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When she doesn’t move or speak, I lean closer. I don’t care if Felix is looking out the window, twitching the curtains and silently fuming. I don’t care that he even exists in this moment. The only thing I can focus on is how she looks, how close we are.

She parts her lips, and I close the little distance between us. I intended to give her a chaste goodnight kiss, but the second our lips connect, it’s like I’m not in control of my own body, and the way she reacts makes me think she isn’t in control either. I don’t think we’re ever in control when in close proximity. It’s like fate or higher forces take over, but I surrender to it all.

I drop my hand from her cheek, moving around to the back of her head, my fingers tangled in her hair. I wrap my other arm around her back to pull her closer and kiss her like a man starved, relishing her surrender and her hunger. She grabs my shirt, fisting the fabric, pulling it from the waistband of my trousers.

She nips my bottom lip, and I wish we were anywhere but outside Felix’s house. I kiss her with desperation and a demand for more, groaning when her tongue brushes against mine.

It’s been two years since I last kissed her, but she lights me up the same way she always has, in a way nobody has ever been able to replicate.

Delilah is the one who pulls away. She doesn’t step away from me, but she ducks her head and rests it against my chest.

A moment of perfection sits in the silence between us. All I feel is the acceptance that the pull she’s always had over me has never really gone away, no matter how much I buried it all. I don’t think it ever will. For two years I’ve forced it down, let the anger scream loudly within me to mask it, but now that pull is all that remains.

“I should go back inside,” she whispers. There's uncertainty in her tone. It makes me wonder what she really wants to do, if she's caught in the same indecision as I am.

“Goodnight, Delilah,” I whisper back.

For a minute, neither of us move. I let myself slip into the memories of who we were and all the times we have been in this position. Then she uncurls her fist from around my shirt and sighs softly before she turns away and walks up the path to Felix’s house. She doesn’t look back, but I watch her until she shuts the front door behind her.

Then I get into my car and drive away, my mind spinning the whole way home.

***

I flick the kettle on and potter around the kitchen, pulling out of the bag the items I picked up from the shop on the way home. I pack away the shopping before grabbing everything I need to make a coffee. I know I should do a proper shop and start getting the house in a better order since I’m here for the foreseeable future. I’m not due back in the States for a few months. The filming is wrapped up for the last instalment, and I have a break before we start the next. For now, I can be in the UK, and I need to make this place feel like home, not somewhere I ran from and never wanted to come back to.

I make my coffee before taking a seat on the sofa, thinking about the way Delilah and I kissed outside Felix’s house. I came back to the UK with a fury in my body and a desire to get my way, but I know that kiss wasn’t driven by anger. It was laced with everything all our previous kisses always were—desperation, longing, heat, the desire to be as one. I’ve never kissed anybody the same way as I do Delilah. Nobody has ever moved me the way she does, made my soul feel at peace.

I don’t know why I kissed her tonight, and I don’t know how she really feels about it. Did I step over a line? Have I potentially ruined both the truce and the fresh start, not more than two seconds after I suggested it? The last thing I want would be to start another argument with her, but the second our lips met, I wanted nothing more than to kiss her for hours, knock down the remaining barriers we’ve both put up between us. I want to tear down those barriers and build a fortress around both of us.

It isn’t just that I’ve clearly seen everything from her point of view; I understand it. All that anger I’ve held tightly to for two years after I stormed out mid-argument, it has eased. What remains is compassion. Acceptance. Accountability for my part, how my actions all those years ago shaped her decisions, and how I chose to react two years ago affected her.

I know if I had been a better man and stayed to talk rather than running when I found out about Maddie, things would have unfolded differently. Nothing would have changed with regards to Maddie, but maybe Delilah and I would both be in a better place. I look back at my actions for how things ended—both times—and all I feel now is shame and remorse.

I finish my coffee and take my cup to the sink, still thinking about Delilah, wondering what we’re supposed to do next.

The buzzer for the front gate makes me jump. Nobody knows I’m here, and the only people who know where my house is located are Delilah and Pippa. I know it won’t be Pippa, leaving the tantalising possibility that it’s Delilah. I wonder if she left Felix’s house as confused as I did, if she still feels that confusion about what happened.

I head to the front door so I can click for the front gates to open. I watch from the door as her car pulls onto my driveway, parking haphazardly next to mine. As soon as she gets out, I know there’s trouble in the air. The truce seems broken. The new start feels like it’s been set alight. This is not confusion—this is fury, and I have no idea what has fuelled it.

She barrels towards me, looking like she’s powered by anger and disgust. She storms across the driveway and into the house, pushing me out of the way. Her hand is balled into a fist, and she glares at me with a ferocious anger. It’s the very definition of “if looks could kill,” because she does look like she wants to murder me.

Clearly frustrated that her glare of hatred hasn’t killed me, she raises her arm, pulling it back slightly. I grab her wrist, stopping whatever she had planned. I’m pretty sure it was a punch. I look at her fist, clenched so tightly that her knuckles are white and taut.

“I thought I told you never to punch with your thumb tucked in,” I snap. “You’d break your thumb before you did any damage to me.”

“I don’t care,” she snarls. With her free arm, she slams something into my chest. “A paternity test, Joseph? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What are you talking about?” I fire back at her, still holding tightly onto her wrist while she holds some papers against my chest.

“You have the balls to deny it? I got home after dinner and found a request for paternity testing, and a legal letter threatening me with being sued if I dare talk about potential paternity. You expect me to get Madeline tested against you? You seriously have doubts that she’s your child after all the shit you gave me when you first saw her? You want to silence me when I’ve never said a word about speaking about you being her father?”

“Delilah—”

“What the fuck was all that show and dance by the car at Felix’s? Telling me you understood and kissing me when you knew this was waiting for me when I got home,” she snarls. “You don’t get to bring a storm back into life and hurt me again, Joseph. You don’t get to play with my emotions. You don’t get to give me hope, make me think about a future I shouldn’t ever think about, and then burn everything to the ground. Again.”

Her anger is palpable. I can practically feel it thrumming under my tight grip of her wrist. She stops yelling at me, and for a full minute, we remain in that position. The only sound is her heavy breathing.

“I’m going to let go of your wrist now, but if you hit me, Delilah, I’m not going to be amused,” I warn.