But he isn’t exactly the kind of person who would want to invite the attention of the police, either.

I palm the two pills and take a sip of the water to wash them down, then pick up the cold compress and stare at it for a minute. This is some thoughtful shit.

I lay it over my swollen eyes, but when a memory flashes in my mind from that horrible night in the garden, I pull it off, throw it back onto the coffee table, and go to the kitchen to look for another cigarette.

There’re other things I should be doing. Going to the police myself, to explain what happened? Running off to Belize, which has no extradition treaty but does have those cute manatees? I could create a new life as a never-married manatee tour guide whose mother is absolutely fine but won’t come to visit, and no one would ever know about my past.

I giggle at the thought. The giggles are a little wild even though my thoughts are surprisingly calm given the situation I’m in.

That’s what happens when life keeps throwing shit at you—the last months, hell, even this last week, have been enough to push someone over the edge. But I’m still here. And now that I can think clearly, I’m starting to suspect that some majorly fucked-up shit is going on, besides the fact that I had to dig my own mother’s grave.

I’ll think it through after another cigarette.

I’m fidgeting with the packet’s flip top when there’s a hard knock at the apartment door.

I feel a spurt of anger that I won’t even get to enjoy this last drag in peace before going to jail, where I’ll have to pay who knows what price if I really need a hit of nicotine.

I won’t even get to go to the block party.

“Sydney?”

I fling the door open to find a strange white man standing there in jeans and a T-shirt. No. It’s Theo, his hair darker because it’s wet and his beard shaved to reveal the harsh angles of his jaw, which do a lot toward containing and putting into perspective all those other prominent features on his face. I thought the beard was great, but I like this smooth-faced stranger at my door, bearing gifts.

He holds up a plastic bag, slowly. “I, uh, went for a walk. Got some guava tarts from the Caribbean bakery because it was the only place open this early. Do you like those?”

I’m about to answer when I notice his nails. There’s a solid crescent of dirt under each of them. That dirt wasn’t there yesterday evening.

“Theo.”

I pull him inside by the front of his shirt and slam the door behind him.

“So you do like guava tarts? Good.”

I grab one of his big hands with both of mine. There are blisters that will soon form into calluses on the palm pads below each finger. There is the dirt. When I sniff him closely, there is the smell of sunflowers.

“Theo. Did you—?”

He shrugs, runs his other hand through his hair. “You know who’s the last person to get stopped for doing some weird shit like digging in an empty Brooklyn lot in the middle of the night? I mean, a cop car did stop and—”

“What?” My heart thumps so hard in my chest that it hurts.

“—I told them I was burying my . . . dog. I’m sorry, it was the first thing that came to mind that would work. Then the cop got all misty-eyed about his German shepherd.”

“Where is she?” I ask, my heart in my throat.

He looks at me for a beat longer than it should take to reply. “There was nothing there. No one there. Under the sunflowers.”

No.

“They took her?” I ask, gripping his hand harder, but he shakes his head.

“They messed things up, but there was no digging before I got there. I didn’t find her.”

My entire body flinches from this as multiple thoughts hit me at once: someone moved Mommy, Drea is gone, Theo will think I’m crazy, people hurt you when they think you’re crazy.

Maybe he wouldn’t be wrong, thinking that.

“I buried her there,” I say quietly. His hand squeezes mine and I look up at him.

“I believe you.”

“Don’t just say that to—”

“If you say you buried her, you buried her. We’ll find out where she is.” He squeezes my hand again, the pressure steady and comforting. “Everything is going to be okay.”

On some level I know it’s wrong, macabre—fucked up—when I bring his hand to my mouth and kiss the back of it.

Mommy is gone.

Drea has seemingly abandoned me—maybe she’s the one in Belize with her $50K. She’d looked up countries we couldn’t be extradited from, after all.

Theo is here, in front of me, looking at me with kind eyes that have no trace of doubt in them, his hands rubbed raw from an attempted exhumation.

No one has ever tried to save me.

My fear and pain and fatigue burn away in the generous light of his attempt, leaving a roar of the emptiness inside of me, and the feeling that only one thing can fill it right now.

I pull him by the hand to the bedroom, glancing back over my shoulder to look at him.

“Sydney?” He pauses at the threshold of my bedroom door, despite my attempt to tug him after me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been through a lot and—”

“You just said you believed me.” My voice is trembling because my body is. “I’m telling you that I want you, need you, right now. Do you believe that?”

He nods and steps into the room with me, and everything else falls away.

There’s no fear of all the awful things that’ve happened before this moment, or all the bad things that might happen after. Just the relief of his gaze, so fucking intense as he looks down at me. The expectation of his touch, his heat, his scent, his presence . . .

I expect him to be gentle, but he drops the bag on the floor and his hands move toward my shoulders like he’s been holding himself back from it for days. His fingertips press into my shoulder blades as he pulls me toward him.

Theo’s gaze roams all over my face before he meets my eyes, reads my confirmation there, and kisses me.

I’m not the only one who needs this right now. Our kiss is like two drowning people searching for a life preserver, finding each other instead, and deciding that roaring waves aren’t so bad if you can fuck in the lulls between them.

His mouth moves as desperately as mine, his tongue searches as frantically; a groan slips between my lips but I can’t pinpoint its origin—him or me.

He backs me up to the wall of the bedroom, one hand sliding from my shoulder to my neck and resting there—not squeezing, but simply restraining. Holding me, keeping me from falling apart. Heat sears through my body at his touch, at the fact that he understands it isn’t roughness that would hurt me right now, but coddling. His eyes are too kind for his touch to be gentle—I wouldn’t be able to stand that. So he holds me as his mouth crushes into mine and his hips grind against me, his arm wedged between us.

He glances into my eyes a few minutes later, face flushed and eyes stormy. His fingertips stroke under my jawbone as he asks, “Do you need more?”

When I nod, he lowers his hands to my hips and his mouth to my neck, sucking at my skin, rubbing his lips across my collarbone. My nipples are hard points through the fabric of my camisole and he teases them through the fabric with his teeth as I drive my hands into his hair. He uses his chin to drag the top of my shirt down, and his light stubble teases my sensitive skin before he sucks a nipple between his lips.

For the first time in months, my mind is gloriously clear, all of my troubles and pain hacked away by the pleasure of Theo’s tongue swirling over my nipples, first right, then left, of his hands pressing my hips against the wall so that when they lift involuntarily my ass is forced to remain against the wall.

“Theo.” I shove at his shoulders and his hands are off me instantly, his tongue a second later. He looks up at me, brows raised, and when I push him again, he tumbles back onto my bed with a grin, hands already reaching up to catch me to him as I scramble on top of him.

I fumble in the bedside table drawer for a condom and lube, and Theo takes advantage of my raised hips and shoves down his pants and boxers.

He follows my lead as I roll us over, but stops moving as I reach between our thighs to pump his veiny shaft, to slide the condom on and warm the lube using my fingertips.

He’s looking at me all gentle again, so I lift my head and kiss him hard as I hold his gaze, tease his bottom lip with the threat of a hard bite. I feel his grin between my lips, and then he thrusts into me.

He doesn’t push into me roughly, but I still gasp at the slow, teasing stretch of him. He’s thick, hot, and hard inside of me, his weight crushing me to the bed. He doesn’t move for a second, as if adjusting to being encompassed by my tight heat.

“Sydney.” He lowers his head and kisses me, and when I slide my hands into his hair and tug, when I nip his bottom lip again, he pulls out and drives into me hard.