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Priscilla.”
    She nodded. “He is also lucky that you have provided the time for him to make his own choice.” She took a deep breath. “I have not had a drink of alcohol in over fifty years, Connor.” Her stare was forthright. “There were times that I desired it more than my next breath. You too will face those times. I found my strength here, among the people in Mercury.” She gazed out unseeing at the street. “But my town is dying, Connor.” She picked up her cane and went to rise from the bench, and both John and Conn stood up and offered her a hand. “I am too tired to walk home. May I have a ride in your fancy little car, Mr. Ford?” She smiled at John.
    He laughed. “Yes, you may, Miss Priscilla.” He looked at Conn. “Can you drive her?” He gestured at his clothes. “I’m covered in paint. And you can stop at the store and buy some plants.” He looked at the mess that Conn had dug up. “We can’t leave it like that.”
    Conn was still reeling from Miss Priscilla’s revelations. And now John was offering to let him drive his expensive car. “Are you sure?” he asked, his shock evident in his voice.
    John nodded with a smile for Miss Priss. “I’m sure.”

Chapter Ten
     
    “Who does the car belong to?”
    The question came quietly from the doorway of John’s bedroom. He’d been lying there awake, refusing to watch the clock, afraid to go out on the porch again. He’d heard Connor get up and come downstairs. With his hands clasped behind his head as he lay there, he pretended a relaxed attitude he was far from feeling. “Me.”
    “Why did you buy it?”
    “I didn’t.”
    There was an expectant silence. John refused to fill it. Finally Connor asked, “Is this what it’s like to talk to me?”
    John laughed at the unexpected comment. “Yep.”
    Connor huffed out a little laugh. “Why is it such a secret?”
    John sighed. “It’s not. A man named Steve left me the car in his will.” It was so easy to say it. John was dismayed he’d made such a big deal out of it.
    “What happened to him?”
    Not “Who was he?” or “What was he to you?” Connor went right to the hard stuff. “He died. In Afghanistan.”
    “A soldier, huh? That must have been hard, being with him.”
    “An officer. And no, not really. He had his life, and I had mine. And sometimes the two managed to take place in the same place at the same time.”
    “Like I said, that must have been hard.”
    John rolled over onto his side, his cheek cupped in one hand. “What do you want, Connor?”
    There was no answer for such a long time that John rolled back over and leaned up on his elbows to see if Connor was still there. He was leaning against the door frame, his hands crossed behind his back, his head tipped forward. John could see him clearly in the combination of moonlight and the light from his digital clock. He was wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. John fell back in the bed with an inner groan of sexual frustration.
    The next thing John knew, Connor was standing at the foot of his bed, watching him. Neither said anything. When Connor climbed on the bed and straddled him on all fours, John lay there frozen.
    “I don’t know if I mean it, Johnny,” Connor whispered. “I guess I don’t really understand what that means. I only know that I need you.”
    John was torn. He wasn’t sure he could do casual sex at all, and casual sex with Connor seemed an impossible thing. But he wanted Connor with a desire he hadn’t felt since the first few years he’d been with Steve, before he recognized the future he talked about was nothing more than a dream. Before he accepted that a secondhand reality was better than nothing at all. He didn’t want to go there again. He didn’t want to need someone again only to be disappointed and abandoned. But what he wanted and was what happening were two entirely different things.
    If he had sex with Connor, he was pretty much dooming himself to that fate. So he could