Page 7 of Entwined With You

He’d wanted more. Hell, he’d wanted it all. Sabrina. A house with a yard. A dog. Maybe a cat. Probably a goldfish. And, yeah, even kids. One day he wanted kids.

No. He’d wanted her kids.

He’d wake up in the morning from dreams of a normal life, like normal people, with normal jobs after which they’d come home and eat normal meals in front of the television before making love in their normal bed, falling asleep in each other’s arms, then starting the whole normal routine over the next morning.

Heaven.

At least in his head. Some part of him always wondered if they would have been happy like that. Or if one or the other of them needed the rush that came with the grift. Or, as he was now learning, the rush that came from chasing those grifters.

His was the third door on the second-story balcony that ran the length of the beach-facing apartments. He paused, his fingers poised over the keypad lock. He exhaled, then let his forehead drop against the cool, painted surface of the door as he tried to fight the wave of melancholy.

It had been fifteen years since he lost her, and all that bullshit about time healing all wounds was just that—bullshit.

The wounds hadn’t healed at all. Hell, they’d barely scabbed over in all this time. And now out of the blue some sister she’d never even mentioned had burst into his life and ripped the scab right off his flesh.

And on September 2nd, too, just so he’d feel double the pain.

He couldn’t do this. Not tonight. Not when he was already so raw. He should text her back. Tell her he had to go into work. Make plans to meet over lunch, just so he’d have a solid excuse to cap it at one hour in case the whole Meet The Sister thing was just too damn painful.

Of course it would be too damn painful.

Yeah, that’s what he would do. He’d postpone it. Give himself time to get his head together.

He pushed back from the door and was about to tap in the key code when a movement down the balcony caught his eye. He turned, and his heart stopped.

Sabrina?

She was in the shadows cast by the building next door, so he could barely see her face. Her hair was long, hanging in waves that fell past her shoulders, unlike the pixie cut she used to sport. It was red, too. The natural, gorgeous auburn that he’d rarely seen because she’d hid it with a Miss Clairol basic brown, stolen from whatever local drugstore was near their current flop.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

But it was.

Somehow, it was really her.

He took a tentative step toward her. “Sabrina?”

She eased forward, putting her face in the light, and his breath caught in his throat. He heard himself make a small noise, somewhere between a gasp and as cry, then realized he was stumbling forward.

As he reached for the railing to steady himself, she raced toward him, catching his hand at the same time that his fingers closed around the rail. He felt the shock of connection—a frisson of sensuality that cut all the way to his core.

“Sabrina?”

She drew her hand away, her lips moving as she whispered something.

It took him a moment to realize that the word she was repeating over and over was, “sorry.”

“Sabrina,” he said again, stepping closer, seeing nothing but her face. Feeling nothing but the thickness of the air between them, the horrible inches that were keeping them apart. “Baby, how—?”

Her lips parted as if to answer, but he didn’t wait to hear. He wasn’t thinking anymore. It was her. And before she had a chance to utter even one single word, he pulled her into his arms, pressed his lips to hers, and kissed her.

He moaned, losing himself in the feel of her. In the certainty that the last fifteen years had been nothing but a horrible, awful nightmare from which he was finally waking.

And then she pushed away.

He stood there. Lost. Lonely. And horribly confused. “Sab—”

“No.” She pressed her fingertip to his lips, cutting off the name. “I’m so, so sorry.” Tears clung to her eyelashes. “I should have told you in the text. I should have called first. I shouldn’t have done it like this.”