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She let go of him only long enough to wipe her eyes, then hugged him hard.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re right. I would have done anything for you, and we both probably would have suffered. For a long time, I thought somehow…maybe…I had failed you in some way, not up to the task of bringing you out from under your parents’ overwhelming demands. Maybe I hadn’t been strong enough to save you…and you went ahead and saved yourself. I can’t deny that is admirable, O.”
“We both became what we wanted to be—”
“I fucked up who I wanted to be because of that same doubt about how maybe I hadn’t been there for my brothers when they needed me. I can’t go back and save Riley or protect Neo from what happened after Riley’s death. All I wanted was for Neo to know that he was more important than anything in my life.”
“Would he have wanted you to give up so much?”
“No, babe,” he said gruffly. “Part of him was angry, part of him was moved. But again, I don’t think it was all about him, O, or about you. I did make my own decisions and now live with the consequences. Although, things have changed, and I’m working through those changes.”
“I’m sure everything is so jumbled since you got back and there are so many things you have to work out. I’ll try to give you some space to do that,” she whispered.
“It has been mindboggling to say the least. But as to what we’re doing here…I think reconnecting is good enough for now.”
Her voice catching on raw emotion, she struggled to get out the words. “I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear what you have to say.”
He went still, then released an unsteady sigh and slid his hand under her braid and up the back of her neck, spanning the base of her head. His chest expanded, and he turned her head and covered her mouth with hot, wet kisses. She made a low sound and opened to him, the thrust of his tongue sending a weakening need through her.
Moaning against his mouth, desperate for the feel of him, she pulled his shirt free of his waistband, then slid her hands under the cotton to his smooth, muscled back, noting with shock the number of scars there.
Then she got lost. Lost to the hunger. Lost to the sensations pumping through her. Lost to the urgency of his questing hands. And it wasn’t until they were panting, their bodies straining together, that a sliver of reality surfaced. Tearing her mouth away from his, she clung to him, thankful for this very visceral answer.
He rested his forehead against hers as they both let the fire between them cool. Out in the open was no place to rekindle their relationship and jumping too quickly to the physical could be a disaster.
Once his labored breathing had subsided, he said, “You still do that to me. But thank you for understanding. We definitely should figure out what we’re doing before we get caught up in something that isn’t really defined.”
She nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.” She kissed his jaw, running her thumb across his bottom lip, thinking about how smart he was, how freaking handsome, about the care he’d taken with her. “That was areallygoodanswer.”
He looked blank for a moment, then he smiled, the light filtering through the trees caught in his eyes. “The kiss…” He took a breath when she nodded and led her back to the picnic table.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We eat lunch, and you go home.”
Which is what they did. Ophelia went to bed that night thinking about all that had happened. She was nervous about returning to work but suspected that her problem with her firearm would subside.
She woke up before dawn, and for the first time since she’d been shot, she donned her running clothes and hit the pavement. Her chest barely twinged. This reconciliation with Dean was all that she could have hoped for. No matter how much she’d dreaded it, the outcome was so much better than she had imagined.
She decided that this time with Dean was a gift, and she wanted to hold on to that gift for as long as she could. She was realistic enough to know that there were countless hazards along the way, and any one of them could destroy something so fragile and renewed. That realization filled her with a cold, hard dread that sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach.
And there was Dean himself. He carried some deep, damaging scars from the past, and he would never let anyone get close enough to inflict that kind of damage again. The only thing that was for certain was the here and now. She was going to celebrate the gift she had been given for as long as it was hers to hold. She would make the most of what she had today and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
When she got home, she found him sitting on the stairs with another bag. This time full of croissants. He didn’t stay long, but shortly after he left, the doorbell dinged.
She smiled. “Couldn’t stay away,” she said as she opened the door.
Her baby sister, looking like a soft pink concoction, stood on her welcome mat. “If you’re talking about the hunk who just left, you can only hope. But sorry, sis, it’s just little ole me. You know, the baby sister who you’ve ignored texts and phone calls from.” She cocked her hip and put her hand on Ophelia’s shoulder as if to nudge her aside so she could enter. “If it had to do with the hunk, I might forgive—” Katie’s eyes widened and she pulled at the strap of Ophelia’s tank top, her eyes growing even more shocked as she followed the terrible bruise. Fumbling with the edge of Ophelia’s shirt, she lifted it enough to see her stomach and rib cage. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Ten minutes later Katie was sitting on Ophelia’s sofa, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That I got shot. Would that have been better?”
“No,” Katie wailed, but I could have been here for you.”
“I suppose you think I should have told Mom and Dad.”
