He finally turns to look my way and I don’t miss the way his eyes flash with heat as they roam around the curves of my body. I’m filled out in ways I never was when I was seventeen. He notices instantly, and the look he gives me when they finally lift to meet mine makes my knees go weak.

My heart constricts as I stand before him torn. I can’t leave; abandon my life here. I can’t abandon my daughters.

I take a step back, which earns me a dark scowl. He reaches out and pulls me quickly to stand opposite him on the bench as the lightning flashes illuminating every curve of his face. When it does, I see the hurt, the pain, the lost look filling his eyes. I have never witnessed a look of such intensity before.

“I thought you said I had a choice,” my shaky voice pleads with him.

His hand snakes around the back of my neck as he pulls me into his chest. Glancing down at my lips, he smiles, “And did you decide?”

I take a look out at the storm. I glance quickly back inside. They're both the same. One, the darkness I’ve been living in. The other, a daunting threat of what’s coming. What I’ve finally realized has always been inevitable. No matter how hard I might try to fight it.

Deep down inside, I guess I always knew that one day he’d come back for me. One day, we’d be forced to finish what we started. My journey with him led me home once before. Maybe, it will again. Maybe, this time, I won’t come back alone.

I glance up at him through the rain pelting against the side of my face. My lashes flutter as a gust of wind picks up, thunder crashes in the distance.

I don’t know what he’s looking for. What’s more, I’m not sure I can help him find it. But I do know I’ve felt more alive in the last five minutes than in the past two decades we’ve spent apart.

I swallow over a lump in my throat. My right hand shakes as I wrap it around his waist. A grin pulls at his lips as I reach up with my other hand and do the same, locking my fingers behind his back like I did all those years ago.

His gaze roams the curve of my face and lands once again on my lips. A lightness sparkles in his eyes a moment later when they lift, once again, to find mine.

“Good girl,” he whispers just as he jolts us forward, out the window and into the black of night.