I unfolded the paper. Tucked inside was a hand-drawn map of the neighborhood with the grocery store, a bank machine and the pharmacy labelled. On the side of the map, he wrote a few phone numbers, including for the ambulance and a pizza delivery place. There was some Swedish money, too, just in case, he wrote.

  But the letter itself was different. Most of it was a description of me as I slept that morning. How it felt to sit next to me, memorizing all the details he had forgotten these last months, in case I was gone when he returned.

  The letter ended with coffee pot instructions and a run-down of my breakfast options. Slim pickings. More sandwiches like we had eaten the night before or cereal and milk.

  Sorry. Wasn’t really expecting company. Was this line a jab or just the truth?

  I fiddled with the coffee pot and turned it on. While I waited, I wandered around the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets to study the contents, looking for… what was I looking for? Clues? There was so little in this apartment. Each object was chosen for a reason.

  Most of the drawers were pretty bare, with a few ordinary things like silverware and scissors. But in the last one I found a stack of newspaper articles about Jonas. They were in all different languages, but each used the same photo of him, tattoos and muscles peeking out of a white t-shirt, hands shoved in his jeans, and those intense eyes, with no trace of a smile.

  I picked out the English ones and read each carefully, looking for clues. But they were about the man who had sat across from me at the Boars and Allen conference room table, scowling. Not what I was looking for.

  Above the fridge, in the cabinets I could barely reach, I found the biggest surprise. Candy. Lots of it. Chocolate bars, licorice, bags of assorted bulk candies of all kinds. Jonas had a sweet tooth? I wouldn’t have guessed it. He was the opposite of indulgence, the model of self-control. And he kept a giant stash of candy? I pictured him standing where I was, eating one of the chocolate bars in two enormous bites, and chuckled.

  After a few sips of coffee, I returned to his bedroom, ready to take myself on a real tour. Standing in front of his open closet, I inspected the shirts, taking in the ones he chose, imagining what each would look like as he pulled it over his bare chest. The scent of him lingered on everything, so I slipped one on and fastened a few of the buttons. I pulled out the one suit he owned and inspected it. Nicely made. Where did he wear it?

  I closed the wardrobe doors and headed down the hall to the living room. I wandered across the bare wooden floor to browse his bookshelf. Most of the titles were in Swedish, but I recognized a few names.

  At the end was his desk. I pulled out the ultra-modern chair and sat down. Surprisingly comfortable. I had found the first place where Jonas spent the money that must be pouring in, now that he had sold the movie rights to his first three books.

  I rested my elbows on the old desk. What was it like to be Jonas in this silent apartment as he wrote? I glanced down at the rows of drawers on either side. Did I open them? It was his writing desk, not his diary, right? And he hadn’t told me not to look around. Not that I had given him much chance to think of this possibility.

  I frowned. Just a peek. I’d stop if I found anything private.

  The top right drawer held pencils, pens, erasers, paperclips, and other miscellaneous office gadgets. And a post card of the Eiffel Tower. I flipped it over, but no one had written on it. The next one down was filled with blank loose leaf paper. The third was filled with bundles of papers, the pages filled with Jonas’s writing. Everything was in Swedish, saving me from the decision of snooping or not. The row of drawers was exactly like his apartment. Bare, anonymous.

  The top left drawer was filled with contracts and other business papers, some in English, some in Swedish.

  I tugged open the next drawer down, slowing as I pulled it out. This one wasn’t anonymous. There was a little stack of photos, most of them older, worn. In one, a group of boys stood in front of a run-down apartment building. Maybe Norr, the area where he grew up? I squinted, studying the boys, until I found him. Jonas was on the end, already taller than the rest of them, already with that don’t fuck with me look on his face. They all had some version of that look, but Jonas was the one who had mastered it.

  I slowly leafed through more childhood photos until I came to one that made me stop. The photo captured Jonas, a man and a woman at a picnic table. All three of them were making attempts at smiles, and no one succeeded. The man looked almost exactly like Jonas. Thinner, a little older, a lot more worn, but the similarity was striking. His father. I studied the photo for a while before I slipped it back into the pile.

  Taking a deep breath, I opened the last drawer. More photos, no longer of Jonas’s childhood. The top one was of him, together with three other guys, sitting around a pub table full of beers. The guys all sported tattoos and one was bandaged above the eye, but they were all smiling. I furrowed my brow as I studied the expression on Jonas’s face. He was smiling, really smiling. It wasn’t just the fighting he had left behind when he got out of prison. He had never once mentioned friends in his letters. I swallowed back a lump in my throat. Jonas must be so lonely.

  There were more photos of his life before prison. One looked like it was just before a fight. He was shirtless, knuckles taped, mouth guard in hand, and he had the sexiest smirk on his face. A rush of liquid pleasure ran through me. I took the photo out of the pile and set it on his desk, then continued sifting through.

  Until I came to one that took my breath away. Jonas, in front of the Eiffel Tower, with his arm draped around a woman with red hair. His Irish ex-girlfriend. The woman was a lot prettier than me, with high, prominent cheekbones and a haughty smile, and she didn’t seem to mind the untamed look of her curly red hair.

  Jonas had saved a photo of them together. Had he saved anything else? My hands shook as I set down the pile of photos and opened the drawer further. And there they were. A bundle of letters, sent from Siobhan Dillon in Dublin, Ireland.

  I took out the little stack and set it on his desk, next to the photo of him. I stared at the envelopes, biting my lip. Siobhan was Irish, so the letters would be in English. And here they were, for me to read. Well, not quite. But in those envelopes could be the answers to the questions that I kept coming back to. Who was the woman who walked down the path of self-destruction next to him? Did he still fight the urge to go back to her?

  Who wouldn’t want a woman with a name like Siobhan?

  These questions were the kind of crazy thoughts I had promised myself I’d never, ever let myself ask. I wasn’t the kind of woman who secretly read my boyfriend’s private letters, was I? I let out a sigh of irritation. Was Jonas even my boyfriend? That word was so frivolous, unnuanced.

  I brushed my fingers over his name. Whether or not I opened these letters, I was that kind of crazy over Jonas. Which meant I wasn’t leaving yet.

  I picked up the photo of Jonas once more as he smirked back up at me. Of all the men in the world, it had to be this one? I set the photo on the sack of letters and stood up. I needed a little more coffee first if I was going to pry into his life.

  JONAS CALLED ON the second day as I was lying in bed, his voice tense.

  “You still at my place?”

  “Your chocolate supply hasn’t run out yet.”

  Jonas let out what sounded like a sigh of relief, mixed with a laugh. “Oh, right. You found all that?”

  “And more,” I said. “You’ve given me plenty of time to snoop.”

  “I probably have the world’s least interesting apartment to explore,” he said, amused.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “Some of those sex toys are pretty interesting.”

  Jonas snorted. “You must have been looking in your own bag. I prefer my hand.”

  I laughed, but my cheeks flushed at the image of him getting himself off, right where I lay. What did he think about when he used his hand? I had all day to imagine it.

  We had talked on the phone before, but it never felt like this. So close, so intimate. I was in his bed, surrounded by his life. Did the opposite of lonely have a name?

  The line had been quiet for a while.

  “How are things with your father so far?” I asked.

  “Not good,” he said. “He’s mad that I helped my mother move out, mad that the neighbors make noise, mad at the store for raising the price of beer.” He sighed. “I don’t think he knows any other way to be.”

  His voice broke a little as he spoke.

  “Are you okay, Jonas?” I asked.

  “I’m a lot better right now, just talking to you.”

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to escape Christmas in Stockholm. The holiday spirit was everywhere. Warm, cozy little scenes set up in the windows of every shop and apartment. Even the fire station I wandered past had candles in the windows.

  I was sorely tempted to buy something cheerful to keep my company in Jonas’s bare apartment. But wandering through these streets, thinking about his Christmas story, I was finally starting to understand his aversion to the holiday spirit. It was a constant, nagging reminder, wherever he turned, of the kind of warmth he had missed his whole life.

  But he didn’t have to resort to his prison-like décor, did he? If I was going to make it through these last days without him, I needed to do something about it.

  Rounding the icy corner back home, I slowed by the flower shop window. Green. In the middle of all the grey and white of the winter day, the bright green called to me. This is what Jonas needed. Plants.

  The door jingled as I entered, and I let down my hunched shoulders in the warm, humid air. There was so much to look at. Bouquets of flowers, tall leafy plants, ferns, mossy arrangements in fancy pots. The place was a miniature jungle, lit by strings of tiny white lights. There were a few Christmas-y bows around the pots, but mostly it was just green.

  The woman at the counter said a few words to me.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked.

  The woman nodded.

  So many plants to choose from, and I only had two hands to carry them back to the apartment. I pointed to a blue glazed pot with flowers and moss spilling over the edges.

  “I’d like this one, please,” I said. “And do you sell the strings of lights, too?”

  I SAT DOWN at Jonas’s desk, the pile of temptation in front of me. I stared at the collection of envelopes, making up my own versions in my head. Flirty Siobhan who writes dirty letters. Talkative, affectionate Siobhan who misses Jonas. Why the hell did he keep them?

  But even worse was the fact that I hadn’t sent him one single letter these last months. I had started many, and they all came out boring and impersonal. But not Siobhan. She wrote a whole pile of them, good enough for Jonas to keep.

  If Jonas walked in right now and saw me holding his letters, would he look at me with the same hot, dark stare from Christmas Eve, a dangerous mix of angry and turned on? Sitting at his desk, eating his candy, sleeping in his bed – I was in the middle of some sort of erotic Goldilocks tale. Up against the wall, his heavy body pressing into mine, his voice rough in my ear.

  Who’s been reading my letters?

  I buried my face in my hands and shook my head slowly. I really needed to get out of this apartment. Jonas definitely needed another plant or two.

  5

  HE RETURNED SOMEWHERE in the deep of the night. I woke up to the heat of his body behind me, his breath in my hair. Jonas’s hands caressed my stomach in soft strokes.

  I turned around and brushed my hand over his cheek, a few days of stubble under my fingertips. His face was lit by the string of tiny lights I had hung in his window. He smiled a little, and his eyes were full of warmth.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  Jonas laughed softly. “Did I wake you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to.”

  His hand skimmed over my shoulder, and he kissed me.

  “Nice plants,” he said.

  “You like them? I wasn’t sure.”

  He chuckled. “Looks like you were pretty sure. They’re everywhere.”

  Okay, so maybe I had gone a little overboard, but once I started, it was hard to stop. Cut flowers for the table, a spiny cactus for his desk, an enormous fern for the corner of the living room. But my favorite was the little mossy arrangement in a decorative pot on the bedroom windowsill.

  “Is it too much?” I asked.

  “Not at all. I can’t tell you how good it felt to come home to this.”

  I had worn one of his t-shirts to bed, and he slipped his hands underneath, around my waist, and pulled my closer. His erection pressed hard against me.

  “How long ago did you get in?”

  “Maybe an hour ago.”

  “And you’ve just been lying here like… this?” I moved against his erection, and he groaned.

  “Pretty much.”

  He stroked my cheek, my hair, my neck. “God, this feels good.”

  “Coming home to a half-naked woman in your bed?”

  He smiled and kissed me. “Knowing you’ve been here while I was gone. I thought about it all the way home on the train ride.”

  “And all the things you wanted to do?”

  “Some of that,” he said. “Well, plenty of that. But more, too. What I wanted to tell you, what you’d say, what you ate while I was gone. Boring, everyday things.”

  I blinked up at him. His eyes were so serious.

  “I ate a lot of scrambled eggs. And chocolate,” I said. “I’m hoping for a change today.”

  He rolled over on top of me. He was so hard, pushing against me. I sighed and moved under him, finding new ways for our bodies to fit together. He held my face in his hands and kissed me.

  “How’s your dad?” I asked.

  He frowned a little. “Not great.”

  “I’m glad you went.”

  “Me, too. Especially since you’re still here.” His fingers traced paths down my neck, over my shoulder. “I told him about you.”

  Interesting.

  “What did you say?”

  He rested higher on his elbows. His big, tattooed body covered mine, separated only by a flimsy t-shirt. Slowly he lowered his lips to mine for another soft kiss. When he raised his head again, his deep blue eyes were steady on mine.

  “I told him I’m falling in love with someone. Someone different.”

  My heart stuttered. This was really happening. There had been more than enough time in between Paris and New York and now Stockholm, more than enough for the glow of excitement and sex to wear off. And still. This man, with a god-like body and a terrible past and a tenderness that took me by surprise each time. This man. Need and want and that persistent giddiness all threatened to crash over me as Jonas moved over me.

  “I think I’m already in love with you,” I whispered. “More than I should be.”

  He stilled above me. “Even after that messed-up night on Christmas Eve?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said, smiling a little.

  His eyes brimmed with warmth and tenderness. He leaned down and kissed my neck, and I took a long inhale. God, this man smelled good.

  I buried my face in his hair and whispered, “I kept myself busy this week.”

  Jonas looked up at me, his eyebrows raised, his eyes sparking in amusement. “Doing what?”

  “Reading a bunch of articles about you, eating most of your candy, staring at letters from your ex-girlfriend.” My voice quivered on the last words.

  Jonas froze. “Letters from my ex-girlfriend?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t read them. But I wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to know who this woman was that kept you hanging on. You must miss her if you kept her letters all these years.” My voice was thin and wobbly.

  “No.” Jonas shook his head. He looked almost angry. “No, Alice. That’s what you thought all week? That I kept the letters because I missed her?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. My heart was pounding so hard now. I bit my lip. How many times had I told myself I wouldn’t get upset over this?

  “You should have read them.” He let out a hiss of frustration. “She wrote to ask me for money, Alice.”

  My eyes widened. That’s what was in those letters that I had stared at all week? I blinked up at him.

  “That’s it? Why did you keep them?”

  Jonas frowned. “It’s hard to explain.”

  I gave him a pointed look. “Try.”

  He stroked my cheek and took a deep breath. “When I read them, I can remember what it felt like to be me at that time. And it wasn’t good. Her letters are what convinced me to leave that whole life behind.”

  “Oh.”

  He brushed my hair off my face, his big palms so impossibly gentle. “Every time I’m tempted to do something really stupid, I read them.”

  I stared up into his stormy blue eyes and let out a shaky laugh. “That was my second guess.”

  He looked down at me, studying me, his forehead creased. Then a slow smile grew, lighting up his face. “Sure it was.”

  He was so beautiful when he smiled. He kissed me, coaxing my lips open, exploring my mouth with long, hot strokes of his tongue. I wrapped my legs around him and flexed my hips against his.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “You’re in my bed, wearing my t-shirt, and you’re so soft and warm.”

  I stroked my fingers over the muscles of his back. “This week I dreamed of waking up with you next to me, too.”

  “I want to get this right, Alice,” he whispered. “New York was intense. And hot. But this is what I want. This.”

  “Right now, you’re getting it exactly right,” I said.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in his warm scent. At this moment, everything was right. The hard muscles of his arms around me, his raspy breaths in my ear, his hard erection against my belly, a reminder of where this was going. And how good it would be.

 

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