“Yeah, this’ll do,” Jane says. “I have some suggestions about decor, but we can talk about that later.”

She’s still standing a few feet from the bed, naked and never shy, and August doesn’t bother pretending not to look at every inch of her for the first time. Jane is obviously, always, inevitably stunning, all long legs and gentle curves and sharp hipbones and tattoos. But August finds that she loves things it never occurred to her to love. The dimples of her knees. The knots of her shoulders. The way her bare toes touch the scuffed floor.

“What?” Jane asks.

“Nothing,” August says, rolling over to lay her cheek against the pillow. Jane’s eyes track the way her damp hair tumbles down her shoulders and back. “It’s cute how you just invited yourself to move in with us.”

“Four’s unlucky anyway,” Jane says, “might as well make it five.”

She throws herself at the bed, and August bounces and laughs and lets Jane push her onto her back, already gasping.

“You’re always so,” she says, kissing the patch of skin behind August’s ear, her right hand finding its way, “sensitive.”

“Don’t—don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you.” She moves one of her fingers in a teasing little circle and August gasps again, one hand fisting in the sheets. “I love that about you. It’s fun.”

When August opens her eyes, Jane’s hovering over her, face gentle and awed. At August. She’s looking at August like that. August can literally split time open, apparently, but she still can’t believe the way Jane looks at her.

“You know I still love you, right?” August tells her. It falls out of her mouth readily. Losing her made it easy to say. “Even though it’s been months for me. I never even came close to stopping.”

Jane presses her lips to the center of August’s chest.

“Tell me one more time.”

August lets out a quiet, eager sound when she moves again. “I love you. I—I love you.”

And Jane presses her into the mattress and says, “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

It’s luxury. The most basic parameters of privacy—a door, an empty apartment, an afternoon stretching out before them—and that’s luxury. No train schedules or nosy commuters. No fluorescent lights. Just touching for the luxury of touch, greedy because they can be. Jane keeps watching her face, and August can’t imagine what her expression is doing, but Jane’s smiling, and it only winds her up more to know that Jane’s getting off on getting her off. August wants more, wants everything she can possibly have, wants to bury herself in it and never come back.

The first one goes quickly—it’s been too long and she’s missed Jane too much for it to take much more than a hand and a few minutes—and when she’s finished shivering through it, Jane kisses her back to her senses.

“God,” August says, breaking off, “come up here.”

“I am up here,” Jane says. “I’m kissing you.”

“No.” August licks her lips and reaches up to drag one fingertip across the bottom one. “Here.”

“Oh,” Jane exhales. “Oh, okay.”

Jane kisses her once more, and then she’s moving up August’s body, shifting on her knees until she’s even with August’s shoulders, bracing herself with both hands against the wall. August can feel the heat radiating off of her like wet sunlight.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” August tells her. She’s thought about this more times than Jane can imagine.

“I just wanted—fuck, okay, stupid question, sorry—fuck, oh, fuck.”

August thinks about summertime in New Orleans, cups of ice and sugary syrup, satsuma and strawberry and honeysuckle dripping down her chin and sticking to her fingers, the familiar smother of steam and sweat. Jane rolls her hips, chasing the feeling, soft little moans falling out of her mouth faster and faster until she gives herself over. August’s fingernails dig into the flesh of her thighs right where they meet her hips, and she loves this, loves Jane, loves the velvety insides of Jane’s legs against her face, loves the way Jane feels on her lips and her tongue, loves how she moves in waves of desperate instinct without a hint of self-consciousness. August could learn how to live without breathing just to stay like this forever.

When it’s over—not over, not ever really over with them, but when Jane falls over the edge and can’t take any more—Jane kisses her sloppily, drunk and euphoric. She smells like August, and that’s a whole different revelation—her body and Jane’s and all the ways they can linger on each other.

There never seems to be a beginning or an end to this. Before, it was whatever circumstances demanded, but now it’s a mess of touching, one kiss blending into the next, an endless glide, a continuous tide. They both give and take, both have turns gasping and swearing and getting on their knees. It could be hours or days, August thinks, when she has anything in her brain still capable of thought. Jane pushes a pillow under August’s hips and hooks August’s knees over her own shoulders, and August goes under.

Jane draws her out again, deadly with her mouth and fingers. She moves like art. She finds every piece holding August together and works it loose until she feels like she’s spilling out of herself. August’s at sea, she’s clay in the hands of someone who knows how to make a life out of nothing, she’s a girl underneath a girl in a bed they both almost died to get to.

“That’s it,” Jane whispers when August can barely stand to hear the desperate, dizzy sounds coming out of her own mouth. She’s got one hand and her hips between August’s thighs, chasing blindly and relentlessly after whatever August’s body responds to. Jane fucks her like they’re the center of the universe. August is in the stars. “So gorgeous like this, angel, God, I love you—”

August comes again with her hands in Jane’s hair, eyes shut, body shaking, and it’s not just the touch. Down to her fingertips, singing through her synapses, it’s a love too big to be stopped, the unbearable, exquisite fullness of it. Impossible.

Later, when the sun is setting and the streetlights flickering on, August feels Jane’s pulse against her and imagines all the wires running over and under the street synced up with it. That isn’t how it works anymore. But it feels true anyway.

“You know what’s crazy?” Jane says. She looks like she might fall asleep soon.

“What?”

“You’re the most important person I’ve ever met,” she says. “And I should have never met you at all.”

* * *

Time, Myla explains to them later, isn’t perfect.

It’s not a straight line. It’s not neat and tidy. Things get crossed, overlap, splinter. People get lost. It’s not a precise science.

So, Jane didn’t go back to 1977. They opened a door, and August caught a glimpse through the crack, but Jane didn’t stay there. She didn’t magically snap into the exact moment of time she left August in either, though. She ended up in the general area of now, the way her socks end up in the general area of the laundry basket when she throws them across August’s bedroom.