Free When It's Right by Jeanette Grey

so singularly intent on chasing that asshole, he hadn’t been watching where he was going.
    Back on the subway, it had been cute, his naïveté. Cassie had seemed to find it cute. He’d been mortified to know so little about how to get around in a big city like this, but now…now…
    In a different world, he would have cried. As it was, he stopped, right there in the middle of the street. All around him, people were having the time of their lives. And he was lost. Completely, hopelessly lost.
    That was his biggest problem. He knew it was. But as he stood there, boggling at faces and streets he didn’t recognize, with no way out and no clear path home, all he could think was that he was missing his chance.
    He wasn’t going to get to kiss Cassie.
    His chest ached. When had that become so important? Two days ago, he’d said he wanted a change. And now, he wanted exactly what he’d always had.
    He just wanted it differently. And he wanted it more than anything he ever had before.
     
     
    Nate had no idea how much time had passed until suddenly, all the people around him seemed to shed their random drunkenness in favor of…purposeful drunkenness. The chorus of voices surged. He followed a couple people’s gazes to a digital display on the side of a building. Saw a clear image of the ball at the top of its spire. For a second, he thought the worst—that it was time and he’d missed it. That he’d fucked up so completely. But his misery wasn’t quite finished. Not yet.
    He checked his watch. Ten minutes. He had ten minutes.
    With a sickening mixture of renewed purpose and abject misery, he pressed forward through the crowd again. He’d been wandering for hours now, searching a million faces for just one. For sandy blond hair and a red knit cap. A smile that could turn his insides to liquid.
    Thanks to yet more kindness from strangers, he’d eventually found his way back to 57th Street and its subway station, only nothing there had been right. It had taken a while to realize there was more than one entrance to the station, and by the time he’d gotten himself back above ground and across the street to where he’d been going, more than an hour had passed since he’d gotten lost. The place where she’d been standing was empty.
    And it was so pointless, trying to find her amidst a throng like this. But what else could he do?
    His heart heavy and aching, he crossed another street, eyes seeing but unseeing as he searched. He checked his watch. Five minutes. He swallowed hard.
    Someone bumped into him, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he grasped Cassie’s purse tighter to his body. He was not going to lose it again. He met the glazed eyes of a man who had clearly had about five drinks too many. Heard his apologies.
    Turning his gaze skyward in frustration, Nate let out a breath that shook his lungs. He lowered his eyes.
    Then raised them again to read the neon words on an awning two stories above the ground. He read them one more time.
    His heart felt like it skipped a beat.
    And he was in motion.
    Like everything in his relationship with Cass, it seemed, he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.
     
     
    Cassie was not going to cry. For what had to be the hundredth time in the space of two hours, she glanced at her watch. Blinked hard. Her cheeks hurt from the force of the cold, and her eyes prickled with a pain of anticipated disappointment that ran so much deeper.
    After Nate had run off after her purse-snatcher, Cassie had stayed right where he’d left her, waiting in the dark and dank of the subway station until the nervous restlessness had finally become too much. Without any way of getting in touch with him and without an ounce of faith in his ability to navigate the Midtown streets, she’d wiped her eyes that were not leaking and ascended to the surface of the city.
    And then with a sudden fit of vertigo, she’d remembered what he’d said to her, clinging to a strap in a