I woke up with a start. The clock on the cable box was blazing at me: 3:48. In the morning. I groaned quietly and slipped off of the couch. Without much thought, I turned off the TV and padded up to my room. The last thing I remembered was watching an old Alfred Hitchcock movie and it being a few moments after three. Apparently, I'd fallen asleep.

And he'd been there in my dreams.

Haunting my every moment.

But, god, I loved it.

I closed the door of my room behind me and started to kick off my shoes but then I felt something strange take over me, like an odd kind of awareness that I'd never before had. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, like they were warning me. Something wasn't right and I knew it.

"My Caroline."

Had he not spoken, I wouldn't have known and maybe, just maybe, I would've screamed. But he spoke and his words smoothed out the fear writhing in my mouth. He spoke and his voice floated through the darkness to me. He spoke and I knew it was all okay.

I finally turned and saw him. He was sitting casually on the windowsill, perched there just so. The window behind him was open and the curtains were billowing as the winter air sprang through them. But there was no chill in the air. Deacon stopped the chill from coming inside. Deacon kept it at bay. Deacon was all the warmth of the world.

"The window was unlocked."

Only I hadn't been wondering how he'd gotten in or why he'd decided to do it. I hadn't been wondering because with him, it seemed like he could do anything. He could do anything. There was nothing he couldn't do. Nothing he couldn't do that would take me by surprise.

Deacon wasn't surprising.

Deacon was mesmerizing.

"Come with me."

"Where?"

I'm not sure why I asked, why I didn't just let him take my hand and take me away. I'm not sure what triggered the sudden curiosity. But there it was in my head and then there it was out in the open, swirling on the air. There it was, ruining our moment.

"You'll see."

Perfect Deacon, always knew how to keep the curiosity tamed without ruining anything. Deacon never ruined the moment. He never ruined our moments, he just let them develop on their own. I was the one who did the ruining.

His hand was around mine now and then we went out the window. He slipped through first and then turned around to grab me when I came through. And there we were, standing on the roof of the porch, our feet sinking into a few inches of snow. He closed the window and then his hand was around mine. He led me to the end of the roof and began climbing down the drainpipe. It was like out of a movie.

Only now it was real.

It was our movie.

He helped me down somehow, but getting down was a blur. All I knew is that suddenly I was at the bottom, pressed against Deacon's chest. He was just holding me against him, not tightly, just holding me there. It was enough, even though it wasn't tight, it was so much more than enough.

But he didn't kiss me or hold me any longer, he walked me to his car and held the door open for me. I wasn't longing it, though. As he walked around to the other side, I didn't feel my heart drop because he hadn't kissed me. I didn't feel it. All I felt was anticipation because I knew that sometime, it would be there. It was coming, I could feel it inside of me.

We drove on forever, through the suburbs where I lived and through the city, into downtown and then down to the river. All of the apartment buildings on the river were springing into the air, ready to battle the falling flakes of snow. They were made mostly of glass, looking oddly abstract and out of place in the night. I stared up at them as we passed, wondering what it would be like to live in one, on the top floor, staring out into the snow, at the perfect level to watch it fall.

Then Deacon parked and we went into one of the buildings, into the elevator. No one was around, not even in the lobby of the building. It was just us in the elevator and I wondered where we were going, what we were doing in this building that so obviously wasn't Deacon. I couldn't picture him going up and down in that elevator daily, passing through the lobby. It didn't seem right that he would. It didn't suit him. He needed more beauty, more mystery.

He just needed more.

Only there we were, getting out of the elevator on the top floor. He was leading my down the hall, holding his keys in one hand. And then he unlocked a door and held it open for me. I stepped inside and all I could do was marvel.

It was insanity.

But it was so damn beautiful.