But this was something more. Something else. Something that made him want to chop wood and cook dinner and then sit at a small dinner table and just share silence. Sit on the couch and watch TV.

Like they were normal. Like they were real people and not these strange, lonely, hollowed-out creatures their families had demanded.

The need for those things was just as deep as the need to touch her, and that was what he couldn’t quite get his head around.

“What exactly aren’t you confused about?”

“I want to kiss you,” she said.

It was the most charming, simple answer he could have ever asked for, and at the same time it told him everything about why he couldn’t let her do it.

Why he couldn’t do what he wanted to do, which was shrink that space between them to nothing and haul her up against his chest and devour her. Because he didn’t want to stop with a kiss. And she had never undressed a man before that night when she pulled his shirt up off him so that she could evaluate his injuries.

But then, that didn’t mean she was a virgin. Not necessarily. Maybe it was just she had never done any of the undressing.

But given her background...

Could be either. And either way, it equated to being 100 percent not for him.

“I want to touch you,” she said, and his body went still. Tight. The blood in his veins running like fire through the woods. “I want to... I want you. I have. From pretty much that first moment, as soon as I realized you weren’t going to kill me. And I can’t explain it. And I know there’s nothing waiting on the other side of this for us. I know there’s nothing possible. I’m a teacher, here. And I love it. And you...”

“I’m a ghost, sweetheart. I have to hope that Jake thinks I died somewhere. And that the authorities think I did too. I have to go underground, and I have to start over. It’s going to be a long ass time before I can come back out in the open.”

“I know.”

And she didn’t say that she wanted to just stay here and hide away from the world, but he was sure that she was thinking it.

Or maybe he was just hoping that she was.

Of course she wanted something normal. Something real. And he was still tethered to a past that didn’t allow that. She’d escaped her past. He had to honor that.

But something about her had turned him into a sentimental wreck, and he couldn’t reconcile it for anything. Not a damn thing.

“We don’t have to think that far ahead,” he said, his voice going rough.

And then he did what he’d just told himself he wouldn’t.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close.

Right now, only the space between them seemed to exist. Only this moment, not the past, not the future. Because something about all the things they’d been—opposite though they were—had led them to this moment, and all that could matter was this moment.