I take his hand as we walk down the sidewalk with the midafternoon sun shining down on us. I take his hand and we let our loose arms swing as we walk to his Explorer. Like he's my beau or something.

"Beau"...what an antiquated word that is. It's something Nasedo used to call Max when I was younger. He used to say, "One day soon you'll meet your darling beau, Tessie." It's only now that I realize how much bitterness was in his voice when he said it. When I was younger, I only heard the words. The hopeful words, sketching a perfect prince for me...a perfect future for me. Where I wouldn't have to run anymore. Where I would finally feel safe and loved and a part of something.

Now I hear the sarcasm. The darkness. And I taste the bitterness no matter how much sugar I pour into my iced tea and my yogurt...no matter how much sugar I pour straight on my tongue when no one is looking. Which is most of the time.

They see right through me.

And the Sheriff sees into me. With his blue, blue eyes.

I wonder if he knows how much that intrigues me. How refreshing it is to have someone actually see me and not pretend I'm imported furniture. I wonder if he knows that this is why I'm holding his hand. Why I'm letting his warm, dry, fingers swallow mine.

He probably does.

I watched his face in the CrashDown...I watched how my vision made him wince. How he gallantly tipped his soda at me after I winked. He's not scared of the truth. He's not scared of me. He's not even scared of helping me climb up into the passenger seat and brushing my bare knee by accident. Most of the dirty old men I know are at least afraid of the laws. But Sheriff Valenti is the law. Human law, at any rate. Which means less than nothing to me. And not enough to *him* to make him stop turning the key in the ignition.

I wonder where we will go. Will we go to another diner on the other side of town? Where we can share crushed ice and soda from one glass in companionable silence? Or will he take me out to the rocks where Max once pushed me down? Where my family turned their backs on me? Will he push me down? Will he turn his back to me? Or his front....and his eyes...and his lips?

He's curious. He wants to know more about me. He wants to know why I stay. Why I hope for something impossible.

It's sweet.

The only thing aside from sugar that's sweet in my life right now.

"Tess?" he murmurs as he pulls the car out of the parking spot and into the sporadic traffic of the small street. "Your name is Tess, right?"

"Elizabeth, actually," I tell him, watching the line of his jaw loosen and tighten with each of his unsteady breaths. "But no one calls me that." No one calls me much of anything. But that's something I don't have to say out loud. He knows. He's perceptive for a human.

"Elizabeth...." He drawls my real name. The name--or at least the closest English approximation--that I was given on another planet, in another life. He tries it out and it sounds perfect on his tongue. "Elizabeth.??" He stops for a second. His eyebrows quirk.

I look at him. Shake my head slightly as I smile. "I know."

He realizes the irony. The very thing I realized when I first saw Max with that insipid little girl. That her name and my name are the same. Few people know that 'Tess' can be a nickname for Elizabeth. And I hold that to me like my last, secret, weapon. I hold it to me because it's all I have left...the simple fact that Max does love me, somewhere in his soul. That it was my name--and a marriage neither of us really remember--that drew him to Liz Parker.

I don't really relish the idea that it can also draw him back to me.

But I'm the consummate actress.

I let Max and Michael and Isabel...and Alex and Maria, too...think I'm a mercenarial bitch that only has Destiny on her mind...Destiny and a man who doesn't want me. I let them think that I have no feelings and no sense.

But I do.

Enough sense to know that I want a mate to love me for who I am. Not for what my name is.

But it's nice to hear Jim say it. Because it doesn't trigger history in him. It doesn't trigger a bond that was engineered within us. Just empathy.

"Where do you want go, Elizabeth?" As if he knows how much I like it...he says it again. He raises my opinion of humans more and more every minute.

"Anywhere," I whisper, shrugging. "Anywhere but here."

And so he drives.

He drives past the diners. Past the rocks. Towards the horizon. It almost feels like he could drive right up into the sky.

It is a long time before either of us speaks again. And by the time we do, the sun has dipped low, has begun to set.

I wonder if we are still in New Mexico.

If we are even still on Earth.

And then he unbuckles his safety belt and reaches for me.

He whispers, "There, there...it's okay" when I burst into sobs.

He strokes my hair and lets me cry. Lets me swear.

Lets me wish I could change my name...change my life...change my Destiny.

He lets me wish he was 'my darling beau.'

And that's enough.

For now.