He chose a bookshop. Not a bar, not a hotel, not any place that might blur the line between fantasy and reality before she was ready to walk it with eyes open. A quiet, labyrinthine secondhand bookshop in a part of the city she had never visited, where the shelves leaned conspiratorially toward one another and the air smelled of vanilla pipe tobacco and ageing paper.

Eva found him in the poetry section, standing before a shelf of Neruda with his hands in the pockets of a worn leather jacket. No mask. Just a man. Dark hair touched with grey at the temples, laugh lines etched around eyes the colour of strong black tea. He was older than she had imagined, perhaps early forties, and far more solid. Real. The sight of him, fully visible and undeniably human, sent a jolt through her that was equal parts fear and electric recognition. Between her thighs, a pulse of heat answered before her brain could.