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He opened his door to cut her off, because he didn’t want her to tell him it didn’t matter. Their history mattered, and tonight was about proving it to her. “We’re here. Ready to hike?”
…
Sinclair followed Shane past a sign announcing lots for sale, onto a parallel path of hard-packed dirt carved from the tracks of vehicles. Despite the evidence of human encroachment, vines wove around the trunks of mature trees and grew thick on either side of the trail. Back in high school, there had been no clear-cut walkway. No generous lots demarked by for sale or sold signs and corner-staked with little orange flags. It had been untouched woodland. These days, it no doubt merited Shane’s professional interest as one of Magnolia Grove’s newest future home sites. Did he remember following her into these same woods on a sultry May night to celebrate his eighteenth birthday?
Somewhere around here grew a willow tree with limbs that reached the ground and had provided the perfect shelter for her to give him gifts she couldn’t take back. Despite how everything between them had played out, she counted that night as one of the most special moments of her life. They were traipsing dangerously
close to that sacred ground. The path veered, and she followed him around a bend. They walked past a fenced-off lot where a crew had assembled the frame of a large, two-story home. Her heart sank. Was the tree even around anymore? She didn’t want to sully the memory of that night with some haphazard tour of new construction.
“How much farther?” she asked when the path split again. Another half-built house came into view, along with some no trespassing signs. Nothing looked familiar. She was all turned around.
“Let’s go this way.” He stopped at one of the orange flags staked into the ground near a narrow opening between two pines and held some branches aside for her.
She hesitated. “The sign says ‘No Trespassing.’”
His slow smile belonged to an eighteen-year-old renegade. “There was a time when you were down for a little rule-breaking.”
Maybe he did remember. “Yeah, but we’re not kids anymore, and it wouldn’t look good for the city’s expert consultant to get busted for trespassing.”
The smile only widened, carving a groove beside his mouth. “Trust me, baby girl.” With that, he walked through the opening and disappeared behind the fringy overgrowth.
She danced with uncertainty for a moment. A woman who lived in the middle of nowhere knew her way around the wilderness, but they’d taken one too many turns while she’d been journeying down memory lane. The result? She wasn’t sure how to get back to the car. She did know the region was blessed with a variety of wildlife that hunted at dusk and might not be intimidated by a lone woman on an empty trail—raccoons, foxes…skunks. Something skittered in the roots near her feet. “Shane!” She dived through the opening in the pines, only to run into an unyielding wall of muscle and bounce off with a breathless, “Oomph.”
Quick hands caught her arms and steadied her. “It’s official. Something about this place makes you want to jump me.”
And that’s when she saw it—lights shining from under the rounded, drooping branches of a winter-bare willow tree. Their tree. Taller, broader, but theirs. Her heart stuttered. “Shane?”
He took her hand and led her along a grassy expanse toward the willow. “Remember?”
How could she forget? The lantern light glowed, telling her he’d not only planned to bring her here, he’d taken time to set the scene, but suddenly, she didn’t want to move. This spot held a special place in her heart, but it wasn’t theirs. It never had been. And coming back now, weaving through property markers and signs, only underscored the fact. “This is beautiful”—she gestured toward the tree—“but we can’t. There are laws. We don’t belong here.”
He turned to face her, but continued an unhurried backward walk toward the tree, pulling her with him. “We do. It’s mine.”
His words careened around in her head like bats, fast and hard to get a lock on. It’s mine. It’s. Mine. “What?”
“I bought the lot,” he said and held a curtain of willow aside to usher her into the cloistered space beneath. A red-and-black plaid blanket covered the ground, and an insulated backpack anchored one corner.
Her ribs shrank, forming a painfully tight cage around her heart. “Why?”
For the first time all night, he looked uncomfortable. “The day before yesterday, I was out here for a meeting. While Campbell and I looked over the map of parcels for sale in the subdivision, I realized this lot was up for grabs. Somebody would buy it. Build a spec house, or their dream house, or whatever. Maybe they’d remove the tree. Maybe not. It was none of my business. I spent half a second trying to bullshit myself into believing I didn’t care. I don’t have deep roots anywhere—and most of the time I’m okay with that—but not this time.” He looked down at the blanket, and she followed his gaze, practically seeing the ghosts of their former selves tangled together under the same encompassing limbs. “This place is important me. I needed to protect it.”
She braced a hand on the tree trunk and immediately remembered leaning against it, raising her lips for his kiss. “I… Wow. I don’t know what to say.”
He took a step toward her. “Say you forgive me, for not protecting you.”
Warning sirens blared in her head. He was merging past and present again, and it made a risky combination. Savannah’s words came back to haunt her. You haven’t given your heart to anyone else because the best parts are already spoken for.
All the parts of her heart she still held a claim to raced—trying to make a getaway. Instead she sagged against the tree. “Don’t…”
“Don’t what?” He stopped his slow advance. “We talked about what happened, now let’s settle it. You won’t trust me with your future until you forgive me for the past, and I’m not satisfied calling this a nostalgia fuck, and nothing more. Screw that, Sinclair. I want more. So do you. Trust me enough to forgive me for letting you go.”
She didn’t consider herself a cowardly person, but she battled a flight instinct so strong she actually visualized herself turning and running. Nothing lurking in the woods could be nearly as dangerous as the man in front of her, giving life to all her hopes, while at the same time embodying all her doubts. “I’m not the same girl I was ten years ago.”
He didn’t so much as blink. “And I’m not the same guy. Congratulations, we’ve both grown up. You were brave enough to take on the boy. Are you brave enough to take on the man?”
His sharp eyes dared her to respond. Silence was her only option, because there was no good answer.
He stepped closer, trapping her between the tree and his body. A smug little smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You know you want to. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
