At Caleb’s words, emotion hit me, so hard I almost lost my breath. All the loneliness, all the grief, all the everything I had stuffed away inside rose, clamoring to be free. Tears pricked hot at the backs of my eyes. I could hardly catch my breath as I stared at him. “I missed you too.”

The words were entirely insufficient to express what I really felt. I lifted a finger to trace his brows again, dragging it down the other side of his face. When my thumb traced his lip, he caught it in his teeth, sucking it lightly. Need barreled through me, my channel clenching, and my body aflame. I didn’t know what to do other than tumble into the fire. I started to lean toward him again, but his hand dropped from my cheek, gently gripping my shoulder and holding me in place.

“I don’t want to rush,” he said.

It wasn’t that I wanted to rush, it was more that I was so overcome with the moment I could hardly contain myself.

Yet, in the midst of the maelstrom when I could’ve been an utter disaster inside, I wasn’t. Because with Caleb, I felt safe for the first time in years.

I managed a shuddering breath and nodded. As I stood between the cage of his knees, his hands slid down my arms, reaching to unbutton my blouse. With the flames of the fire flickering behind us, he slowly began to undress me. It was only when my blouse started to fall off of my shoulders that I recalled he had never seen my scars. In a panic, I caught the edges of my blouse, tugging it closed again.

My panic must’ve shown on my face. His eyes flicked to mine, his hands stilling where they rested at the buttons of my jeans. “What?” he asked, his voice intent and gentle.

Words lodged in my throat, so I did the only thing I could and slowly released my blouse and let it fall open, exposing the scars on my side and abdomen.

Maybe it didn’t make sense, but the scars were the easiest part of everything that had happened. Don’t mistake that for me saying that healing from burns was easy. Hell no. It was more like walking through fire again and again and again. The worst of the scars were on my left side where I’d sustained burns on the side of my waist that wrapped around to the front and back. The scarred area spanned from just below my breast to the edge of my pelvic bone. There was a gap of unblemished skin and then another swath of scarring on the side of my upper thigh. I also had scarring in small areas on my back and arms. Those were small enough to not be so obvious. When burns healed, the skin looked stretched tight and almost shiny.

Caleb’s eyes hadn’t left my face yet. My mind spun back to those first few years after the accident when I was a little wild and reckless, busy trying to forget everything. One night stands were my thing. Not that I had that many of them, mind you. But here and there, when the grief got too much, when the guilt of surviving sliced through me and when I just wanted to forget, I would try to escape with enough alcohol to blunt everything I felt and find someone to hold me.

I wasn’t ashamed of my scars, but I had become sadly accustomed to the reaction of others when they saw them. It wasn’t pretty, and it could’ve been so much worse. I’d never forget this man who was in the burn unit in Anchorage at the same time I was. Like me, he’d been in a car accident, but it had been much worse and he had no Caleb there to pull him out to safety. He’d sustained burns over much of his body. In the face of that, he was the most cheerful person I’d ever met. Even in severe pain, his spirit had shone through. His wife had said hello to me one day when she was there visiting, and we struck up a conversation. His life changed drastically because of the accident. Yet, they were still married, and we’d stayed in touch over the years.

Meeting him at that time had helped me immensely. While I had struggled with all of my feelings about Jake dying and the mess of it all, I’d actually done okay when it came to accepting my scars. Beauty was only skin deep, and I knew that. Despite that, I carried a sense of trepidation whenever someone was going to see my body.

“I just didn’t want you to be startled,” I finally said in response to his question.

I wouldn’t pretend I wasn’t self-conscious at all, because I was, but it was from my worry over how he might react. His eyes flicked down finally as I let go of my blouse and it slid to the floor. I watched him carefully, trying to read into what might be passing through his mind.

He lifted a hand, tracing along the top edge of where the scarring began along my ribs. His hand came to rest in the dip at my waist after he traced all the way down to where the scars disappeared below the waistband of my jeans. Only then did he look back to me again. His eyes gleamed with a hint of tears, but there was no disgust, no shock, simply acceptance.

“I wish you’d let me be there for you,” he said, his voice breaking into the weighted quiet.

“I wasn’t ready. If I could do it all over, I would.”

I meant those words with every fiber of my heart. I could only wonder if everything would’ve been different if I hadn’t nearly lost my mind with grief and shock and pushed away everyone who mattered for those first few years. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up in Oregon, maybe I wouldn’t have had a crazy idiot become obsessed with me. Yet, there was one thing I had learned in therapy—I had to accept what happened. So I was trying. I couldn’t change my past, but I might be able to change my future.

Caleb never looked away and nodded slowly. “Can you feel this?” he asked.

I felt the brush of his thumb against my skin over the scars. The sensation wasn’t the same as if he’d been brushing over my unscarred skin, but I could still feel it. A true gift.

At my nod, his hand slid down over my scars, coming to rest just above the curve my hip. As we stared at each other, the air around us hummed, and the butterflies unleashed in my belly went wild.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he murmured.

Emotion and desire were barreling through me, twisting and tangling together.

I shook my head. “I pushed you away. It wasn’t your fault.”

Something flickered in the depths of his eyes. In this moment, so fraught with emotion, need, uncertainty, and the ghosts of our shared past, I couldn’t have interpreted it if I tried.

“But I could’ve argued about it. I could’ve pushed back.”

“It doesn’t matter now. Just like we can’t change what happened that night, we can’t change what happened after.”

Lifting his hand, he brushed my hair away from my forehead, lightly tracing the stitches along my hairline. “When do you see the doctor again?”

“Tomorrow actually.”

Tucking a loose lock of hair behind my ear, he threaded his hand into my hair. Then, his lips were on mine again, and I forgot everything else.

His tongue tangled with mine, while my hands got busy. I needed more, I needed everything, everywhere, all at once. I wanted to tumble into this madness, every searing minute of it. When I moaned into our kiss, he broke free, his lips blazing a wet trail down the side of my neck.

“Off,” I demanded, yanking at his shirt. I needed to feel his skin against mine. With a low chuckle, he lifted his head. Reaching behind his neck, he lifted his T-shirt off in one swoop where it fell to the floor with my blouse.

His palm slid down the center of my spine in a heated pass. Cupping my bottom, he pulled me tight against him. The feel of his body against mine elicited a gasp from me. My skin felt alive, little fires lighting under the surface at every point of contact.

His lips made their way down into the valley between my breasts, creating a pocket of space between us. He cupped a breast, his thumb teasing my nipple, while he dragged his tongue over the other. His teeth scored me lightly, my nipples puckering to an ache.

I cried out when he lifted his head. “Don’t stop,” I gasped.

But then he was lifting me against him. I curled my legs around his hips as he turned. He held me easily, his strength evident. Walking swiftly across the room, he carried me up the spiral staircase without once missing a step. With his hard cock at the apex of my thighs, rubbing against my core, the friction of the denim between us made me wild. I drew my tongue along the side of his neck, savoring the salty tang of his skin. Breathing in deeply, I inhaled his scent, so familiar it was like a drug.

Before I knew it, we were upstairs in his bedroom and he was easing me down onto his bed.

“Ella.”

My eyes flickered open to find him, the heat of his gaze like a brand. He took my breath away. My eyes coasted over his body—every inch of it so muscled, he might as well have been carved from stone. I lingered on a few scars on his forearms, recognizing them as the burn scars from our accident.

Leaning up on my elbows, I reached for the button on his jeans. He moved quickly, taking a step back and kicking off his boots. In no time, he stood in front of me in nothing but a pair of fitted black briefs, his arousal evident. My channel clenched, and I became acutely aware of the drenched silk between my thighs.

He nudged my thighs apart with his knee, his fingers trailing under the curve of my breasts. As gentle as his touch was, it sent slivers of fire through me.

“Caleb,” I murmured.

“Ella,” was his only reply.

I had no idea what I might’ve meant to say. Losing all sense of anything other than the feel of him near me and the intimacy catching us in its web, I sank into a haze of need. His touch dusted over my belly before he swiftly unbuttoned my jeans and slid them off my hips. On the heels of the gentle sound of the fabric tumbling to the floor, he stretched out over me. His lips met mine in another searing kiss. His lips were everywhere—on my neck, down over my breasts, teasing my nipples.

He dusted soft kisses over the curve of my belly and then on my side. In the years since the accident, no one had ever touched my scars other than me, or nurses and doctors. Caleb did. He traced along the edges, the contrast of the subtly ticklish sensation over the scars and the feel of his lips on the unmarred surface of my skin shattering me with need.

“Ella.”

I dragged my eyes open at the gruff sound of my name. Lifting my head, I met his gaze, the look there so intent, so strong, it arrowed into my heart, straight to the core I’d buried behind walls and numbness. Tears pricked at my eyes again. For a moment, sheer terror struck me, and I almost pushed back. But I couldn’t.

This was Caleb. This was me. Us.

With Caleb’s eyes locked to mine, he dragged his fingers across the damp silk between my thighs.

That was what I needed, pure sensation to make me forget, to push me through to the other side of everything I’d hidden from. My hips reflexively arched into his touch, my head falling back. Rolling to my side, he dragged my panties down, and I kicked them free from my ankles.

Then, his fingers were stroking through my slick folds. I gasped at each pass, my sex clenching. I heard myself murmuring his name again and again—that seemed to be the only word I was capable of speaking now.

Caleb’s mouth came against me as a finger sank into my channel. He had always been a generous lover. Our teenage explorations had been awkward at times, but always fun. I knew he would tease and dally without ever getting impatient, but I was too close to the edge to make that possible. My hips flexed into him as a second finger joined the first, both of them buried deep inside of me while his tongue teased over my clit.

Pressure gathered inside, swirling in my core, narrowing to a point of sensation at my center. Pleasure scored through me, hard and fast, with every swirl of his tongue and every drive of his fingers inside of me. I broke apart, pleasure piercing me from the inside out.

I felt him slowly pull back and stand. Dragging my eyes open, I glanced up to see him kicking his briefs off, all of him now bared to me. I swallowed, need slamming into me again.

Every inch of him was pure muscle. He started to lean over me and then rolled to the side, reaching for his dresser. Inside of a hot second, he had a condom on and his weight was sinking down over me. The feel of him against me was so good, I almost cried out.

As he settled between my thighs, my legs curled around his hips and I rocked into him. The feel of his cock sliding through my folds almost sent me over the edge again.

“Ella,” he murmured.

Opening my eyes, I found his gaze waiting, the look contained within them striking me at the heart. I’d forgotten many things, but I had never forgotten what it felt like to be this close to him. I felt vulnerable and safe at once. I swallowed against the emotion rising inside, trying to hold it together. Because I didn’t want this to be a moment where he had to comfort me when I fell apart. Not when the only reason I was falling apart was because it felt so good to be with him again.

He brushed my tangled hair away from my face, saying more with his eyes than words could ever express. The need to cry subsided.

“I need to see you,” he said simply.

I couldn’t have denied him if I wanted to. And I didn’t. Because I needed to see him too, to be present in this moment in a way I hadn’t been in years.

He reached between us, adjusted the angle of his hips and surged into me. At the feel of him filling me, I gasped. Because I was tight. It had been a while.

Caleb held still for a beat, his hands curling into mine and gripping them tightly. With my breath heaving and his in tune with it, we stared at each other.

“I missed you,” he repeated.