A/N: So, this is it! TLoSaD ends here, but I'll be starting a sequel in June made up of short drabbles about these guys and their adventures and the blog will remain active and updated. I'm so grateful for everyone who's stuck with this to the end, and I hope you all enjoy this final chapter. Thanks, and happy reading!

July
Nolan
The first day of July had been hot and sticky, dragging all the smells of the city down to the streets and the sidewalks to mingle with the sweat of pedestrians. It wasn't until the moon started pushing the sun out of the sky that the city finally began to cool.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" I asked, walking out onto the helipad as dusk began to bleed shades of sapphire and onyx into the sunset.

If Kyler was surprised by my appearance she didn't show it, just hummed in agreement as she swung her legs over the edge of the building.

"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting down next to her.

"Why would anything be wrong?"

"You always come up here when you're upset." I said. "Even the great Kyler Barton has habits."

It was a few moments before she said anything and I started to think that maybe she didn't want to talk, but then she let out an almost imperceptible sigh. "Andrew wants me to have monthly psych evals until the end of the year." She admitted.

"But you don't want to."

She shook her head making her golden curls brush against her neck. "I just want to let this go, not relive it every thirty days so I can have my brain picked apart."

"He just wants to help." I reminded her gently. "You haven't talked to anyone about what happened."

"Yes I have, I told everything to the agent at the hospital."

"Okay, you've talked about what happened in the warehouse, but you haven't said anything about what happened to you."

"I just want to let it go." She repeated, turning to look at me for the first time. Her eyes still looked like a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, but there was a hardness to them now that told me she was unsure of what to do.

"I don't know if you can let it go." I said. "I think this might be one of those things you have to face before you can move past it."

She didn't acknowledge that I had said anything, just turned her head to look back out over the city. I knew she had heard though, and she'd talk about it in her own time.

It was well after sunset when that time came, as if she had been waiting for the safety of darkness to admit what couldn't in the light of day. "I don't remember a lot." She told me. "You saw the reports, you know the kinds of drugs I was on. They shocked me first though, I remember that the best. And every time they flipped that switch I thought to myself 'If this wasn't Ella, if this was some random asset or government secret they were after, would I still be fighting right now?' And I don't know the answer to that. It scares me."

"Kyler, you don't have to…"

She shook her head and cut me off. "No, you're right, I need to get this out. After they gave me the drugs everything became pretty unclear. I don't know what was real or fake, but I remember Sasha falling from the sky, and I remember your voice — you said I was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen."

"Well it was true."

She laughed at that, just a little bit. "You know, I dreamt about you when I was out. Just before you guys came I had this dream that I was with my dad in the elevator and you got in with me and he disappeared. You said you loved me, and then I turned around and Sasha's body was hanging from the ceiling."

"Why do you think that those are the things your brain chose to focus on?" I probed, sounding more like Andrew than I ever thought possible. "I don't think it was random."

"I don't know. The first part wasn't even a dream really, just an old memory, and the rest… I guess they were just my fears making a guest appearance."

"So, the thought of Sasha being killed cares you?"

She shrugged. "Of course it does, but I also know that Sasha can take care of herself. I can take care of that fear with simple logic."

"And the other part?" I asked. "What I said in the dream scares you too?"

Kyler took a long breath, savoring the cool air of the night. "It's a liability. I can't risk putting you in danger, much less losing you altogether. What happened at the gala was impulsive."

"But do you regret it?" I asked. "Because I don't, and I know how badly you want to become an agent, but you can have it both ways. If anyone can make this work, it's us."

Kyler bit her lip, still staring out at the city below us. "Are you sure I'm… you're sure this is what you want?"

"Whatever you want, I'm all in. We can take this slow." I offered.

She cracked the smallest of smiles. "That sounds nice." We sat quietly for a minute, letting the moment sink in before she broke the silence. "You know, it's getting pretty chilly on this roof so if you wanted to kiss me, now would be the time."

"I always want to kiss you." I said. Then I was finally holding her, kissing her hard, reveling in the fact that she was here, and safe, and somehow wanted me. Nothing about it was like the night of the gala, there was nothing possessive in the way her hands fisted in my hoodie and the hair at the back of my neck, no lingering taste of champagne, no urgency in the way her lips moved against mine. Just city lights, and slow kisses, and the happiness that came from being together.

"What are you thinking?" She asked after I finally pulled away.

"That you're still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Ella
We spent the week of my birthday at our house in Virginia. It was nice to be away from the Tower for a while and breathe the fresh ocean air. I don't know what it was, but something about the being there made us all wake up early. I found myself on the beach painting the sunrise every morning while Andrew and Isabelle sipped coffee on the back deck and read some sort of medical journal together. Sophie sat with them sometimes, letting Izzy braid her hair while the others got in a morning workout and our parents finally got a chance to sleep in.

The Starks were headed back to New York with Izzy and Uncle Bruce the next day, and the Bartons were off to their farm the day after that. Then it would just be the four of us here until we went back to New York in about four weeks.

"Mind some company?" Sophie asked, walking up to me from the direction of the house. I motioned for her to have a seat next to me in the sand.

Out in the water Liam and Sasha were taking turns doing flips off the dock while Nolan inspected the engine of the boat. Kyler had just returned from a run up the beach, and barely took a second to strip off her tank top before jumping into the water in nothing but her shorts and a sports bra. She must have said something to Nolan that I couldn't hear because soon he was diving in after her. Over on the deck I could see Andrew shaking his head while Izzy laughed at their antics.

"It's going to be weird with all of them gone." Sophie said, watching the scene play out in front of us.

"You can say that again. I swear every time I look at a map, California moves a little bit further away from New York."

She gave me a pitying look. "Don't worry, Ells. I'll help you set up video chats with Liam every day if you want."

"Thanks. I'm just really going to miss him, you know? I'm going to miss all of them."

"But, at least we won't have to be exposed to all their mushy romantic stuff." She said, trying to lighten up the mood.

"I think it's sweet." I said, watching as Liam helped Sasha jump off of his shoulders. "They're really happy. Besides, you'll have that too one day and then you'll be changing your tune."

She laughed at that. "All that stuff is fine for them, but I refuse to let some boy make me all blush-y and ridiculous."

"Maybe some girl then." I suggested. She shot me an unamused look. "Fine, I get it, Sophie Stark refuses to ever be stupid in-love."

"That's right." She confirmed, letting a long pause stretch between us before she spoke again. "You know, now that you can drive we can go to Ben & Jerry's whenever we want."

"Ooh, and that place that sells fresh pie until two in the morning!" I remembered.

Sophie's face brightened up at that. "You know how much I love midnight pie. See? It won't be so bad. Just try to cram all of your bonding time with Liam into these next couple weeks, and then you won't miss him so badly when he leaves."

"I don't think it works like that."

Sophie just shrugged. "Hey, if you wanted a phycologist you should have talked to Drew."

August
Andrew
I was becoming fairly certain that this was a certifiable form of psychological torture. I had already checked my email twice, texted Isabelle and begged her to meet us for lunch, and psychoanalyzed the employee that had started to stare at me, and Sophie still hadn't come out out of the dressing room.

"Are you almost done in there?" I asked, checking my phone for the umpteenth time that morning. Isabelle still hadn't responded.

"Hold on." Sophie said. "I just have to try on a few more things."

I bit back a groan. How could it possibly take this long to try on a few blouses and skirts? "Why do you even need to go shopping for the start of school? All of your classes are online."

"Mom's letting me join a debate team, and I needed some new clothes for our debates."

I looked at the menagerie of bags scattered around my feet. "All this is for your debate team?"

"Well not all of it."

"That's what I thought."

I took a slow sip of my coffee, only to choke on it when Sophie asked, "So when are you and Izzy going to get married?"

"Excuse me?" I asked, trying to expel the liquid that had mistakenly entered my trachea.

"Don't sound so surprised." Sophie teased. "You've been in love for years, everyone knows it. So, when are you gonna propose?"

"I don't know, whenever the time feels right. Why do you want us to get married so badly?"

I could almost hear Sophie roll her eyes from behind the door. "Because you guys are ridiculously in love, and that's the next logical step in your relationship. Besides, it sets a good image for the company to have a CEO that's happily married to a brilliant young humanitarian and doctor."

"What are you talking about? Mom and Dad are in charge of the company.

"Yeah, and they have been for a really long time. Don't tell me you haven't noticed that they want to step down."

"I really had no idea." I admitted. "They don't really want me running the company anyway, I have no idea what I'm doing."

Another hanger appeared over the door of the dressing room. "It may not be forever. Nolan's been looking into MIT's business school, so he may be going back after he finishes his engineering degree."

I briefly considered asking her how exactly she came across this information, only to decide that I really didn't want to know. "You don't think this has anything to do with the fact that Kyler will be in Boston for the foreseeable future? You really think he wants to take over the company?"

She finally opened the door, stepping out with her arms full of clothes. She handed the smaller stack to the attendant, then started towards the register. "I really think he does."

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a new message from Isabelle.
Meet you guys in twenty. Love you!

I sent a quick message back before following Sophie out of the store. Things were going to work out.

Kyler
After everything that had happened in the past months, going back to the farm had been a breath of fresh air, both in the literal and figurative senses. So much of my childhood had been spent here, playing in the barn, running through the orchard, or staying up late with Sasha in the house. Today my hiding place of choice was the hayloft. If I looked out the window on the far wall, I could watch my horse, Cerus, romping around the paddock with the others and tossing his head.

"You've been quiet lately." There weren't many people who could sneak up on me, but having two world-class assassins for parents meant that there were a few exceptions.

Dad had a habit of walking around the farm without his hearing aids that Mom swore was going to get him killed one day, so I turned around so he could see my hands when I signed to him. Really? The guy who can't hear is going to tell me I'm too quiet? I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"You've just been very… pensive." He said by way of clarification.

I guess getting kidnapped will do that to a person. I signed back, looking back out at the horses.

"It's not too late to back out. You don't have to go to Boston." He said, sitting down next to me.

I shook my head almost before the words were out of his mouth. I want to go. I want to become an agent like you and Mom.

"It's not an easy life, Birdy."

I knew that much without him telling me. I had seen him and Mom go through all sorts of chaos, but they had come through it together and stronger than before. This is the life I want. I need a mission, something that I can focus on right now other than what happened in June.

"You get that from your mom, you know." He said, smiling absentmindedly. "That drive is all her."

For obvious reasons, people usually compared me with my dad, but I inherited more than my mother's eyes and the texture of her hair. Some of the things I picked up from her were totally innocent, like how to speak Russian and different ways to do my hair in less than five minutes. Other things she passed down to me were more of a side-effect of her profession, like forming an exit strategy for every building I went into or carrying at least one weapon on me at all times.

Is she happy about me going to Boston? I can never tell with her.

"We've both accepted it, and we're proud of you — both of you. It's just hard to see you two moving on without us. I'm not sure, but I think that's actually a normal thing for parents to feel."

I grinned over at him. What do we know about normal?

"You've got a good point. Do you want some lunch? I think your assassin of a mother is making macaroni." We walked back to the house together in silence, taking in the warmth of the day and the togetherness.

Mom had, in fact, made macaroni, which Sasha was helping her spoon into bowls. Dad greeted her with a kiss that usually would have made me roll my eyes, but now just made me smile. "I wondered where you'd wandered off to." She said, freeing up her hands so she could tell Dad to wash up.

I shrugged and helped Sasha set the table. "Oh, just hanging out in one of my super secret hiding spots."

"She was in the hayloft." Dad said, walking back into the kitchen with his hearing aids in.

"Traitor." I accused, pretending to be upset. In truth there was nothing secret about my hiding spots, in fact he had shown me most of them.

"Do you have everything packed that you're going to need?" Mom asked. We were leaving the next day to return to New York for a few days before everyone left for school.

I nodded, taking a bite of macaroni. It was my favorite kind, with the spiral noodles and the really thick cheese. "I got a message from my other roommate last night. We worked out what furniture each of us is going to bring, and I made sure she got the second bedroom so I'm sharing with Christina."

Next to me, Sasha made a sound that was vaguely reminiscent of a dying walrus. "We have to go furniture shopping don't we?"

"I didn't realize you were so opposed." Mom said.

"It's not that I have a problem with it, but Liam is unbelievably picky about furniture." She explained. "I mentioned Ikea the other day and he gagged, actually gagged."

"Awww, trouble in paradise?" I teased.

She arched an eyebrow at me. "This joke again?"

"It's more fun now that you guys are actually dating." I said. "Although, it doesn't seem like much has changed between you two."

Sasha smirked over at me. "Trust me, plenty has changed."

"Really? Do tell." Mom prompted, brushing a strand of her bright red hair behind her ear.

"Well, we certainly talk more. You know he calls me every night before he goes to sleep?"

"We know." Dad said. "Your room is right across he hall from ours, remember?"

"It's not just that though," she went on, eyes alight with mischief "there's also the kissing. Fantastic kissing, by the way. And who would've guessed- "

"Okay that's enough!" Dad cried reaching towards his ears. "I do not need to know about the nasty things you and Rogers get up to behind closed doors."

Sasha rolled her eyes at him. "Calm down, Dad. Liam's a perfect gentleman." She gave me a quick wink before adding, "most of the time."

"Come on Clint, you know that nobody raised by Captain Righteousness would ever do anything out of line." Mom said.

"No, but someone raised by Stark might."

I held my hands up. "Woah, when did this become battle of the boyfriends?"

"When both of you decided to start dating new people within a month of each other."

Thankfully, Mom decided that Nolan deserved her defense just as much as Liam. "You know Pepper raised him better than that." She said with finality. "Now, can we talk about something important?"

"Like what?" I asked. Goodness knows we had plenty of things to talk about. Sasha was moving across the country at the end of the week, and Nolan and I left for Massachusetts not long after.

"Like your evaluation scores?" She suggested.

Sasha and I both perked up at that. "You've seen them?" I asked. "How did we do?"

"As if either of you would have settled for less than a perfect score." Dad snorted.

"So we did well then?" Sasha asked, features flooded with a mix of relief and pride.

"Very well," Mom assured her. "In fact, I think we should celebrate tonight. I've got all the stuff for s'mores."

We enjoyed each other that night, between rounds of laughter and bites of marshmallow-chocolatey goodness. It was nice to be a family for the night without any of us worrying what the next day, the next phone call, the next assignment might bring. There would be time to worry later, but for now we were together, and together was home.

Liam
The car had been a gift from Uncle Tony — a medium sized SUV which now had the back seats folded down and most of our belongings jammed inside. With one final shove, I closed the silver hatch and Sasha and I were officially ready to go. We would be the first to leave for school this year, since driving to L.A. was the most logical way for us to get there, and the whole tower seemed to be attuned to the upcoming change.

Ella had been crying intermittently all morning, and the sound of the closing door sparked a fresh round of tears. "It's so far." She whispered, sniffling into my shirt.

I smoothed some of the pale strands of hair back from her face and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. "I promise we can talk every day if you want." She nodded, squeezing me tighter than I would have thought possible.

"Every day." She echoed. "You have to promise."

"I swear on my book collection." I said, and it seemed to satisfy her.

She pulled away with one final kiss on my cheek and a quick, "love you Lemur."

"Make sure you check in when you stop for the night, okay?" Mom asked, giving me another surprisingly firm hug.

"Alright. I'll call you once we've gotten on campus too."

"That's my boy." She smiled, patting my cheek.

Dad looked like he had a thousand things to say, but he just gave me a handshake and a short "You'll do great." And then Sasha was ducking into the passenger's seat while I started the car, and before I thought to look back the Tower was blocks away and obscured by the bustle and the buildings that I had known for most of my life.

We were close to entering Pennsylvania by the time she spoke. "So I heard a little rumor." She teased, hardly giving me any information to work with.

"Really, what about?"

She took a sip from her gas station slurpee and drew out the pause before she answered. "About you. Maria says you asked your moderator to add Dothraki to your languages section. Didn't you learn anything from the whole Elvish debate?"

"It's a legitimate language." I said in Dothraki, just to prove my point. "Besides I would have been doing you a favor. If he'd let me you would have beaten your sister in the languages section of our evaluations."

"It is not a real language." She insisted, sticking to English.

"Then why did you learn it?" I countered, still stubbornly using said language.

She gave me a long glare, but when she responded it was in the same tongue as me. "Because I thought it could be useful in the field. It's important to be able to communicate discreetly."

"Or because you're just as big of a nerd as I am." I suggested, switching back to English. "I know I saw a copy of The Hobbit in one of your boxes."

"You can't prove anything." She said loftily and tossed a handful of gummy bears into her mouth.

I flicked the blinker on and switched lanes. "Trust me Sweetheart, that response tells me everything I need to know."

"Do not ever call me that again." Sasha said.

"You don't like Sweetheart?" I asked innocently. "How about Honey then? Dear? My love? Moon of my life?"

She laughed at that one, turning in her seat to give me a distractingly beautiful smile and a quiet reply. "My sun and stars."

September
Isabelle
"I think that's the last of it." Andrew said, stacking one final plate in the cupboard.

I cast a glance around the little apartment before my eyes landed on the oven clock. "We should have worked on unpacking your place too. There's no way we'll be able to get it done tonight."

He shrugged, coming to stand next to me in the living area. "That's okay. I'll get the essentials unpacked before I go to sleep and do the rest tomorrow."

"Or you could go grab your toothbrush while I place an order at that Chinese place down the block, and you could spend the night here." I suggested, wrapping my arms around his torso.

He grinned down at me, dark blue eyes roaming my face. "That does sound preferable." He agreed before dropping a quick kiss to my lips before untangling himself from my arms. I went to search for my phone while he headed upstairs to his own apartment, where his boxes and suitcases were waiting to be emptied. They would have to wait another night it seemed.

An hour later we were cuddled up on the couch with takeout containers littering the coffee table and a documentary playing on the television.

"We should do this more often." Andrew said, the words reverberated through his chest before reaching the ear I had positioned over his heart.

I gave a sleepy hum of approval, although I'm not sure if it was approval of his idea or the way he was tracing senseless patterns on my arm. "We should do this every night."

He chuckled at that. "I think we might get sick of Chinese food and documentaries." There was a stretch of time filled only by the sound of the air conditioner and the narration of the film we were only half watching. "Do you want to get married?"

"Sorry?" I sputtered, suddenly not feeling very sleepy anymore.

"I didn't mean… I just…that wasn't a proposal." He said finally.

"What exactly was it?"

He sighed, dropping his head back on the armrest of the sofa. "It was just a question. Sophie brought it up a while ago, and I just… it seems unfair that I get to take as long as I want to decide if I want to get married and you only get a couple seconds. I guess I'm just wondering where you want this to go. Do you want to get married and have kids and live in a house in the suburbs, or do you want to roam the world together until we're old and grey?"

My heart couldn't help fluttering at how sweet the gesture was. "I don't see why we can't do a little bit of both. Get married, travel the world together, have a couple kids, work on helping people from here in the states, then maybe go back to the roaming the world thing for a while before our joints give out. If that's okay with you, that is."

"I'm okay with any plan involving the two of us growing old together." He said. "But we're never naming any of our kids after my dad."

"I can live with that. I'm quite partial to the name William anyway, so that gets top spot on the baby name list."

His hand came up to play with my hair. "What if we have girls? I've always thought Rebecca was a nice name."

We stayed like that for a long time, wrapped up in each other and planning out our future piece by piece. It was beautiful.

Sophie
I'll be the first to admit it, I get caught up when I'm coding. The jingle of a set of keys snapped me from my daze and drew my attention to the doorway where Ella stood smiling at me. "What time is it?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"Oh, about one in the morning."

I closed my laptop and stretched, just starting to realize how stiff my muscles had become. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

She gave me guilty smile. "I was really craving some pie."

I jumped out of my chair and shoved my wallet in my pocket. "Well, what are we waiting for? That pie place closes in an hour."

"I had hoped you would be on board." She led me towards the elevator and down to the garage.

"Did your parents want us to bring anything back?" I asked,sliding into the passenger's seat of one of the less conspicuous cars in the structure.

She turned the key in the ignition and shifted gears. "Well, they don't exactly know we're going out."

"Do my ears deceive me, or is Ella Grace Rogers sneaking out of the house?"

"I left a note." She admitted, "but they were asleep when I went to ask and I didn't want to wake them up. Besides Liam's always saying it's better to ask forgiveness than permission right?"

I couldn't help but snort at that. "Slow down Ells. Next thing we know you'll be doing serious stuff like not smiling at random strangers and mixing your mediums."

"Hey, you remembered what a medium was!" She said proudly, turning the car onto a new block.

I shrugged. "Not everything you tell me goes in one ear and out the other." Ella had been trying to teach me about art lately, meanwhile I was helping her improve in math and science. It wasn't that she wasn't smart enough to understand the concepts, she just needed them to be explained a different way sometimes and I happened to be able to do that.

It had been surreal having just the two of us in the Tower lately. The building had always been big, but now the unusual quiet only emphasized the absence of the others. We still did our schoolwork in the office, which was strange now that we had essentially used it as a war room, but a lot about our routines had changed. At least once a week the two of us would venture out for breakfast or lunch, a feat that would have been far more difficult with five of us, and occasionally met up with Ella's best friend Damien.

I'd never been as close with her as I had been with Isabelle, or even the twins,despite the fact that she was the closest to me in age out of everyone. However, I had come to realize over the past month that we had more in common than I had thought, and that our differences were actually quite complimentary to one another's. She'd begun to feel like a sister to me in a way that only Izzy had before, and it was nice to have that relationship again. Still it gave me a bit of a jolt every time I found myself telling her a secret, or picking films I knew she liked for movie night, learning the difference between oil pastels and chalk.

"So," she started as she parked the car on the curb, "is it a chocolate mousse or a peanut butter kind of night?"

I thought about it as I slid out of the car and she joined me on the sidewalk. "I haven't decided yet." I said. A little bell jingled as I opened the door. "Maybe I'll try something new."
Sasha
Friday nights were easily my favorite part of the week. Not because I hated my classes, (I actually liked most of them) but because Friday nights were dedicated to video conferencing with everyone who was still on the east coast.

We had set up shop in Liam's room tonight, and I was sitting on his bed while he set up his laptop in front of us. "Ella texted me twice today to make sure she hadn't miscalculated the time difference." He said.

I laughed. "We've done this every Saturday since we moved and she still thinks she'll get the time messed up?"

"Maybe she just wants an excuse to text me." He said, climbing onto the bed with me. We were so squished together trying to fit onto the screen that I was practically sitting on his lap, and I honestly didn't care.

Sure enough, Ella and Sophie were the first faces to pop up. It looked like they were in the kitchen, and I could see an apron hanging from Sophie's neck.

"Hey guys, what's cooking?"

"Baking." Sophie corrected. "And they're peanut butter brownies."

I was about to say how much I missed her baking when Andrew and Isabelle popped up on screen. From the looks of it they were in Izzy's kitchen, probably sitting on her couch since I could see her bed and the door to the bathroom behind her. She had been very excited to give us an apartment tour a couple of weeks ago, even though she nearly dropped her tablet trying to do it.

The program made another little dinging sound as Kyler's face popped up on the screen. Her hair, which had grown down to her shoulders, was leaving wet marks on her shirt. She must have just gotten out of the shower. "Hard classes today?" I asked.

She nodded. "Fun though, plus we got our casting for The Nutcracker."

"What did you get?" Ella asked.

"Once everyone's logged on I'll tell you." She said.

It was only a few moments before Nolan's face materialized on the screen. "So, what did you get?" Sophie asked, all but ignoring her brother's appearance.

"Snow queen." She announced. "And CJ made first chair in the cello section."

"That's great." I said, while congratulations rang from everyone else. She and her roommate/charge had hit it off right away, so it was great to hear that both of them were doing well.

"What about you guys? What's going on in Los Angeles?" She asked.

I shrugged. "The usual. A little bit of homework, a little bit of espionage, a little bit of both at the same time."

"And surfing, don't forget the surfing." Liam added.

"You guys learned to surf?" Ella asked.

"We took two lessons." I clarified. "And only because we needed to bug the instructor's phone."

Kyler rolled her eyes. "Sure, I get the protective detail and you two get required surfing lessons. I see how it is."

"Like you didn't get a totally sweet deal." Nolan cut in.

"I think we're all right where we should be." Izzy said. "Even if we do miss each other like crazy."

Izzy talked about her schoolwork, and Andrew told us about the research he was doing. Nolan said he was making some breakthroughs on a design he had in the works, and Ella and Sophie filled us in on the things going on in the Tower. By the time the conversation wound down it had been almost an hour and a half.

"I hate to kill the fun," Kyler said "but I have my first rehearsals tomorrow. I really need to get to bed." There was a chorus of goodnight before she disappeared from the screen. One by one the rest of the group made their excuses and logged off until Liam and I were the only ones left.

"Well," he said. "It's pretty late in New York, but the night's still young for us."

"You sound like you have something up your sleeve."

"I thought we could get some milkshakes at that diner by the beach. What's it called, Marco's?"

I hopped off the tiny bed and slipped back into my shoes. "Now that sounds like an idea I can get behind. I'll drive!" I added, snatching up the keys to the SUV.

It would be a long time before Los Angeles felt like home, but I could see the draw of the sprawling, sunny city. And I had to admit, if only to myself, that I was falling in love one day at a time.