The off-key pitch would normally have made her flinch, but it didn’t. It tugged at something inside her. He felt this. This song about love and loss and never having the heart to love again. He knew what that felt like. She could see it in every line of his being as he sang along with her papa, voice so full of emotion, so full of truth.
He turned.
And stopped when he saw her.
Her mouth went dry.
The magic of the moment, of the truth she’d seen in him, the knowledge of it on his face, simmered between them. Suddenly, he broke eye contact, walked over to the stereo and turned it off. Silence fell, broken only by the chirrup of cicadas outside. He didn’t turn to face her. Was he embarrassed she’d seen him like that? So lost in her father’s music?
‘Flynn,’ she managed to say after a long moment of silence passed. ‘I didn’t know you liked my papa’s music.’ It was a stupid thing to say, but she could think of nothing else.
‘I’ve always liked it. He has a way of expressing things that feels true.’
‘Yes.’ He still wasn’t looking at her, but she could see his finger running along the top of the stereo, almost as if he wished to turn the music back on, to escape back into it again.
She swallowed hard. They’d agreed to talk, but hell, it was more difficult than she’d imagined it being. She took a small step into the room. ‘You should be resting your knee.’ She almost groaned at herself. Stupid thing to say. Not at all appropriate to the moment.
‘I did.’ He sounded like he was smiling. ‘Reid would only let me hold Rebel while he and Mac fixed the fences. Then they wouldn’t let me do anything but sit and clean saddles and tack for the rest of the day while Barb ordered Reid and Ben around in here emptying out the two back bedrooms for your clinic. They didn’t get everything finished though, and I couldn’t just do nothing while waiting for you, so I thought I’d finish off moving the last few things.’
‘Thanks, but you shouldn’t be carting furniture around.’
He shrugged. ‘It was only a few small things. Besides, the knee doesn’t hurt so much now.’ He gestured to his knee as he moved away from the stereo, pacing across the room, no closer to her, but not further away. He ran his hand along the back of the couch that lay between them. ‘I thought maybe you’d changed your mind.’
‘Carter took a long time to settle.’ She took a step into the room. Stopped. The tension of him was like a saw on her nerves.
‘You’re lucky he still wants you to put him to bed. Aaron only wants a goodnight. He doesn’t want me to tuck him in or read to him anymore.’
‘Their needs change as they get older.’
‘Yes.’
She swallowed. Loudly. ‘Shall we talk?’
‘Yes.’
She waited. He simply stared at her. She took another step closer. ‘What did you want to talk about?’ Her voice was low, harsh, her throat so horribly dry all of a sudden. Her skin prickled and she’d never been so aware of the heat of the night or the breath in her lungs.
‘You.’
‘Me?’
He nodded. Stepped around the couch, closer. ‘Us.’
‘Us?’ Oh god, had her voice squeaked? And this wasn’t the conversation she thought they were going to have. ‘What about us?’
He took a breath and another step closer. ‘I realised something.’
‘Yes?’
Another step. This time close enough that he could reach out and touch her. His hands stayed by his side. ‘I think we were friends. Before the kiss.’
‘Yes.’ She knew she should say something more, but as he took another step closer, leaving but a hand space between them so that she had to tip her head to look up at him, more than one syllable seemed impossible.
‘The kiss changed things.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I liked it.’ He swallowed. ‘A lot.’
‘Me too.’ Oh, had she just said that? It was too late to pull it back into her mouth, a mouth he was now looking at with such intensity, it made her skin tighten, prickles of energy sparking along her nerves.
‘Good.’ His lips quirked up into a small smile as he brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, the sear of heat as his fingers slid across her skin making her knees tremble. ‘We’re also adults.’
‘Yes.’
‘Adults who, for our own reasons, don’t want a relationship.’
‘Yes.’ She knew her reasons, thought she knew his.
He moved his head as if gesturing to the outside world. ‘You’re married for reasons other than love from what I heard.’
‘Yes.’
‘And your husband is in love with a man. Having a relationship with him. Sleeping with him. All with your consent.’
‘Yes.’ Could she say anything other than ‘yes’? Apparently not.
‘What about you?’
‘What about me what?’ Ahh, there, she could say something other than ‘yes’.
He cleared his throat and stepped a little closer so that there was only a centimetre between his chest and hers. ‘Did you look outside the marriage? Did you sleep with someone too?’
Her mouth dried. ‘No. I didn’t want that.’
‘Did someone hurt you?’
Such worry, such angry-fear in his voice, his eyes. ‘No. Not like that. I hurt me.’ She looked away then back at him, not wanting to be a coward. ‘I acted out in my teens. I slept with a lot of guys. Did a lot of stupid things to hurt my mother’s family, but really, I just hurt myself. The only good thing I did was when I decided to become a doctor. I did it in part because they’d given up on me, thought I had no future and
