I can’t believe I’m standing here, in front of Kaden.

Can’t believe I’m seeing his face again. Even banged up as he is, he makes my heart race and my palms sweat.

He makes my blood sing and my mouth smile.

How does he do it? All he has to do is look at me with that light in his eyes. For a while, he made me feel like the most important person in the world. More than my parents ever did. More than anyone ever has.

And when I lost him, I thought I was going to die from sorrow.

He’s looking at me like that now. Like I’m the only light in the room. Like he’s drinking me in and can’t stop, like he can’t see anyone and anything else but me.

Oh yeah, this is much harder than I thought it would be. And I have only just arrived.

“Hay,” he says, his rough voice caressing my pet name. “Come here.”

I approach the bed as if in a dream, my purse slipping off my shoulder and falling to the floor with a soft thud. His head is wrapped with white gauze, a big pad pressed to one side, over his ear. His blond hair is falling in greasy strands around his face, and his beard has grown longer, but it’s him, and I can’t even…

When he opens his arms, I just fall in them, forgetting for a second that he’s hurt in my need to wrap myself around him.

God, I missed this. Missed him. His skin is cold from the hospital air-conditioning, but his heart beats steadily under my ear, and under the stench of drugs, he smells of Kaden: the scent of warm, sexy man with a hint of leather and engine oil.

“Kade,” I mumble against his chest, and his strong arms are wrapped so hard around me my bones are creaking. “God.”

I can’t find the words. It hits me how close he came to dying, and I want to bawl like a baby.

Apparently I’m not over him.

Yeah, not that much of a newsflash, I know. This guy has a habit of tearing down all my self-imposed subterfuges and illusions, laying me naked.

No barriers.

Which is really a problem when a barrier is what you need between yourself and your handsome ex.

Between your desire and your rational mind.

Between today and yesterday. All the yesterdays.

How do you move on when your sexy past keeps catching up with you? I did wish for a miracle, didn’t I?

I didn’t wish for him to be hurt, though. Or for my new-found, delicate equilibrium to be shaken and broken to pieces again.

Then again… who said miracles are always perfect? I guess they just get the job done.

So I should just shut up and take whatever time I have with this man. Forget about yesterday, and about tomorrow, and for once just live for today.

* * *

“You okay, baby?” he asks. He hasn’t let me go since I arrived, practically growling at the nurses when they tell us visiting hours are over until they leave. “You seem sad.”

I’m half-sprawled over him on the narrow bed. He says he has no injuries other than his head, but I asked a nurse just to make sure. She said that his ribcage is bruised and one knee banged up but otherwise he’s fine.

Except for his skull, which is thankfully thick enough it didn’t break when he slipped on a slick of oil in the car workshop where he works and cracked it on the floor. They don’t know how long he’d been unconscious when they found him, and it seems this version of Kaden is not as confused as the one I’d have met had I come two days ago.

At least now he remembers his own name and what year it is.

Jesus.

So I cling a little bit more tightly to him, and he growls deep in his chest. It’s different from the menacing growl he keeps directing at the poor nurses.

No, this sounds more like… a purr? Like he’s a content big cat, a lion, with his big paw around my back.

I keep feeling the urge to scratch behind his ears – or rather down his muscular chest, down that happy trail leading into his briefs…

…and I should stop this thought right there, because I’m not getting anywhere near that happy trail or his briefs, and not only because he’s wearing one of those awful blue hospital gowns and he’s laid out with a bad concussion.

Nope.

Me and Kaden naked? Not happening. Bad idea.

But my mind keeps wandering where my hands can’t.

My mind is out of control and should get spanked.

Which brings me back to memories of Kaden spanking me and how good it felt to be under his hands, at his mercy, in his control, that my body reacts without permission, my thighs clenching with an ache nobody else has been able to satisfy like he did.

Dammit. Yeah, I am totally out of control, and all I’ve done is see him, exchange a few words with him and place my head on his chest.

Living in an illusion where we’re still together, where our epic row never happened. Where he cares for me and never cheated.

Where I never found those photos and messages on his phone, where I ignored the fact he rarely took me to his apartment, and I lived in blissful ignorance and amazing sex-filled nights with him.

But no matter how beautiful a dream is, sooner or later, you wake up.

* * *

“You look sad,” Kaden says for the hundredth time, pointing the spoon at me and an accusing look. He’s been eating some soup and Jell-O the hospital staff brought him.

“I’m not sad.”

“Where were you? You were not here.”

And I shouldn’t feel guilty. He isn’t accusing me. He doesn’t sound angry, just… worried. A bit sad himself.

He keeps asking me that, and I keep replying I’m fine, but he forgets. He keeps asking if I’m okay, when he’s the one hurt.

But okay that’s not entirely true. He hurt me, too, and I bet he can see it on my face. I’ve never had much of a poker face, and from the start he was able to read me like an open book.

The problem is, he keeps forgetting the lies I’m telling him, about everything being fine.

“Hailey.” He strokes my back, his voice rumbling in his chest under my ear. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me? Why won’t anyone tell me?”

“You hit your head,” I whisper, horrified that I’m once more caught on the cusp of tears. “You slipped—”

“Not what’s wrong with me, dammit. I know I hit my head.” He lifts a hand to the bandage wrapped around his head. “I mean with us. What’s wrong with us?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” His voice cracks on that one word.

I lift my head and take a good look at him. His eyes are closed, his brow furrowed, his jaw tight. He looks like he’s in pain, which he probably is, despite the medication they’ve given him.

“I missed you,” I tell him, and I hope he hears the truth in my voice. If I can’t tell him everything, and can’t lie either, then I’ll have to lie by omission.

He blinks, as if having trouble focusing on my face. “You did?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I’ve been right here, all along.”

My throat closes up. He makes it sound so simple. So perfect. Makes me feel like a heel for walking out.

Remember what happened, I tell myself. It wasn’t like that. Remember the facts.

He cheated. You left before he hurt you worse. You ended it on your terms this time, unlike last time. It’s what saved your sanity.

But now here I am, questioning my sanity and my decisions.

Bad, bad idea, being here, with his pale green eyes on me, and on top of that raw sexiness this unexpected air of vulnerability and hurt that tugs at my heartstrings…

Dear God, I’m falling for him all over again, and this can only end badly for me.