Alex had not expected the smell of turpentine to hit her like a memory. She stood in the narrow hallway of apartment 4B, one duffel bag over her shoulder, the other dragging behind her, and the scent curled into her nose the way it had the summer she was sixteen. Back then Jordan had been twenty, home from his first year of art school, painting in the garage while their parents argued inside the house. The divorce papers were signed six weeks later. She had not seen him since.
Now the door swung open and there he was, taller than she remembered, shoulders broader, hair longer and tied back with a strip of cloth that might once have been a paint rag. A streak of cadmium red crossed his left cheekbone like war paint. He looked at her for a long moment, eyes the same unsettling green, and th
