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“He’s just . . . you know, old. I mean, your mom and dad are what, thirty-two?”

“Thirty-three and four,” Liam said, ripping open a bag of chips.

“And

my dad is sixty,” Emma said. “Sixty and raised in a little mountain village in Nowhere, Guatemala. He thinks different.”

“He hates love,” Liam joked.

“No, he just hates sex if it involves his daughter.”

“We’re always careful. I mean, all rubbered up, sir!” He snapped a salute.

“Oh, good, you can tell my dad that. Tell him it’s okay because you were wearing protection. Just be ready to outrun a bullet.”

Liam fed her a chip. She tried to crunch it in some sensual, provocative way, but most of the chip broke off and hit the floor. They both laughed and Liam gathered her to him.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

“No,” Liam insisted, his voice heavy with emotion. “I don’t mean like a throwaway line. I mean that I think about you every hour of every day. I see you every time I close my eyes. I don’t shower after we’ve been together because I want to be able to smell you on my skin.” He hesitated, feeling embarrassed as his fair skin colored. “That last might have been a little creepy.”

“Not even a little creepy,” she said, her own voice husky. “And I love you that same way. Desperate love. You know? Like sometimes it just kind of wells up, and for a few seconds I can’t breathe or swallow.”

Suddenly angry, Liam spun away from Emma. “We have to get past this. We have to be together. I mean, what is the problem? Why can’t I just go to your dad and say, ‘Look, Mr. Aguilar, Emma and I love each other, and I know you still think about me breaking that trellis when I was twelve, but let it go, all right? Let it go.’”

“Mmmm. That will so not work.”

“Let me try at least.”

She held him out at arm’s length. “Liam, listen to me: It won’t work. He’ll ground me for three months. There will be no way for us to see each other. To be together. Like this.”

Liam cursed. Not at Emma—at life, it seemed. He tore into the bag of cookies with enough violence to cause half the cookies to scatter across the countertop.

They ate in silence, glum, chewing and drinking juice.

“Please tell me this doesn’t end like Samantha Early,” I said.

Messenger did not answer. He was watching them. Having tastefully not intruded on their lovemaking, he watched now with a palpable hunger. He swallowed and I saw that even as he watched them, he was seeing another image, a faraway image.

“I have to water the plants,” Emma said.

“Yep.”

And just like that, we were in the backseat of the car again, and Emma was driving as Liam distracted her with light kisses on the side of her neck.

“What do you think of them?” Messenger asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Your opinion. Your judgment. That is our subject now, the question of your instincts.”

I shifted uncomfortably. I did not like the idea of being judged, certainly not of being judged on my ability to judge others. But Messenger waited, knowing, I suppose, that I would answer, whatever my qualms.

“I like them. They’re in love,” I said.

“Are they? Did you look inside them?”