“You had to go,” I said, my voice gravelly and raw. “I didn’t want you to go home that night, and I told you so.”

“You did,” she whispered.

“I remember,” I breathed. “I kissed you. I wanted you, thought I had you.”

“But then you forgot.”

“Then I forgot. And you hated me … I thought it was your mom, everything you were going through. I thought you needed space, so I never tried, not knowing I’d pushed you away myself.”

She swallowed, looking up at me with uncertainty.

“I owe you more than a kiss, Tess. Let me make it up to you,” I begged, her face in my palm, my fingertips in her hair.

A flicker of a smile. “You can try.”

And with a smile of my own, I kissed her again with the intention of doing just that.

TESS

Beyond all logic and with all the rightness in the world, Luke Bennet kissed me.

Slower, deeper was this kiss, without the frantic frenzy of the first. He breathed in my fire, stoking it until it raged. But his lips moved with intention, a savoring, sampling game of catch and release. He tasted me like it was the first time so many years ago, like he wanted to memorize the details he’d once forgotten.

Disarmed. He disarmed me, stole my grenades, took down the wall brick by brick, left me defenseless. I was helpless to fight, and my desire to was gone, replaced by another desire entirely.

This was a moment I’d thought about too many times over too many years, one that had found its way into my dreams, unbidden, unwanted. I’d written him off, but then he had come back and did everything right, said everything I wanted to hear without knowing I wanted to hear it.

It was a rewriting of history, that kiss. And I chose to lose myself in the moment.

I should have stopped. I should have refused. I should have stepped back and run out of that shop like it was on fire. Part of my brain screamed for me to, but I pushed her into the cellar and locked the door. This time, I wouldn’t stop. This time, he wouldn’t forget. Tonight, I would be selfish and make a new memory to replace the old one.

I couldn’t ask him for more than that.

Because in the end, I was still me, and he was still him. He would move on again, and I would stay here. I’d be brushed aside the minute Judy called in an order or Wendy blew back in town. He wouldn’t want me for more than this, so I should never let myself want him. Not for more than tonight. Right now.

Letting him in for more than that would be naive. A cavalier risk, not a calculated one. Because the data told me one thing: Luke Bennet would hurt me if I let him.

So I wouldn’t.

A shocked hiss left him when my hand slipped up his shirt, breaking the kiss.