The train car was quiet. It was almost empty, a fact she had been trying to ignore for the last hour. A man sat directly across from her, a presence that was a physical weight, a heat that seemed to absorb all the oxygen in the space. She kept her eyes fixed on the paperback in her lap, but the words were just meaningless black squiggles. Her entire being was focused on the man opposite her.

He wasn’t classically handsome. His face was a collection of hard angles, a strong jaw shadowed ...