"Be nice to him?" I scoffed. "That's your A-plus advice?"

"Sure. Go to him as a man and demand to be heard, but do it with a smile on your face. Men like Tim Brighton get off on intimidation. Don't ever let him see you sweat, kid."

"If I get kicked out of med school, will you let me sleep on your couch with my poor, homeless, Everly Anne?"

She pulled my sweater, tugging me back out onto the ice. "I wouldn't," she smiled. "But my girly inner romantic side absolutely would."

I breathed, and then knocked. I wasn't greeted by a gruff man who'd rather see me dead than with his daughter, though. No. I was greeted by a heavy-set woman with a thick German accent.

"Is Timothy home?" I asked her.

"Doctor no here."

"Is Everly?" I hoped.

"Who you?"

A soft voice spoke from behind. "It's okay, Henrietta." Everly came around her and opened the screen door, stepping out. "I'll only be a minute."

"You catch death out there," the woman said. "I get coat."

"She can have mine." I shrugged free of my coat and wrapped it around her. "See?"

Everly reached for the door handle and shut it without another word to her nurse.

She stared at me, and I soaked her in. So much the same, yet, somehow different.

"Shocked he doesn't have an armed guard on the stoop," she grumbled.

"I'm so sorry, Everly Anne."

"It's not your fault," she said, bouncing on her heels. "I should have known it was too easy to get him to say yes." She looked up at me. "Not that I doubt you, Callum Andrew."

"If it makes you feel better I had to do cadaver dissection as part of my punishment. I hope yours was a little less brutal."

She kept looking at me. "My punishment was not getting to see you. I'd vote more brutal."

I reached for her hand. "I didn't have you, either."

"Callum," she sighed, and then stepped into my arms.

"Where is your father right now?"

She pressed her forehead to my chest. "Something happened at the hospital. He'll be back soon, I'm sure."

"Come with me somewhere," I begged.

She raised her face. "He'd murder you on site."

I lowered my head to hers. "It would be a death worth dying."

She tightened her arms around my waist. "We're already in so much trouble."

I leaned to her ear, and whispered, "But does your rebel heart still sing for me?"

We ran away from the house, with the stealth of thieves in the night.

I told Everly to close her eyes as I slipped the grey cover off the car. "What do you think Merriam Webster would call this?" Everly opened her eyes to see a sky-blue '57 Chevy in the middle of my father's garage.

She whistled low. "Ho-lee-buckets. God Bless America."

I laughed. "I might very well have been conceived in this car . . . at least . . . the concept of me. The actual me was conceived on a train."

She lit up. "A train?"