phosphorus onto the fire. Watched the building burn to the ground. Thought about you sitting at the campfire on the beach on your graduation night, how beautiful you looked in the firelight, how much I wanted you.”
“All you had to do was cross the fire pit.”
Zane felt yet another stab of regret. So many opportunities wasted. How different would things have been if he’d crossed the fire pit that night, or the playground the day he’d seen her with Mark and Ty? “I didn’t want to get burned.”
He felt her chest rise and fall with laughter. “What about all the nights we lay together under the stars and talked about the future? You wanted to be a firefighter after you put out that fire in the chemistry classroom. I was going to go to college and get my Fine Arts degree. We were going to come back to Stanton so we could see each other every day and meet up for stargazing at night.”
A wave of nostalgia hit him hard, and with it the ache of longing he’d felt every time he was with her. “I got a confession to make. I was never looking at the stars. I was looking at you looking at the stars, wishing I could be inside you. Not easy being a teenager and having the woman of your dreams lying beside you, all sexy and sweet, and not being able to touch her.”
“I was the woman of your dreams?” She tilted her head back, rubbing her cheek over the soft bristles on his jaw.
“Every one.” He’d dreamed about her even after he left, saw her on street corners, heard her voice in restaurants and bars. For years, he couldn’t be with a woman without thinking about her, wondering if another man was touching her the way he touched the strangers he took to his bed, keeping her safe and happy, loving her.
“It must have been hard…” Her voice hitched in sympathy. “When you came back and saw me with Mark and Ty.”
Zane’s body stiffened. That kind of pain wasn’t meant to be dredged up, relived, wielded to torture him again. “It fucking killed me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You had Ty to think about.” Forgiving, but not forgetting. He would have waited for her forever. In some ways, he was still waiting now.
A heavy silence thickened the air and it took him a moment to realize she was waiting for him to say something else, to apologize. But the words wouldn’t come. If he hadn’t left, he would be in jail, locked away, forgotten. He wouldn’t have trained as a firefighter, or saved Jagger’s life; he wouldn’t have joined the Sinners and found brothers who accepted him despite his darkness. And although he was sorry he had hurt her, staying would have hurt her more because he would have been forced to tell the truth he had hidden from her all these years; he would’ve shattered the illusion she had of her father as a good, kind, loving, honorable man.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said. “After three years of waiting, alone with Ty, I gave up hope.”
He knew the moment she gave up waiting now—gave up hope—from the way her body tightened, unmolding itself from him, separating, until a chasm formed between them all the deeper because it couldn’t be seen.
“I guess we’d better go.” She sat up as he knew she would, pushed herself to her feet. With her hair tangled, her dress rumpled and her feet bare, she looked like a forest creature, ethereally beautiful, wild.
Free.
Free to leave him. Free to walk away.
She took a step back when he stood, retreating. “I think you were right. There’s too much between us. Too much hurt. Too much pain. Even when we’re close I feel I can’t touch you, like you’re holding back, and I can’t stop thinking that means you’re going to leave. I don’t think sex is enough to build a bridge high enough to get over that pain or long enough to cover the distance between who we were and who we are.”
“I told you I wouldn’t turn my back on my responsibilities.”
She regarded him with a measure of resignation. “Yes, you did mention your responsibilities.”
Zane let out a growl of frustration. What more did she want? He’d told her twice now that he wouldn’t shirk his responsibility as a father. He would make sure they were safe and provided for, and tonight he’d shared with her more than he’d shared with anyone