When they finally pulled back, he smiled. “I’ll come pick you up at four.”

“I love driving in with you.”

“I love being your chauffeur.”

Marissa gave him one more peck, and then she opened her door and shifted her legs out. As she extricated herself from the low-level car, he wanted to pull her back in. Then he wanted to drive off and keep going.

Instead, he tilted over into the passenger seat and looked up at her. “I’m counting the hours.”

“Me, too.”

Marissa blew him a kiss, closed the door, and went up the front walkway. On her way inside, she gave him a last wave, and then the heavy, reinforced oak door was shut. Butch took a deep breath. Then he put the car in M1S and hit the gas, manually shifting the DCT as he left the neighborhood. It was a good ten or twelve minutes to get downtown, and he enjoyed the swerving in and out of lanes, the seventy-eight miles an hour in M4S . . . the dropping down into third gear, hammering the accelerator, and taking the Audi up to a hundred just before he got off at the North-way’s Trade Street exit.

Some blocks down from where he dumped out onto the surface roads, he ditched the R8 in the garage where Manny parked the mobile surgical unit when it needed to be downtown on standby. Out on the street on foot, he strode along with his senses threading through the darkness. He immediately sensed a couple of lessers, but they were blocks and blocks away. Frustrated, he gave their approximate locations to the group that was on rotation, and hoped that tempers would hold and nobody would get too stabby before he could come on scene.

The instinct that he was being followed was a gradual one, the kind of thing that snuck up on him . . . as someone snuck up on him.

Triangulating the direction of the wind, he made a left, a right, and then another right so that the breeze coming off the river rode up on his back, carrying the scent of his little friend upon it.

Not a slayer. Not a vampire.

And was that . . . Poison by Dior? Shit, his nose had to be playing tricks on him. No one wore that perfume from the eighties anymore.

Stopping, he pivoted around, not bothering to hide his Hi, how’re ya.

The woman was a good twenty feet away from him, and she was surrounded by light, sure as if the ambient illumination of the city was drawn to her. And yeah, he could understand why. Considering all the grime that downtown had to offer, she was certainly more worthy of a glow than a dumpster or an MSD truck.

Long brunette hair. Ridiculously good legs, like a thoroughbred. Tiny waist. Boobs that were perfect, but proportional, which, according to his male brain, meant that they might well be real. All in all, a package done up in runway-worthy clothes that, prior to his bonding with Marissa, would have caught his attention and then some. But he didn’t fall into those kinds of feels. He was, after all, and in spite of the many questionable choices he’d made in his past, a good Catholic boy who had no interest in adultery.

Plus, hello, his shellan was all he wanted anyway.

The woman kept walking toward him, and she did that model thing, where the high-heeled shoes swung out and came back in with every step, the hips counterbalancing the exaggeration, the hair all bouncing to the rhythm of “Sexy Can I.”

This show couldn’t be for him.

Her eyes, however, told a different story.

They were locked on his, and Butch glanced over his shoulder, figuring a tour bus full of rappers, ballers, and tech billionaires had to have rolled up behind him.

Nope. She was coming for him.

When she stopped, she was about five feet away, and damn, her foundation was either the spackle they used at the end of Death Becomes Her or her skin was just fucking perfect. And those eyes. There was a king-sized bed with furry handcuffs attached to the headboard behind each one of those glittering black irises.

“Can I help you,” he said dryly. “Because you’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody.”

“No, I’ve been looking for you.”

As her words came through the air at him, he weaved on his feet, his brain shorting out for a brief second. But then, like the electricity came back on in his skull, he was perfectly fine save for a lingering headache.

He rubbed one of his temples. “Look, sweetheart, you need to keep moving on—”

“Dontcha recognize me? I’m a friend of your sister Janie’s.”

Butch froze. And not only at the words, but the Boston accent that came through loud as a marching band in those syllables. “What did you say?”

Those eyes never left his, and as he stared into them, he felt as though he were falling, even as he stayed on level ground.

“Your sister Janie. I went to school with her and you.” The woman pointed to her bodice. “Melissa McCarthy—and who knew that name would ever mean anything outside of Southie, right?”

Butch narrowed his stare. “Melissa . . . McCarthy?”

“You know, we lived on Bowen and F Street. I had braces back then, but you gotta remember me.”

“Your brother was . . .”

“Mikey. Remember they named the five of us with M’s? Mikey, me, Margaret, and Molly, the youngest. Megan, who shoulda been the baby of the family, didn’t make it when she was born.”

“Holy . . . shit, Melissa.” He closed the distance between them. “What the fuck you doin’ up here?”

His accent, long suppressed by his years in Caldwell, rebounded in his mouth like something that had been vacuum packed.

“We ain’t that far from Boston.”

“Far” was “Fah.” “Boston” was “Bahston.” And he loved it.

“Look, Butch,” she glanced around, “I didn’t mean to ride up on you like this, but it’s just too crazy a coincidence. I mean, I was just talkin’ to Joyce the other night. She had her second baby—but you know that, right?”

“Ah, my mom, she mentioned something.”

“So ya still in touch with some of your family, huh.”

“Just Ma. But she’s, you know . . .”

“Yeah, in that nursin’ home. I’m real sorry about that, Butch. Anyway, yeah, so Joyce was invitin’ me to the baptism back home. She said she hadn’t seen you, and when I told her I was livin’ up here, she said I should see if I could find you. No offense, but I don’t think she really meant it. It was kind of a bad joke.”

“That’s Joyce.”

“But yeah, so I was heading over to that club, Ten? Do you know it? Anyways, I seen this hot car go by and park in this garage. Then you came out the door. I was across the street—I couldn’t tell for sure it was you. But . . . it was. Is, I mean. You.”

They stared at each other for a while.

“It’s good to see you, Butch,” Melissa said in a voice that got shaky. “You got people who miss you, you know? I mean, where you been these last couple of years? And what’s with the clothes. You look like some kinda hard-ass now.”

Butch glanced down at his leathers. Opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Listen, whatever’s between you and your sistah?” Melissa shrugged. “It’s none of my business. I’m not . . . I mean, if you don’t want me saying nothing to her, that’s fine. And if you don’t want to talk to me, I understand. I know what it’s like to have to leave things behind. It’s not fun, no matter what side of the exit you’re on or the reasons why you have to go.”

Melissa wrapped her arms around herself and shivered a little, her eyes drifting away as if she were trying to stop her own memories from knocking on her frontal lobe.

“You shouldn’t be out here walking alone,” Butch heard himself say. “It’s not safe.”

She seemed to snap back to attention. “Oh, I know, right. Did you hear about those two bodies they found? What the fuck?”

“Why don’t I walk you to the club. That way, I know you’re safe.”

Melissa’s smile was shy, and very much at odds with her beauty.

“Come on,” Butch said as he offered her his arm. “Allow me to escort you.”

“Such a gentleman.” She linked a hold on him. “Hey, why don’t you come inside with me? Or we could go somewhere quiet.”

“I gotta work.” The sound of their footsteps rose up from the pavement, the heavy impact of his boots balanced by the staccato clips of her high heels. “And listen, I’m married.”

Melissa stopped. Stamped her foot. “Get out. You are? Joyce said you weren’t ever going to settle down.”

“You meet the right person, that’s all it takes.”

“Well . . . shit.” She recrossed her arms and looked him up and down. When her eyes came back to him, there was a sly light in them. “But married isn’t always . . . you know . . . married, necessarily.”

“It is with me.” He took her elbow and started walking again, drawing her along. “But come on, someone like you, I’ll bet you’re beating ’em off with a stick.”

“You’d be surprised,” came the dry response.

“You know, I don’t remember you looking . . .”

“So good?” She smiled at him and put her head on his shoulder. “Go on, you can say it and not violate your vows.”

“Fine. I don’t remember you being this hot.”

“Plastic surgery is expensive,” she murmured with a laugh. “But the shit works.”

“Clearly.” He nodded down at her black, sparkling outfit. “And is this ensemble Chanel or am I crazy?”

“It is! How’d you know?”

Like anything else came with all those interlocking C’s? he thought.

They chatted about the past during the walk back by the garage where he’d left the R8, and he was surprised how good it was to plug into those memories of growing up—and by that, he didn’t mean the shit in his household, with his father hating him and his mom being flinchy about everything. He meant the kids stuff. The friend stuff. The school stuff. Not all of his childhood had been bad.