Back at Nat's empty apartment, I kicked the door open and slammed it behind me, ripping off my coat and flinging it on the couch, almost knocking over the lamp.

Damn you, Steve! I thought. The moment he opened up to me, he cut me off and dumped me.

I pulled off my boots angrily, flinging them to the floor. I had spent the past three hours lost on the New York City subway that was a million times more complicated than the DC Metro, trying to get back to Brooklyn with homeless people hitting me up for spare change.

I took the hottest shower I could manage, and scrubbed the city off me, my stomach roiling with equal parts of hurt and rage. I didn't cry. I wanted to, but I couldn't.

Instead of studying as I needed to for my end-of-semester exams coming up, I turned on the TV for distraction, but found very little: Nat mostly subscribed to news networks and CSPANN and some Russian channels, there was nothing to distract me like E! Entertainment Television or HG TV. I got out my computer to get on the Turner Movie Channel app, but the app shorted out.

Frustrated, all I could dwell on was Steve and that incredible body that he hadn't shared with me, as if I were repulsive. Well, he did say it was me after all, I thought swearing to myself to start working out harder and eating less. Was it because I wasn't in majorette shape any longer? It's not you, it's me was code for, yeah, it really is you.

Who the hell did he think he was? Those secrets bugged me to no end. I had tried to research Steve before but had no luck.

James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky Barnes.

The name echoed in my head.

Wait, I had more information.

I opened up my search browser and typed in his name.

A wealth of URLs came up, and I saw an old photograph from the Army archives of a handsome young man, but the hat was propped to the side. This was a picture from a long time ago.

Was this Bucky's grandfather?

My stepbrother was Harland Lewis Jr, so I searched for James Buchanan Barnes Jr, no luck.

James Buchanan Barnes still came up.

He was the son of General Barnes.

General Barnes was the General that had a family center erected on Camp Lehigh.

With shaking hands, I typed, James Buchanan Barnes World War II

I saw Bucky Barnes in an old black-and-white photo, and to my shock, standing next to him was a familiar lower half of a face under a half mask. Bucky Barnes had known Captain America. And that face was Steve's.

I felt sick. Was this Steve's father? He bore too much of a resemblance.

The caption said, Captain America liberates 200 from behind enemy lines.

The more I researched, the more I saw it.

If I believed Steve had been Captain America, he had died in action in 1945 before VE Day.

I researched Captain America and World War II since one of Tony Stark's Avengers was a man who dressed in disguise as Captain America, whom everybody believed was a tribute to the old hero lost in action.

I found a lot of information that had been censored by the Army. Captain America had never been named, but the Army and the State Department said they knew his name. The USO show came up, and the message boards said that there had been two Captains in WWII: the USO actor and then the expert super soldier who had become an expert tactician behind enemy lines.

Falling down the rabbit hole, I searched for Steve Rogers born between 1910 and 1925 in New York, and I found records of a birth certificate for a baby boy born in a Catholic hospital in 1920 that had been a few weeks premature, to a widow named Sarah Whaley Rogers and the deceased Sargent Joseph Rogers. The baby was named Steven.

My head spun, but I kept searching. Joseph had been a soldier in WWI, and Sarah a TB ward nurse. Both had immigrated to America in 1919 as a newlywed couple and had gone through Ellis Island.

Of course, this couldn't be my Steve.

But the story was lining up so effortlessly to what Steve had told me on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building.

Was Steve a time traveler? Was that even possible? All kinds of secret science experiments were being carried out by the mysterious organization named S.H.I.E.L.D. that had put out the Avenger's Initiative, and the Avengers had saved New York in an intergalactic battle against someone who said he was Loki, the Norse god of mischief.

I looked up the sudden reappearance of Captain America last summer in the battle of New York, and the security footage that had been salvaged of the Avengers on random message boards, delving into non-accredited sources this time.

Captain America had the same silhouette as Steve. That could be pulled off, but I watched the security footage of him running. It was like watching pictures being shown at a fast pace, but I recognized Steve's running gate and his movement. Then, the grainy footage of Captain America as his hooded cap and half mask had been knocked off his head: a blond, broad-jawed man, and a piercing blue gaze, a warrior expression.

There were only a few blurry pictures of his face.

But it was Steve.

Steve's stories had always had holes in them that had bugged me, but they were puzzle pieces and the story suddenly became complete with the time-traveler narrative I had put together in my head. But time-travel wasn't real . Right?

Steve told me his history was too strange to be real. Nat had seconded that. I looked through the footage, and I realized it was Natasha fighting right beside him in the battle of New York.

I was cyber-stalking superheroes in a superhero's apartment.

This was surreal.

He had talked about sci-fi and time travel last night, and I had completely missed the point. He was not on an Army Special Ops team; he was an Avenger, working for the mysterious S.H.I.E.L.D. He had been Army once, and the Blue Spades had been an special ops team during World War II. And he certainly was a captain, that was true.

I wandered around Natasha's apartment, stunned. I couldn't just sit still.

Was that it had been too hard to explain this to me? What had made Steve say those things on top of the Empire State Building today?

The clock on the wall said it was almost 3 am. Well, I was going to find out.

I put on my boots and coat over my pajamas and started down the stairs to the street. The icy wind tore through my pajama pants as I ran down the street with my iPad tucked into my coat, holding it tight.

At Steve's apartment, I looked up to his floor, and saw the lights still on. I rang his door buzzer, shivering.

"Can I help you?" Steve's confused voice came through.

"Steve, it's me, Dani," I stuttered through chattering teeth.

"Dani? What are you doing outside at three in the morning?" The apartment entrance door buzzed and I pulled it open. It wasn't much warmer in the foyer, but the wind wasn't tearing through my clothes. I took a moment to breathe in relief and then took off up the stairs to his apartment, only to meet him at the top of the stairs.

Our eyes met, and I shivered.

God, he was beautiful, but…

"I want to know how you were Captain America in World War II and right now."