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him awake.
    â€œWell, look who the cat dragged into the fair.” Ginny was stationed a mere foot in front of the flat-­screen, which showed a clip of Cherie and himself as they talked by the Firefighter Photo Booth.
    â€œHey, where’d that come from?” Fred must have used his video camera without asking.
    â€œWhat was she doing there?” His mother was not a fan of Cherie, though they’d never actually met. All her knowledge was secondhand, mostly obtained during the bleaker moments of Vader and Cherie’s on-­and-­off relationship.
    â€œSame as everyone else. Supporting the San Gabriel Fire Department.”
    â€œHmph. So she’s got red hair now? What happened to the pink streaks?”
    â€œI forgot to ask her. I was too busy flexing my muscles for the camera.” He watched the two of them on the TV screen, himself huge and shirtless but for suspenders, Cherie even more curvaceous than in person, filling the screen with summery pinks and hot cinnamon reds. He wouldn’t be surprised to see bees hovering near her. The two of them were standing to the side of the photo booth. In the background, attendees wandered past, munching on hot dogs, carrying balloons. But he and Cherie seemed to be locked together in their own private world. Neither of them looked at anything but each other.
    Watching the two ­people on screen, he felt excruciatingly awkward, as if he was invading his own privacy. The raw intensity vibrating between him and Cherie was embarrassing.
    His mother fell silent, but she shot him a disapproving glance. After their second breakup, she’d stopped supporting his relationship with Cherie in any way, shape, or form. And she didn’t even know about his two rejected proposals.
    â€œWe were just talking,” he said defensively.
    That was her cue. “There’s never ‘just’ anything with that girl. Why don’t you let me find you someone nice and uncomplicated? I know you, Vader. You might act like all you want is a party, but you’d give up all those crazy nights out for a nice girl to love. I’ve been surfing around on dating sites and I found one specifically for firefighters and—­”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œVader, you’re my only child. Do you know what it’s like to see you eating your heart out for a girl who doesn’t appreciate you?”
    He opened his mouth to tell Ginny that he and Cherie were through, that she could stop nagging him on the subject. But something in him refused to say it. Because it wasn’t true, damn it. He and Cherie were a long way from being through; he knew it in his bones. “Cherie and I are fine the way we are.”
    â€œDoesn’t look that way to me.”
    She gestured to the TV screen. Vader looked, desperate for escape, and saw the camera zoom wildly in and out. Fred must have been fooling with the lens somehow. A close-­up of the tendons on his neck turned into a panoramic view of the blue sky, then shifted back to a wildly tilted angle on Cherie. And there it froze. Or maybe Fred stopped recording at that moment.
    At any rate, Cherie had just glanced toward the camera, though she didn’t seem to realize it was there. Her head was tilted thoughtfully to the side, and underneath her bright, eager smile, a different expression lurked, like one of those “ghosts” captured during long exposures. She looked . . . hopeless? Desperate? Haunted?
    Hell, he was no wordsmith. He didn’t have the right vocabulary for that look. But all along he’d known it was there. He’d always sensed the vulnerability beneath her busy-­ness, a sad, sweet wistfulness shadowing her fun-­loving nature. Maybe that’s what kept drawing him back for more.
    His mother snapped off the TV. “If only I had a remote control for your hormones.”
    â€œOkay, that’s the line, right there. The one you don’t cross.”
    Wisely,