"We did exactly that," Karen says, deciding not to go into the details of the story: that John showed up hypothermic and bleeding out on the beach, that he almost hadn't let her call for an ambulance, that she'd told the hospital staff she was his wife so she would be able to stay with him and live up to her promise of not letting anything happen. When he finally kissed her, she was playing his wife again, too, for a totally different reason. In retrospect, she thinks they must be the biggest goddamn cliché imaginable, but it isn't as if she could have seen this coming when she first stumbled upon a stranger who'd been shot. "And I don't know about half the guys in town. A quarter, maybe. Third, if we're being generous."

She shoots him a warm, teasing smile, one to suggest that she gets it, that he doesn't need to say anything more serious on the subject. It is what it is, and there's a lot she isn't in a position to talk about anyway. Tony may be one of her closest friends here, but the work that's become her primary focus, that's not hers to tell.

"I think you're probably right. It is not gonna be fun to still be out in the open once that's overhead."