The Last Man on Earth by Tracy Anne Warren

her coat. For a long moment she’d considered its meaning and the man who’d left it for her. Then she’d tucked it away and returned to the office.
    The film’s previews were rolling, the theater dark, when she walked inside at half past six. The wide set of wooden double doors, with their long, thin slits of window, swung shut at her back.
    Momentarily blinded, she stood in the aisle to give her eyes a chance to adjust. A handful of people sat scattered in the hundred-seat-capacity room, making it an easy task to pick out the back of Zack’s head and his broad shoulders a few rows down.
    She moved forward and, with barely a sound, eased into the seat next to his.
    He didn’t speak right away. “I wasn’t sure you were coming,” he whispered.
    “Traffic was heavy,” she whispered back.
    He’d bought a giant tub of popcorn. He nudged it toward her, balancing it on the armrest between them. Madelyn took a handful and began to eat, one kernel at a time. The movie opened with a sweeping flourish of music, credits forming and re-forming over rugged hills of green and miles of cloudless indigo sky.
    Zack angled his head toward hers. “Your day okay?”
    “Long. Busy. The usual. How was yours?”
    “About the same,” he said. “Too many meetings.”
    She paused. “The movie ticket surprised me. How’d you manage to slip it into my pocket with no one seeing, including me?”
    “Handy skill I acquired in my youth.”
    She decided it wisest not to probe further, knowing what she now did of his past. Instead she ate a few more kernels of popcorn.
    Silence settled between them, filled by the voices of the actors on the screen. “So are you going to tell me why we’re here?” she asked.
    “To watch the movie.”
    She studied him in the screen glare for a long moment. He seemed tense, uneasy, troubled. “That’s not why we’re here.”
    “No, I suppose it isn’t.” He sighed and rubbed a hand across one thigh. “I wanted to talk and not on the phone. Since the office was obviously out of the question, I chose this.”
    A woman two rows ahead turned and shushed them.
    Madelyn waited a minute, then lowered her voice as much as she could. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
    “Last night.” He paused as if he were trying to find the right words. “I wanted to say . . . well . . . to tell you . . . that I’m sorry.”
    “Sorry for what?”
    “For being too rough. I didn’t hurt you, did I? Is that why you left so quickly this morning?”
    She turned to him, reaching for his hand. “No. How could you think that? I left because I needed to go home and change clothes for work. You didn’t hurt me. You couldn’t.”
    But he could. Very easily, he thought. Didn’t she realize? She was a strong woman. Yet even strong women had fragile bones.
    Soft bodies.
    Tender hearts.
    “I was angry,” he said. “I didn’t give you much choice.”
    “We were both angry. If I’d really wanted you to stop, you would have stopped.”
    “You’re so certain?”
    “I am. Besides, I’m not a doormat. If you’d hurt me, Zack, I wouldn’t be here with you now. I’d never accept something like that from a man. Not any man.”
    He considered her statement and recognized the truth of it. Madelyn wasn’t a woman who backed down or kept silent about things she believed needed to be said.
    She laid a hand against his cheek, already grown rough with evening whiskers. “Making love is always good with you. Each time, it only gets better.”
    He wrapped a hand around her wrist to press a kiss into her palm. “You told me you needed time apart. Do you still?”
    “And if I said yes?”
    He looked into her eyes. “I wouldn’t like it, but I’d give it to you anyway. If it’s what you really want.”
    Something warm and waxen seemed to pool inside her, spreading through her body all the way to her heart.
    And in that instant she knew. She just knew. He was the man for her.
    Improbable as it might seem,