She bit at her lip for a second and then her shoulders sagged a little. “I can’t blame you for being checked out, Preston.” She shook her head. “It was just . . . it was just what happened and you did what you had to do to get through that time.” She turned her head, looking away from me. And there it was. In typical Lia style, she had offered me the olive branch, an offer of empathy and forgiveness, and then she’d retreated inside herself.
I frowned slightly. Yes, what she’d said held some truth, but why did it feel like she was still absent, even though she was standing right next to me? Even though I could feel the heat of her body and smell the sweetness of her skin, it felt like she was a thousand miles away—closed off, untouchable. A part of me wanted to shake her. Stop being so understanding. Yell at me—something.
Cole would have known how to draw her out. He would have either made her laugh or made her mad. But not so mad that it did lasting harm. Just mad enough to get her temper to flare and loosen her tongue. I didn’t know how to elicit emotion from her without doing some sort of permanent damage. God, maybe we’d been doomed from the start, even if Cole hadn’t died. Maybe Lia and I were just doomed in general—always managing to just miss each other. Like two people searching for one another in the dark.
I looked up at the big old tree next to us, the one she used to sit under sometimes. “Cole and I came up with this secret handshake under this tree,” I murmured. “We used to do it all the time. Hell if I can remember it. In the beginning, right after he died, I used to go over and over it in my head—just trying to recall it—each time I passed this tree and I couldn’t figure out why other than to keep my mind busy, or maybe just to torture myself. I can barely remember his funeral. It’s like I was cocooned inside myself, just going through the motions. So I don’t know. I thought . . . if I could just remember that handshake, I’d have a piece of him back however small.”
Lia turned her gaze back to me and the sadness in her eyes had turned to surprise. I’d only mentioned Cole one other time since he’d passed away. I remembered because that time had hurt, too. “We fought that day. He hit me, and I hit him back. I never told you that, but we did.”
Lia was staring at me in startled silence, and I forced myself to go on, to say the words that had been lodged inside me for so long. “One eye was swollen shut when he left and . . . I wonder if that was why he didn’t see—”
“Oh, Preston,” she breathed. “No. No, you can’t do that to yourself. He was on the highway on a motorcycle barely fit for back roads, and he wasn’t wearing a helmet. You’d warned him about that bike. I heard you. It was not your fault.”
I let out a huge gust of air, clenching my eyes shut briefly. She stared at me for a moment, the look on her face so full of stunned heartbreak. “The fight, was it . . . was it about me?” She flinched slightly.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but I also knew this conversation had been long overdue. “Yeah.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as I’d just done, and let out a long, slow breath. “You told him what we’d done and he didn’t like it.”
“No, he didn’t. But . . .” I let myself go back to that day. “It was because he cared about you. And the truth is, Lia, he didn’t know that I cared about you more because I’d never told him. And I should have.”
She turned her whole body toward me and nodded slowly, biting at her lip. She opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it. I couldn’t blame her for not quite knowing what to think—it’d been so long and I still hadn’t settled on anything that felt right. I’d gone through grief, and self-blame, anger, and denial, but I was still searching. Maybe I always would, I wasn’t sure. Maybe if we kept talking, maybe we could help each other come to some conclusions that brought a measure of peace.
She shifted and the soft swells of her breasts rose very slightly in her sundress, drawing my gaze. I remembered how they’d looked when she’d been nursing, swollen with milk, her nipples dark and enlarged. I hardened so quickly, I let out a quick hiss of breath at the wonderfully painful sensation. Lia glanced at me and I attempted to adjust myself subtly. Between my legs I felt hot and heavy and I wanted to lay her down and connect my body with hers. If it was going to take us some time to find our way to each other in other ways, at least we could have that. But then I remembered how she’d left after the last time we’d made love, and my body cooled with the fear and regret that trickled through me.
But I had to touch her. I needed to feel her skin under my hands, wanted so desperately to taste her sweetness on my tongue. I still loved her. God help me, I did. And I wanted her so much I could barely breathe. I stepped toward her, and her eyes widened in surprise as her head tipped back to look up at me. “Lia,” I said, my voice gravelly, “I missed you. I’ve missed you for a long, long time.”
Her lips parted and her eyes blinked and a gust of breath whispered from her mouth. “I’ve missed you, too.”
I wove my fingers through her silken hair, supporting her head in my hand. “Do you think there’s a chance for us, Lia?” I rasped. “After everything, is there any chance at all?” I didn’t know myself, but I wanted her to want it as badly as I did. If we both tried . . . maybe if we started over with the intention of repairing what had been so broken, there was a chance. However small, I’d take it.
She stared up at me for a moment, so many emotions flashing through her eyes that I couldn’t identify them. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Do you want there to be?”
She closed her eyes briefly, just a fluttering of her lashes, as pain flickered across her face. “Yes,” she breathed. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
My heart leapt and I took her mouth, hard and sudden, and she let out a tiny squeak as her arms came around my neck, her fingers weaving into my hair. She tasted just the same as I remembered and every cell in my body responded. Mine. I dipped my tongue into her sweetness and she moaned, tangling her tongue with mine and pressing her slender body against me. Blood surged through me in a hot, fast rush, but I willed myself to slow down. It’d only ever been that way with us. It’s all Lia had ever known, and I wondered if she even realized there was anything else—lovemaking that was slow and languorous and didn’t result in ripped clothing and bruised skin.
Ah, hell.
I pulled my mouth from hers, ending the kiss, resting my forehead against hers for a moment as we caught our breath. I leaned away, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear, her full lips red and swollen from my kiss, her eyes soft and vulnerable as she looked back at me.