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The smirk he shoots me when I open the door tells me he knows exactly where I was—just on the other side of the door.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
The question comes out harsher than I mean for it to, and his smirk slips slightly before it comes back stronger than before.
“You know why I’m here.”
I cross my arms across my chest.
“Maybe. Are you finally done running from me?”
I’ve managed to push his buttons. A muscle tics in his jaw, and a flame sparks in his dark brown eyes. He brushes past me and into the house.
“Damnit, I don’t know why you want to play twenty questions with me when all I want to do is talk about the other night.” He runs his fingers in his hair like he’s done it a hundred times today. Based on how it looks, I might be right.
“Twenty questions? Are you serious? I haven’t even begun with the questions. It’s been almost a week, Shep. Why now? What does it matter?”
“It matters,” he grits out through clenched teeth.
“Why? You’ve avoided me since the reunion. Hell, actually more like twelve years—”
“I don’t go after something that’s not mine. You were with Brian.”
“Not twelve years ago I wasn’t.”
“Fuck.”
He flops down on the couch and rests his head in his hands.
“Why?”
It’s the question I’ve always had. The one I never got an answer to. Not then. But I need to know now.
He glances up and his eyes meet mine, the regret in them as clear as if he’d said it out loud.
“I…I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were leaving the next day.”
“We talked about that. You knew I was going to college, but I told you I was coming back. And we’d have weekends and breaks until then. My plan was always to come home.”
“I didn’t have a future. You did.”
“What do you mean you didn’t have a future?”
Understanding is starting to dawn, but I need him to say it.
“I wasn’t going to school. All I knew was fixing cars in my uncle’s garage. What kind of future was that going to be for us?”
I sit on the floor in front of him.
“So you broke our hearts for my own good?”
“I didn’t mean to. I hated it.” He reaches out a hand, and his calloused fingers rub along my jaw until he cups my cheek. “You deserved your future. Not me holding you back to your past.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
