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“Me, neither,” Rae said, her throat tight. She looked up at her brother. She wanted to believe him. “Who, then?”

“So help me, I've wondered that for years, been over and over it in my mind…but there's no one I can even imagine. I think…at least I thought at the time…that she loved me, too.” Bar stopped and covered his face with one hand, briefly, then straightened with determination. “Jesus, Rae, I have no one to talk to about her anymore. Leslie wouldn't understand—”

“Can you blame her?” Rae interjected.

Bar grimaced, flashing his teeth for a moment. Though his hair was thinning, reminiscent of their father's, he was still very handsome, still looked much like the high school boy who'd had his heart broken and never fully mended even after two decades.

“I love Leslie, I do,” he said then, punishing or convincing himself, Rae wasn't sure. Really, the point was moot in the here and now, seeing as how Bar had fathered four children with Leslie Ryan Taylor.

“I know,” Rae said, and she really did. Michelle would always be his heart's first choice. There was no closure, no word from her after all these years…Bar, Sr. and Caroline had been in Spain the spring that Matthew's mother died; neither Bar nor Rae, who had just recently moved to Chicago with Tony, had attended the funeral, hadn't even realized Michelle would be there. Apparently she had shown up the morning of, in a piece of shit car, dragging a small child with her. Rae had listened to the story, stunned, later that week, after Michelle had already left. Bar had spent three days drunk out of his head; Leslie hadn't known what was wrong, and Rae hadn't known how to explain to her sister-in-law. And Michelle had never returned to Minnesota, at least as far as anyone knew.

“She looks so much like her, doesn't she?” Bar asked quietly then.

“She does,” Rae agreed in the same tone of voice. “Darker, but still…it took my breath away when I saw her.”

“I better head for home, Leslie'll be wondering,” he said then, unable to continue discussing the topic. “You gonna be okay, sis?” Bar looked at her tenderly for a moment; he still wanted to kill Tony, his ex-brother-in-law, for the pain he'd caused Rae. The son of a bitch had put her through hell.

“Yes, yes, of course,” she said, downing the last of her drink. And found herself foolishly wishing that she'd accepted Lew's subtle offer after all.

***

Matthew threw
his suit jacket into the cab of his truck and left it in the lot at the Lodge, rolled up his sleeves and then walked with head bent and both hands shoved into the pockets of his dress pants. He wasn't quite unsteady drunk, but didn't trust himself to drive, and it was a gorgeous night, the sky deep and brilliant with stars, windless and warm, inviting him to walk. He did so along a road as familiar to himself as the trails at the Pull Inn, keeping to the grassy strip that edged the road but wasn't quite yet the ditch, registering the night sounds with unusual clarity; he had heard the crickets and peepers singing their harmonies, the whine of mosquitos, the sigh of the pines for so many years now they normally mellowed into a gentle background cadence, but tonight his senses were oddly lucid.

Walking was good for the body but not exactly the heart, not with so damn much on his mind. To do so solitarily was something as conducive to reflection as gazing into a campfire. He felt removed from himself, swept along in a current he had not seen coming, had no clue, no forewarning, was waiting for him. Just last Thursday, not even a week ago, when he'd agreed to run Marshall's three-day route to Texas because Marshall's wife was a week past due with their first baby, he had been a completely different man.

Dad, goddamn it
, he thought, and tears burned into his eyes for the countless time that day. He didn't even try to swipe them away; shit, it was pitch dark and he was utterly alone, not even a single vehicle had passed. They rolled over his cheeks and he closed his eyes for a moment, aching at the thought that he would never see his father again. He hadn't even really said good-bye. Last Thursday Daniel had left early for the campground, called farewell on his way out the door; Matthew had still been in bed, catching a few extra hours before he planned to pull an all-nighter getting Marshall's big rig to the Texas state line.

“See you on Sunday, Matty-boy!” he'd said, using his old favorite nickname, and Matthew had sleepily responded, “'Bye, Dad.”

And that was it. He hadn't called home on Friday from his motel in Gainesville, Texas. He had been planning to get back to Rose Lake Saturday night, but the semi blew an axle outside Middleton, Oklahoma, and he'd been held up while getting it fixed…and ended up meeting Bryce.

Just the thought of her sent the blood in his body churning with anticipation and wonder. He pictured her for the hundredth time as she'd looked when he first saw her, a case of beer braced against her belly from about five steps below, with her exquisitely beautiful eyes flashing golden-brown in the sunlight, staring up at him as though he sported wings from his shoulder blades.

In that second he was caught in the chest by the strongest punch of desire of his life, though he could not have imagined in those first moments the night they would share together in a few short hours. Hoped, maybe, but still, it seemed a slim possibility; one-night stands had never been his style. And yet he'd been totally powerless against the force of it, had thought of her constantly all afternoon while getting estimates, finally settling and then arranging payment with a service garage, had hurried back to the motel and showered and shaved and then…

When Bryce came around the corner and into the party, he had felt a tug of such force that the room seemed to vibrate. Unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome. He'd been worried about coming on too strong, scaring her off, but there was something in her expression that his heart understood, even if his head was a few steps behind. The way her eyes couldn't seem to move from his, her delicate eyebrows drawn slightly together, the question her full soft mouth seemed to be begging to ask him, the rise and fall of her breasts beneath her shirt, letting him know that her own breath was short, her pulse erratic in those moments. She didn't play coy like the many other girls who'd let him know they were interested over the years, didn't offer any strong hints, but he knew. Holy shit, he knew.

Jesus Christ
, he thought, and tipped his head back for a few beats.
I can't let her go.

He clenched his jaw, afraid to admit how much he wanted her, how terrified he was that she was leaving and the only time he might ever set eyes on her again was if she returned here to visit them. Or he went to her…but to what end?

You can't have her, Sternhagen, so just stop right now. She'll leave and you'll get over her in time…

He walked faster, then finally broke into a jog that became a sprint as he neared their driveway, his dress shoes crunching over the gravel. And then he caught sight of her and stopped abruptly. Bryce was alone on the porch, pushing herself on the swing with one bare foot, moving subsequently in and out of the spherical orange glow of the porch light. Matthew held himself utterly still for a moment, studying her, his heart thundering, his breath coming fast.

Her hair was loose and soft over her shoulders, her chin tipped toward a book cradled in her arms. She was clad in his old sweatshirt, he realized, and he was struck with equal floods of desire and tenderness: he wanted to scoop her into his arms and take her somewhere, anywhere, as long as they could be alone and undiscovered, and make love to her until she was too spent to walk…he wanted to wrap her in his arms and hold her until the end of space and time, just hold her, breathe her scent.

The entire house was dark, and seemed to be sleeping; he didn't want to startle her, and instead whistled softly through rounded lips, making her head flash up in his direction. She closed whatever it was she was reading and instantly slipped it to the floor under the swing, rose to her feet, hugging his sweatshirt against her breasts, feeling the incredible thrusting of her heart behind her crossed arms. He was out there, she knew it, and stepped down to the grass…

“Will you walk with me?” he asked her, his voice low, coming into sudden view, and Bryce caught her breath, even though she had been expecting him. She tried to meet his eyes, could hardly look up into them just as fiercely as she knew she could never look away. At last she nodded. He said, “Let's go to the dock.”

The path was narrow and again he led the way, allowing her to study his utterly sexy, sloping shoulder muscles beneath the pale dress shirt he'd worn all day, his narrow hips and long legs in black pants nearly invisible in the dark. The water glinted into view, an expanse of black silk in the starlight, slightly darker than the surrounding air, static and as smooth as glass. The shore hummed with fiddling crickets and whining mosquitoes, and beneath this, the constant, undulating chirp of frogs. Bryce stepped carefully, wincing once as she encountered a sharp point. Matthew walked first onto the dock, and it trembled with his tread; Bryce followed, her damp feet making a series of slim, curved prints along the bare boards. At the end, where the water lapped softly, he sat on the bench bolted to the boards and curled both hands around its seat, casually, as though his world were not ending tomorrow.

She sat delicately, leaving a mere foot between their hips, but couldn't bring herself to look directly at him. Instead she slipped her hands beneath her thighs, clad in her old flannel pajama bottoms, and stared out across the smooth surface, imbibing her senses instead with the sight of the far, tree-lined ridge, darkened to the shade of wet ink as night settled in like an old friend. Her heart trembled in her chest; they were very near, and alone, no one to witness anything. They sat in silence for a good five minutes, the space between them vibrating with awareness, until he couldn't bear it another second.

“Don't go,” he said finally, his voice low and husky. She closed her eyes.

“I have to,” she whispered after a time, her own fractured by the jagged lump forming in her throat. She was having trouble swallowing the ache away. A pulse pounded in her temples.

“Bryce, please,” he said then, and his voice made her bury her face into her palms. “Please stay.”

“I can't stay here, Matthew,” she whispered, and her eyes burned with the pain of not allowing tears. She lifted her face to see him angled toward her, the intensity in his eyes visible even in the darkness. Her own thrummed back into his, and he tightened his grip on the bench, hard enough to dig splinters into his skin.

“Why?” he demanded in a harsh whisper, even though he damn well knew the answer.

“You know why,” she whispered back, and her heart felt as though metal bands were tightening around its chambers, trying to cut off any chance of hurting like this ever again. She imagined not seeing him for the rest of her life, never feeling his hands in her hair or on her face, of never loving someone like this again…
you never will, you know it
…and the stars seemed to mock her, glittering harshly like diamonds on the finger of the girl he would eventually marry one day…

Tears gushed over her cheeks then, stunning her. She pressed both fists hard to her lips to staunch the flood of choking sobs, and Matthew damned it all and hauled her against his chest, his huge, strong, solid chest, wrapped her into his arms and clutched her like a drowning man. She clung back, her fierce sobbing muffed against his body, her arms around his torso. She wept for what they had and what they could never allow to happen, sobbed against his fancy shirt, tears that had been trapped within her for more than a decade.

“Bryce, oh God, Bryce, don't cry, sweetheart,” he said, rocking her, his heart clubbing his chest. For long minutes they held each other, so tightly, and her cries at last subsided to shaking gasps. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and whispered around the lump in his own throat, again, “Please stay.”

She shifted and reached to touch his face, cupped both palms against the scratchy surface of his cheeks. From less than six inches away she looked into his beautiful, long-lashed eyes, her own swollen and red, and he gave her just a hint of a grin, his hands wrapped around her waist. She opened her lips to speak just as he tipped his forehead against her own and said, his voice low and somber, “I'm in love with you, Bryce.”

Her heart lashed her insides with the incredible joy of those words, and tears streaked over her cheeks again, making him grip her even more tightly.

“Oh Matthew, I love you,” she whispered firecely, and his lips were on her neck, her jaw, her fingers curled into the thick softness of his dark hair. “I love you so m—” and his lips claimed her own with possessiveness. Pure, undiluted happiness churned through her body as his tongue swept into her mouth and she opened her lips to his taste, kissing him back with total abandon. It seemed as though lifetimes had passed since he'd last kissed her, instead of four days. He tore away and demanded, “Tell me again,” and she pressed herself flush against him, unable still to believe this was happening, that this gorgeous man with eyes like coals was cracking her wide open to an ocean of feeling.

“I love you with my heart and soul,” she said, her mouth an inch from his, and the air all around them seemed to sigh and shift, and at some level they both felt deep in their bellies, it was as though the earth recognized this statement in this exact moment in time to be a point of no return. The stars sparked above them as Matthew gently thumbed the tears from her cheeks and then kissed her again, his hands moving to splay like starfish along her ribs, and he carried her with him as he moved to lie flat on his back on the old familiar dock boards, holding her against his chest, her hair spilling like a waterfall all around their bodies. They kissed and kissed, her thighs veeing over his hips, his arms locked around her.