Constance
We ate in companionable silence and didn’t return to our interrogation of each other until after our plates were cleared off the table and the hot chocolate Gabriel had ordered arrived. Then, resuming his earlier position—his arm wrapping back around my shoulders—he whispered softly against my ear, “It’s your turn.”
Trying to ignore the tremors running down my spine from the intimacy in that simple act, I asked him to tell me about his childhood, hoping to shift the mood to a lighter subject. “I grew up in Wyoming on a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere. My biological father—according to my mother—didn’t know about my existence until I was already eight years old. They had hooked up for a one-night stand kind of thing back in high school. Anyway,
