It’s warm, he’s warm, radiating love and light and I feel swaddled and safe. It’s hot outside too. I can feel the heat building and as I lay her... in the grey light just a few moments awake, I know the heat is going to build to a white hot zenith and we will escape into the cool together again later. I enjoy the moment, careful not to wake him and breathe. I still can’t believe it, after all this time, the dream I wanted most of all has come true. And I count my blessings, of which there are. Kelly knew she shared me with her ghost. I tried not to let it be like that, but I couldn’t help it. I knew that she wanted me to promise that I’d return to my family as soon as I got my mess in order. I promised.I woke up with a start as the engineer screwed up his braking job and the train jolted to a slack-smashing stop in St. Cloud, Minnesota. I knew freight engineers who couldn’t screw up their slack that bad if they were half drunk and 90% asleep. Ridiculous. I looked at my Vostok and saw. It seemed to take forever as it did but she knew it was only an instant. She quickly smiled to try to recover from whatever it was that just hit her. “What are you reading?” His voice was deep and cool. It made her skin tingle. “ Huh? Oh, nothing.” She said frazzled shoving the book back on the shelf. She was getting nervous; her hands were shaking as she pushed the book into place. Her skin was on fire. She glanced up at him again. He was so tall, he made her feel petite (she loved that). He. The estate had a caretaker’s residence as well as the main house. It was several times larger than my apartment. Once we were back in the car, Lily turned to me.“Trent, I know that this would be a great imposition on you, but it is going to be some time before I can sell my property on Doheny Drive. I don’t know what your situation is with your apartment, but is there any way that I could convince you to move into the caretaker’s residence so that there would be someone on the premises at night.