*   *   *

“Lie with me.” He didn’t wait for her response. Instead, he straightened his clothing and lay on the grass, beckoning to her with his outstretched arm. Evie pulled down her dress and joined him, curled into his warmth, her head on his shoulder, looking up at the stars, brilliant in the dark sky.

“We never did our stargazing anywhere normal,” she said quietly. “Rooftops, treetops, forests, the roof of your car … Except then we talked about deep things like extra-terrestrial beings, and war, and music, and how chemistry teachers always manage to accidentally blow things up.”

Zane chuckled. “That was a useful lesson. We needed a quick explosive one night and I told the brothers how Mr. Cooper cut into that stick of phosphorus and blew up the class. We broke into a school and stole some. Flattened one of the Jacks’ money laundering facilities, a pool hall just outside Devil’s Hills.”

“I guess you didn’t run in with a fire extinguisher and save the day like you did in school.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss to the pulse at the base of his throat.

He curled his arm around her, tucking her into his body. “I threw more phosphorus onto the fire. Watched the building burn to the ground. Thought about you sitting at the campfire on the beach on your graduation night, how beautiful you looked in the firelight, how much I wanted you.”

“All you had to do was cross the fire pit.”

Zane felt yet another stab of regret. So many opportunities wasted. How different would things have been if he’d crossed the fire pit that night, or the playground the day he’d seen her with Mark and Ty? “I didn’t want to get burned.”

He felt her chest rise and fall with laughter. “What about all the nights we lay together under the stars and talked about the future? You wanted to be a firefighter after you put out that fire in the chemistry classroom. I was going to go to college and get my Fine Arts degree. We were going to come back to Stanton so we could see each other every day and meet up for stargazing at night.”

A wave of nostalgia hit him hard, and with it the ache of longing he’d felt every time he was with her. “I got a confession to make. I was never looking at the stars. I was looking at you looking at the stars, wishing I could be inside you. Not easy being a teenager and having the woman of your dreams lying beside you, all sexy and sweet, and not being able to touch her.”

“I was the woman of your dreams?” She tilted her head back, rubbing her cheek over the soft bristles on his jaw.

“Every one.” He’d dreamed about her even after he left, saw her on street corners, heard her voice in restaurants and bars. For years, he couldn’t be with a woman without thinking about her, wondering if another man was touching her the way he touched the strangers he took to his bed, keeping her safe and happy, loving her.

“It must have been hard…” Her voice hitched in sympathy. “When you came back and saw me with Mark and Ty.”

Zane’s body stiffened. That kind of pain wasn’t meant to be dredged up, relived, wielded to torture him again. “It fucking killed me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You had Ty to think about.” Forgiving, but not forgetting. He would have waited for her forever. In some ways, he was still waiting now.

A heavy silence thickened the air and it took him a moment to realize she was waiting for him to say something else, to apologize. But the words wouldn’t come. If he hadn’t left, he would be in jail, locked away, forgotten. He wouldn’t have trained as a firefighter, or saved Jagger’s life; he wouldn’t have joined the Sinners and found brothers who accepted him despite his darkness. And although he was sorry he had hurt her, staying would have hurt her more because he would have been forced to tell the truth he had hidden from her all these years; he would’ve shattered the illusion she had of her father as a good, kind, loving, honorable man.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said. “After three years of waiting, alone with Ty, I gave up hope.”

He knew the moment she gave up waiting now—gave up hope—from the way her body tightened, unmolding itself from him, separating, until a chasm formed between them all the deeper because it couldn’t be seen.

“I guess we’d better go.” She sat up as he knew she would, pushed herself to her feet. With her hair tangled, her dress rumpled and her feet bare, she looked like a forest creature, ethereally beautiful, wild.

Free.

Free to leave him. Free to walk away.

She took a step back when he stood, retreating. “I think you were right. There’s too much between us. Too much hurt. Too much pain. Even when we’re close I feel I can’t touch you, like you’re holding back, and I can’t stop thinking that means you’re going to leave. I don’t think sex is enough to build a bridge high enough to get over that pain or long enough to cover the distance between who we were and who we are.”

“I told you I wouldn’t turn my back on my responsibilities.”

She regarded him with a measure of resignation. “Yes, you did mention your responsibilities.”

Zane let out a growl of frustration. What more did she want? He’d told her twice now that he wouldn’t shirk his responsibility as a father. He would make sure they were safe and provided for, and tonight he’d shared with her more than he’d shared with anyone in his life. He’d let her see into his soul.

Evie turned and picked her way across the grass, her bare feet pale in the moonlight. No longer flying, laughing, as she had when he chased her, she weighed each step, as if she was afraid of getting hurt. For some reason her caution annoyed him more than her speech. Didn’t she understand she had nothing to fear when he was with her?

Maybe it was because he wasn’t good with words. He had never been an eloquent man.

Zane closed the distance between them in three easy strides. Without speaking, he lifted her in his arms, cradling against her body. Then he carried her back to the party under the twinkling stars.

*   *   *

Since guns and swearing had been banned, Zane wasn’t sure what to talk about with Ty. He’d never hung out with a kid. He stayed away from the Sinner parties where kids were invited, never dated a woman with children, and didn’t frequent locations where kids might be found. So when Evie left him alone with Ty in the safe house kitchen the morning after the party, he found himself disconcertingly unprepared.

“Where’s mom?” Ty stared at Zane from across the white plastic table. Who the hell had done the decorating? The safe house looked like something out of a catalogue, all white and shiny with blue accents. Cold. Austere. Certainly not welcoming. Not that he usually cared about such things, but he wanted Evie and Ty to be comfortable.

“In the shower.” He pushed the eggs and bacon Evie had cooked around his plate. Whether it was the alcohol or the fact he had to sleep alone on the couch with his guilt and frustration, he’d had the worst night of his life. Why the heck had he taken her so roughly in the forest, let her see that side of him? This was Evie, soft and sweet, not one of the women who came to his apartment wanting exactly what he needed to dish out to soothe the darkness in his soul. No wonder she’d tried to push him away. Or maybe it was like Dax said. She could sense he wasn’t fully committed, that he was still half in and half out the door.

“What are we doing today?” Ty’s voice pulled Zane out of yet another round of self-flagellation. “Mom says we can’t go outside.”

“We’re all gonna go to the clubhouse. I got some work to do and the brothers are gonna be too busy to keep watch over here.”

“Are there other kids there?” Ty stirred his cereal. He hadn’t eaten anything since they sat down. What was up with that?

“No. It’s not a place for kids except once a year when they have a summer barbeqcue, or there’s a special reason for a get-together, and kids can come.”