“How do you know that I don’t understand?” he exploded. “Don’t you know I can see what you’re feeling every time we find something down there? Do you think I’m so blind I don’t see that you’re hurting because you found it, not him? Don’t you think it tears me apart to see that you punish yourself for not being what you think he wanted you to be? And I’m tired,” he continued as her breath started to hitch. “Damn tired of being compared to and measured by a man you loved without ever being close to him.”

“I don’t.” She covered her face, hating the weakness but powerless against it. “I don’t do that. I only want…”

“What?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

“I didn’t cry when he died,” she said into her hands.

“I didn’t cry, not even at the funeral. I owed him tears, Ky. I owed him something.”

“You don’t owe him anything you didn’t already give him over and over again.” Frustrated, he dragged a hand through his hair before he went to her. “Kate.” Because words seemed useless, he simply gathered her close.

“I didn’t cry.”

“Cry now,” he murmured. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Cry now.”

So she did, desperately, for what she’d never been able to quite touch, for what she’d never been able to quite hold. She’d ached for love, for the simple companionship of understanding. She wept because it was too late for that now from her father. She wept because she wasn’t certain she could ask for love again from anyone else.

Ky held her, lowering her onto the bench as he cradled her in his lap. He couldn’t offer her words of comfort. They were the most difficult words for him to come by. He could only offer her a place to weep, and silence.

As the tears began to pass, she kept her face against his shoulder. There was such simplicity there, though it came from a man of complications. Such gentleness, though it sprang from a restless nature. “I couldn’t mourn for him before,” she murmured. “I’m not sure why.”

“You don’t have to cry to mourn.”

“Maybe not,” she said wearily. “I don’t know. But it’s true, what you said. I’ve wanted to do all this for him because he’ll never have the chance to finish what he started. I don’t know if you can understand, but I feel if I do this I’ll have done everything I could. For him, and for myself.”

“Kate.” Ky tipped back her head so he could see her face. Her eyes were puffy, rimmed with red. “I don’t have to understand. I just have to love you.”