Her breath snagged in her throat. She linked her fingers through his, pulling him to her. He came willingly enough. Pliable. She tucked herself against him again.

“I missed you so much. It was all could think about once I got here.”
“You never came back in all these years?”

She shook her head. “No. I never did.”

Nick’s lip curled and he looked at her with half his face illuminated from the golden light spilling from the kitchen windows and the other half dark. “You married that asshole.”

Bess nodded, silent.

Nick ran his hands through his hair before turning back to grip the railing with both hands. “Why?”

“Because I loved him.”

Nick laughed. “Yeah, I think I remember you saying something like that.”
Bess rubbed her bare arms and wished for a sweater. “It was true at the time.”

“Sort of,” Nick said with a mocking grin she only glimpsed, since his face was still turned away.

“A lot happened after that summer,” she said quietly. “It didn’t change all at once. We had to work on it, Nick. Andy was there. You weren’t.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” The wind turned Nick’s shout to confetti, but it was still loud enough to attract attention, if anyone else was outside on their decks. Before Bess had the chance to shush him he’d taken her by the upper arms and said from deep in his throat, “it wasn’t my fault. I wanted to.”

“I didn’t know that,” Bess told him without softening or bending. Without apologizing.

Nick let her go and paced the smoothly worn boards of the deck. His hands went to the pockets of his jeans, washed and dried now, but he pulled out nothing. Bess had brought him a toothbrush and toothpaste, clothes, but no cigarettes.

“How long?” Nick asked, his back to her. His bare feet paused on the boards.

“I told you. Twenty –”

“No.” He shook his head but didn’t turn to look at her. “How long did you wait before you decided to marry him?”

“It was six months before we got back together for good.” Then it had seemed an interminable amount of time, fraught with angst and anxiety. Now it was no more than a blink.

Now he turned, mouth bracketed again by lines. “So you married him? Because you didn’t believe I’d do what I said? You didn’t believe me?”

“Did you ever really give me any reason to believe you, Nick? Did you ever give me anything?”

He flinched. “Don’t be a bitch.”

“You can call me a bitch if you want, but you know it’s true.” Tears burned her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She didn’t bother dashing them away. “I asked you, flat out –”

“I didn’t mean it!” His voice rose again. “Jesus, Bess, didn’t you know I didn’t mean it?”

“I didn’t know anything!” She still didn’t, actually. “I don’t know anything now! All of this is crazy, Nick, it’s insane!”

He crossed to her in two steps and took her in his arms. It was the action of a man, not a boy, and though she didn’t remember him ever acting that way back then it seemed perfectly suited to him, now. He looked down into her face and brought their bodies close together. As it had been since the first night of his return, heat radiated from him like a small sun. Her own personal sun around which she orbited the way she always had.

“I know I was an ass back then, Bess. I know you hated me.”

She shook her head. “No. I never thought you were an ass. A lot of other things, but not that.”

A small grin touched the corners of his lips. “I know I lied to you, but not about coming to find you. I meant it. And now, this…it’s not crazy. Why do you think I came back? Why was I able to, after all this time?”

She shook her head a little. “I don’t know.”

“Because of you.” He pulled her closer and bent to brush his lips across her cheek and down to nuzzle at her neck. “Because when you went down to the water and wanted me, the gray went away.”

His hands were hot on her, his mouth, hotter. When he slid his palms up to cup her breasts through her t-shirt, Bess’s lips parted in a silent sigh. Her nipples tightened at once and the beat of her heart stepped up. Under his touch, she melted again, the way she always had.

Maybe, always would.

“This is crazy,” she whispered, but it didn’t feel crazy.

It felt right. It felt like she had waited her entire life to feel Nick’s hands on her, like she’d been born to fit his touch. It felt like nothing else had ever mattered or ever would but his mouth moving over her skin and his hands holding her.

“Everything was gray until I heard you say my name.” Nick kissed her throat and nudged her backward, his hands guiding her so she didn’t fall. “I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t matter anymore because I heard your voice and I knew where I wanted to be.”

It was a more poetic speech than any she could remember hearing from him, but like the rest of this, it didn’t seem out of place. Bess let Nick guide her through the sliding glass doors, across the linoleum, through the living room and into the bedroom. He kissed her mouth when they got to the bed, and she pulled away to catch her breath.

They looked into each other’s eyes, both breathing hard. Nick licked his mouth and passed a hand over her hair, then cupped her cheek for a moment before finally resting his hand on her shoulder.

“What?” he asked.

“You didn’t used to…”

He kissed her mouth again, hard, before gentling the pressure. He pulled away just enough to say against her lips, “I didn’t used to do a lot of things.”

He nipped at her bottom lip, not hard enough to hurt, then ran his tongue over it. Her mouth parted for him and his kiss took her breath away not from its harshness but from the uncommon tenderness.

“Stop thinking about the way things were,” he murmured as his hands lifted her shirt over her head. His palms skimmed the lace of her bra, then unhooked it and tugged it off, too. “Just think about the way things are, now.”

* * * *

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