouldn’t have said that. I should have just said yes. Because I put doubt in his head and now he’ll think I’m not.

He smiles, looking away before looking back. “Well, we all have a different definition of that, don’t we?”

“I suppose.” I uncross my arms, placing my hands in my coat’s pockets instead. “I have a good life according to most people. A roof over my head, clothes on my back, yada, yada.”

He smiles. “Yada, yada.”

I taste the cold on my lips. “Are you happy?” I ask.

He sniffs, his eyes casting down. He pulls out a cigarillo and lights it. “Only if you are, love.” Him calling me that…it kills me. It reminds me of times long ago. When we loved one another so fiercely. When he worshipped my body and I his.

I exhale, blowing a cloud of cold smoke into the evening air as Danny releases toxic smoke from his own lungs. The two gases drift up, mingling with one another.How fitting, I think to myself, and it’s as if he thought it, too, because he nods and then he shocks me stupid.

“Samuel’s going to ask you to marry him.”

I feel my chest burn. “What?” I blurt. “How do you know that?”

“He came to the bar and told me. I’m not sure if he was asking for my blessing. It would be the respectable thing to do, or if he just wanted me to know.”

“Why would it be the respectable thing to do?”

He eyes me. “Why do you think?”

“I’ve been Samuel’s for seven years now. So, I don’t think anything.”

He smirks. “Yeah. But are you his?”

“Are you asking if I’m not, or are you saying that I’m not?”

“I’m saying what we both know. That no matter where you lay your head, your heart will always belong to me.”

I shake my head. “You’re so sure of this, aren’t you?”

“I’m more than sure.” Leaning against the brick wall with his hand slid into his long wool coat’s pockets, Danny looks like a gangster from the early 1900s. He puts the cigarillo between his lips, letting it hang there.

I grow angry at his cockiness and his indifference about mine and Samuel’s relationship. He acts as if it’s nothing. Meaningless.

I frown. “Why are you telling me this? Why have you asked me to come here so you can ruin an important time in my life?”

“Because, Bexley,” he says in a way that sounds exhausted, “I want to know what you’re going to say.”

“Why does it matter to you what I say?”