Not fear. Recognition. The same recognition that's burning through me right now, the understanding that the thing between us didn't die when she left.
It didn't even have the decency to go dormant. It's been sitting in both of us for twenty-one years like an ember in dry grass, waiting for oxygen.
"Don't," she whispers.
"Don't what?"
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're deciding whether to hate me or—" She stops. Swallows. Her throat moves and my eyes follow the line of it the way a predator tracks movement—involuntary, instinctive, dangerous. "Harlan. We can't."
"You don't get to tell me what we can't do." I close the distance between us in two steps.
Not fast—deliberate.
The way I do everything. Giving her time to move, to step back, to leave if she wants to leave.
She doesn't move.
Her feet stay planted and her chin comes up and she looks at me with those dark eyes that are older and more dangerous and I amsogoddamn furious at this woman I can barely see straight.
"You kept my daughter from me."
"I know."
"Twenty years, Marlena."
"I know."
"Every birthday. Every first day of school. Every—" My voice breaks and I hate it. I close my jaw. Reset. "Every moment. You took every moment from me when I could have been forging a relationship with my daughter."
"I know." Her eyes are filling. Not spilling over… just filling, the tears sitting right at the edge, held there by the same force of will that's keeping her standing in front of me instead of running the way she ran before. "And I'm sorry. I'msosorry, Harlan. I know that doesn't fix it. I know sorry doesn't give you twenty years back. But I am sorry."
"Sorry." I say the word like it's poison. "You'resorry."
My hand comes up. Not to hit. I've never hit a woman in my life and I won't start now, no matter what she's taken from me.
My hand comes up and cups the side of her face, thumb on her cheekbone, fingers in her hair, and the contact is a detonation.
She inhales. Sharp. Her hand comes up to grab my wrist, to pull me away or hold me there, I don't think she knows which.
Her skin is warm under my palm. Her hair is soft between my fingers, and the freckles. God, Presley has these same freckles,my daughter has her mother's freckles, and the fury and the want tangle together into something I can't separate and don't want to.
"I should throw you off this ranch," I say against her mouth. Close enough to feel the words land on her lips. "I should let you walk out that door and never look back. The way you did to me."
"Then do it." Her voice is barely a sound. Her fingers tighten on my wrist. Not pulling away. Holding on. "If that's what you want. Throw me out. But I came here for Presley, and I'm not leaving without my daughter."
"Ourdaughter."
The word snaps something. In both of us.
I don't know who moves first, but it doesn’t matter.
My mouth is on hers and her hands are in my shirt and years of fury, want, and grief pour out of both of us in a collision that has nothing to do with tenderness and everything to do with punishment.
I kiss her like I hate her, because I do.
