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He was sitting down below, shirt unbuttoned, boxer shorts, feet bare. Hannah came and sat opposite him, feet pulled up beneath her on the chair.

“Charlie …”

“Every day,” he said, “most days, so much of what I have to deal with, it comes from that.”

“That?”

“People having power over one another, using them. Submission. Hurt.” He looked at her, the beauty in her eyes. “It’s not a game.”

She moved across to him, sat on the floor with her arms around his legs, resting her head against his thigh. “Charlie,” she said after a while, “the fact that I can say that to you, that I can ask you … That fantasy-that’s all it is, a fantasy-I could never show that, expose myself in that way if I didn’t trust you. Absolutely. It shows how safe I feel with you, how close we are, don’t you see?”

Resnick reached down and stroked her hair and touched his fingers to the fine line of her back, but still, no, he didn’t see.

“I’m going back up,” Hannah said, getting to her feet. “You’ll be up in a little while, yes?”

Resnick nodded but he didn’t move; he didn’t move until much later, when, stiff-legged, he went to the window to pull back the curtains and by then the first light of day was stretching out across the park.