I knew that Blake was chasing after me. I could hear the pounding of his footsteps crunching underneath the bed of leaves on the ground. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t know what to feel inside. I was confused and shocked.

“Brooklyn? Will you just wait a second, please?” His voice sounded wounded, as if he couldn’t believe that I was taking off, away from him.

Another thing I noticed? His voice sounded closer now than it had before. He was rapidly approaching me. I swallowed hard and gulped in more air the faster I ran. The problem was, I didn’t know what I was running away from. I didn’t think it had to do anything with him. I was running away from my own fears.

I think I was just furious too. I was angry that all my camera equipment had been destroyed. If Blake hadn’t startled me like that by walking up to the dock out of seemingly nowhere, then I wouldn’t have fallen backwards into the lake in the first place.

I peered up at the canopy of golden leaves on the trees stretching to the sky, wondering what I’d say to my client. All those pictures on my camera. Lost. Gone. Forever. There was nothing I could do to get those photos back. There wouldn’t be another sunset today, so I had to wait until tomorrow which meant I couldn’t deliver the images this evening as promised.

That wasn’t the only thing I was unnerved about though. I was scared to admit this one thing in my heart, much less out loud. As soon as I had seen Blake approach me on the dock, my initial reaction was to swoon. Not the head over heels, love struck and seeing little hearts in front of my eyes type of swoon, but I had to take a moment to recover.

He was even sexier than I had remembered him. He still had short dirty blond hair, but now he had a beard to go with it. He looked like a rugged mountain man, like he belonged out here to blend in with the wilderness. He was seeping with masculinity. And he wasn’t a high school jock anymore—he was a seasoned full-grown man.

With just about fifty yards between me and my SUV, I fumbled in my pocket with shaking hands, attempting to fetch out my keys. I found them and pressed the unlock button.

“Brooklyn, wait. I just want to talk to you.” Blake’s voice was urgent yet hopeful.

What did we have to talk about so many years later? More importantly, what was he doing on the dock in the first place? Something didn’t seem right. I had to suppress my dire longing to stop in my tracks and let him reach me even though every fiber in my body was conflicted. Should I stop, or should I keep going?

I squeezed my eyes shut for a brief moment to encourage the fantasies to stop swirling through my brain of us together. I had to take a deep breath to control my emotions.

I began to shiver as my wet clothes, still stuck to my body, began to cool my internal body temperature. Goose bumps prickled on the surface of my skin and my teeth started to involuntarily chatter.

I couldn’t rub my arms to create warmth in friction because I was still clinging to my damaged camera, but it didn’t matter. After what had seemed like an eternity, I had finally made it to my SUV.

My fingertips were numb and tingly from the cold, but I was able to open my car door. I had just tossed the camera and its bag into the passenger side seat when Blake jogged up beside me. He put his hand on the door frame.

“What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” He threw back at me, but his tone didn’t sound as accusatory as I had expected.

Beads of water were still dripping from his hair. He was soaked to the bone too, and he had done it all to rescue me and my camera. I felt like an asshole for running away from him, but at the same time, he had directly caused my fall in the first place. Well, maybe I couldn’t plant total blame on him.

I was clumsy by birthright. I always had been, and I had been standing at the edge of the dock when I first saw him.

But I was still irritated that the contents of my four-thousand-dollar camera had been erased by the unplanned underwater plunge.

“I asked you first.” I met his gaze, and the breath was knocked out of me for a brief second. I almost gasped. His gray eyes were steely and gorgeous. His eyelashes seemed to go on for days. I loved the way his damp hair dripped water droplets down his chin. He looked smolderingly sexy. His long-sleeved shirt was clinging to his chest too. He was ripped. I could see the indentation of his boulder-like muscles, rock hard beneath the surface of his clothes. They were out there in plain sight for me to ogle over.

“Brooklyn…” Blake trailed off, saying my name almost impatiently.

“I was taking pictures, obviously.” I knew I sounded cross, but I couldn’t help it.

I was still seething that he had shown up out of nowhere. Part of me wondered if I was just in a dream, locked in a deep sleep. I was angry at myself for still being attracted to him. I didn’t want to show that weakness in front of him. I would rather do it privately.

“I know that much,” he began again. “But why here? Why this lake on this dock?”

He continued to blink at me with curiosity. He wasn’t upset. I could gather that much by his demeanor. He appeared to be as confused as I felt inside.

“I was sent here,” I said. “On assignment for a job.”

He scoffed as if the mere idea of me having a job was something comical and outlandish. “You work? What job?”

I rolled my eyes. “Why does everyone keep saying it like that? I’m a freelance photographer, mostly wildlife, but I’ve been dabbling in other types of photography as well,” I explained.

“Oh.” He looked at me as if he were puzzled, but that the pieces were adding up. “So, us seeing each other again was what…fate?”

“If that’s what you want to call it. I’m three hundred miles away from home. There’s no way I could have known you were here. It’s been…years.”

“It’s been a long time,” he agreed, nodding.

He was leaning over me. I was sort of…pinned there, under him and his masculinity. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to protest. Part of me was enticed by the way he was looming over me. He wasn’t necessarily demanding answers of me either. He just wanted to get to the bottom of why I was on the lake, but I had questions too.

I met his gaze and then quickly flickered my eyes downcast. I focused on a tiny white caterpillar crawling across a red leaf on the ground by my foot. I set my jaw. If my camera wasn’t broken, I could have taken a picture of that lovely moment in nature.

“I’m not stalking you or anything like that, so, are you satisfied? Can I go now?” I looked at him.

I saw a shimmer of disappointment and hurt in his eyes, but it disappeared as quickly as I had noticed it.

What were the chances of me running into him after so many years? It seemed like too much of a perfect opportunity to be a coincidence.

I was still freezing, and a misty rain had begun. A blanket of fog was beginning to creep across the canvas of the forest floor. I wanted to get in my car, turn the heater on full blast, and peel out of this parking lot while never looking back.

But…

There was always a catch when it came to ex-boyfriends.

I couldn’t leave. I was drawn to him. There was a magnetic force rooting me to the ground. I was compelled to keep staring into his handsome eyes. I wanted to stay. I was torn between the past and the present, and they were playing ping pong in my mind.

“You still didn’t answer me,” I told him.

He frowned. “Answer you about what?”

“About why you’re here too, in this town.”

Blake chuckled as if he were amused. He shook his head, but he didn’t give me a solid answer which made me feel even more suspicious of his behavior and sudden appearance out of thin air.

“I live here,” he said flatly.

“Here?” I was taken aback as I looked around for any sign of houses. I hadn’t seen a home for miles. I was under the impression that the only thing out here was this lake and campgrounds.

“Yes.” Blake nodded assertively. “And you’re on private property.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. “I am?” I shook my head. “I had…no idea. So, what are you? The security guard, or something?”

Once that statement came out, I realized how I must have sounded. But Blake just chuckled. “Or something,” he said. “This is my property. I own the lot and that includes the lake.”

I stared at him in utter shock. “That was your dock we were standing on?”

“Correct.” There was a teeny sliver of a smile at the corners of his lips, and his eyes looked kind, not domineering in any way.

I sighed, but before I could express my surprise, he exclaimed, “Don’t look so surprised. I’m not the stupid kid I used to be.”

I shook my head. “I never thought you were stupid, Blake.”

“Not even a little?” he asked.

“Not in the least.”

He was looking down at my hand and it took me all of few seconds to realize that he was looking for. I covered my left hand with my right.

“Are you single now?” he asked.

“Yes” I folded my hands behind my back. “Happily single,” I added with emphasis.

“Mm-hmm.” He pressed his lips together and eyed me through narrowed slits. “Did you ever marry that tight ass Daddy-Big-Bucks?”

I laughed. “What?”

“You heard me.”

There was a tinge of jealousy in Blake’s voice, but honestly, I couldn’t blame him for being a little bitter. Given how we left things between us all those years ago, I could understand his hurt, but he didn’t have the whole story. He didn’t know what I had endured, or how confused I’d been.

“I married him, yes, but obviously I’m not with him anymore.”

There was a slice of silence that felt heavy in the misty fog of the woods. I waited for Blake to say something, anything. Surely, he didn’t expect me to elaborate on the pain of my past. I mean, our fateful encounter had been going on for less than half an hour.

Finally, I had to break the emptiness between us. “I’m not going to give you the juicy details if that is what you’re looking for here.”

“It’s not.” Blake didn’t skip a beat, but his eyes flickered with sincerity. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories or anything like that.”

“It’s okay. I’m a big girl now. Like I said, I’m happily single now.”

He lifted his left eyebrow. “Brooklyn?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen you in eight years, but I remember enough about you to know when you’re lying.”

“Lying? Why would I lie?” I swallowed and nibbled the left corner of my bottom lip.

“I don’t know.” He lifted his hand and reached out to swipe away some wet hair from being plastered to my face. “But when you lie, you look down to the left and then you look back up quickly to check to see if the person believed your lie.”

“You think you still know me?” I mumbled.

“I know you from head to toe,” he whispered.

I gasped when his palm, which was surprisingly warm touched my cheek. “I’m not the girl I used to be.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You were happy then. You just said you were happy being single, but for some odd reason, I don’t think that’s entirely true. That statement just didn’t come out right. Am I right?”

I nodded and leaned in. He was so close that I could kiss him. Eight years ago, I would’ve jumped in his arms and been open about what I needed from him, but those days were long gone. He wasn’t mine to have anymore. I had let him go. And I lost him.

“I want you to be happy, so let’s fix that,” he exclaimed, before leaning in and pressing his lips to mine.

I saw sparks in front of my eyes behind my eyelids. My hands were independent from my body. I melded into him, yielding immediately. I surprised even myself. I ran my hands through his thick, luscious hair.

I found my lips parting, relenting to the outpouring of passion that he had to give me. He was kissing me urgently, with primal desire. Every part of my body tingled, but it wasn’t from the cold any longer. I was warmed up, ignited by an old flame that was suddenly giving me affection in his tender kisses.

That’s when I remembered what I was doing. I was jolted back to reality by the own monsters in my mind. I pushed away from him. We were both panting hard. His lips were red from the suction of being connected to mine. His kiss and his touch still lingered, sizzling on my lips in a tantalizing way.

I couldn’t continue down this path. Not until I had more resolute answers.

“We can’t just do that anymore,” I panted. “Where have you been all this time, Blake? Why did you disappear on me?”