Kaegan wasn’t sure how long she walked around and he wondered if she was somehow getting closure. Finally, she turned to him. “I’m ready to leave now.”

He walked over to her, feeling emotions that she was trying to hide. This place was a part of her past, like it was to him. It had meant something to them once. “Talk to me, Bryce. Tell me what you’re feeling. What you’re thinking.”

She looked away and then she looked back at him. “I came here today to find closure, but it appears that you beat me to the punch. Obviously, you needed closure here, as well.”

He hadn’t seen it as closure but more as survival. It had been time for changes and he’d made them. But nothing—and he meant nothing—could erase memories of her presence here. There hadn’t been a single time when he’d come here that he hadn’t thought of her, remembered bringing her here, making love to her here.

“No, Bryce, making changes was not my way to find closure. It would have taken more than removing pieces of furnishings and installing a staircase to do that. No matter what you think I might have transformed this place into, I never lost sight of what it had meant to us. Nothing can ever replace that.”

She lifted her chin. “It should.”

“Why?”

She glared at him. “Coming here was a mistake. I’m ready to go.”

She moved to walk by him but he reached out and grabbed her hand, gently holding it in his. Her hand was trembling, but she didn’t pull it away. She wasn’t looking at him but was staring down at the tiled floor.

“Bryce?”

She slowly lifted her head and met his gaze. He felt a punch to his gut when he saw those eyes, which always had the ability to take his breath away, were filled with tears. When one fell and trickled down her cheek, on instinct he reached up and wiped it away with the pad of his finger.

“I can’t say enough how sorry I am for what I did to us, Bryce. I take full responsibility for hurting you, for costing us the last ten years, the future we’d dreamed of.”

He paused, fighting back the urge to tell her here and now that he knew he loved her and that closure was the last thing he wanted with her. The only reason he held back was because she wouldn’t be ready to accept that yet. Bryce was a show-me kind of girl and he intended to show her that she was the only woman who had his heart.

He stared into her eyes and she stared into his. He was aware of the moment her gaze shifted from his eyes to his mouth. She used to do that when she wanted him to kiss her. Did she remember? Deciding not to waste time pondering it, he lowered his head to hers.

The moment their lips touched, ten years of denial, hunger and craving took control. He slid his tongue in her mouth like he had every right to do so. Like he had to do so, or die right then and there. There might have been other women after her but none had ever meant anything to him. None had ever made him feel the way she had. Only Bryce had the ability to not only rock his world, but also tilt the universe in his favor if she chose to do so.