Liesel Meminger was secluded to her sewing machine in the dreary, under lit room. The other girls sat around her, tailoring their articles: a skirt with a ripped hem, a pair of trousers that fell a bit too long. Liesel held the dark green fabric of the freshly doctored dress in her hands. It was a soft, warm feeling. She stroked the sleeve where she had mended a tear and wondered what might have caused such a rip.

She thought of the boy with the yellow hair. Rudy. Her dearest Rudy. A tear slipped down her cheek as she remembered her first kiss, his last breath. A beautifully melancholy moment that haunted her as she reminisced on the days they used to play soccer on Heaven Street before it was reduced to rubble so many years ago. Liesel wiped the tear from her cheek before it fell on the scarred fabric of a lucky woman's dress.

The time read eight o'clock. Liesel rose to dismiss herself and glided to the front of the building to notify her boss. She applied as a seamstress to honour Mama. Mama would surely be proud of her, but would tell Liesel she was making a mistake and complain about the unrewarding career of tending to laundry. But Mama was gone. And Papa, who would stroke her hair and kiss her head. He would then smile and say, "I'm so proud of you, your majesty."

How she missed them so.

Liesel opened the door to the small lobby just as the door to the street chimed. There was a dark haired gentleman standing in the dim room. The structure in his face was too familiar to be false, his build was strong and unforgettable. He was undeniably handsome which left Liesel unsure of whether she had only met him in a dream.

"Max," Liesel murmured. She said it again louder when his head slightly rose in attention. "Max!"

"Liesel?" She ran to him, wrapping her arms around him. His arms slipped around her waist and he held her like a lost memory.

"Get out of here, girl!" Hans yelled. He held the name of Papa, but was quite the opposite in character. "Take your private life out of my shop!"

Max kept his hand loosely on the small of her back as he guided her out of the door, which made Liesel tremble even before walking into the wintery street. When they were outside, the brisk February air hit their skin. Liesel suddenly remembered that she left her coat on the rack, but there was no going back for it now that Hans was on a rampage.

"When did you get here?" she asked Max.

"As soon as I was back on my feet, I told myself I was going to come back to Heaven Street and find you, tell you I never left." His face, in the brighter light reflected from the snow, looked harder somehow, shadowed in all of the wrong places. Liesel wondered what had happened since he had been gone. Where he had been, what he had seen. She knew it wouldn't be polite to ask and it was freezing, she couldn't think about that right now.

She gazed at him. Before she could stop herself, her hand reached for Max's arm.

"Do you have any place to stay?" she asked.

"Nien. I just simply left."

She looked at him again, contemplating the advantages and disadvantages of having another person in her house, particularly a man. She told herself that she would remain platonic with him.

"Stay with me," Liesel said to him. It slipped out, she wished she had said something a bit more subtle, but the offer was expressed, nonetheless, and she needed to get home before she caught pneumonia.

"Liesel, I couldn't—"

"I insist," she interrupted, a bit more forcefully than she intended. "Really, it's just around the corner."

He gazed at her, his dark eyes softening for a moment as they met hers, a sea blue, then returning to their shockingly hard stare. Then he nodded and noticed Liesel was shivering in her deep red work dress. Max took his heavy black coat off and draped it around her shaking shoulders. She immediately felt the warmth surrounding her. He was tall so the coat went to her knees, and his body heat lingered in the fabric.

"Max, you'll freeze," Liesel protested. He was already losing colour.

"I'll be fine," he assured her. "You kept me warm once."

That was a lie. Mama and Papa kept him warm. Liesel stole books for him, or that was how Rudy put it when he caught her in the act. She was only borrowing, she was reading them to Max as he lay unconscious in a fever on the floor of her basement. She returned them when she was done. He claims that was what kept him alive, but Liesel knew that it was Mama and Papa's care that helped him survive. She provided nothing, they provided everything.

Then one day, it became dangerous to care for him. It became a burden to feed him. It became clear that he had to leave. Thus he became the boy in the shadows. Liesel hadn't seen him since.

Now, here he was, warming her as she led him back to her apartment. The thought was surreal to Liesel. Why had he come back just to see her? The thought drifted through her mind as she rounded the block, Max at her side, resisting the inevitable shivering.