I scowl over at him. He’s watching the road, but there’s a looseness in his jaw and shoulders that I’ve never seen before. The permanent tension is gone. He looks like a guy driving his girlfriend to the beach on a whim. Nothing more, nothing less.
We park and get out. The boardwalk stretches out in front of us, gray and deserted, the wooden planks dark with salt spray. Everything is shuttered. The rides are still, the game booths are boarded up, and the only sound is the wind off the Atlantic and the distant cry of a gull circling over nothing.
It’s bleak, cold, and utterly perfect.
Kir gets out first and comes around to open my door, which makes me snort. “Oh, so you’re a gentleman now?”
“Not even a little bit.”
We walk side by side down the boardwalk. There’s not a mask in sight, b
