Lana spoke, and the world went quiet.

The silence was almost complete. Never mind the fire burning in the too-near distance, the sounds of civilization breaking apart and crumbling to ash. Never mind the familiar roar and moan of an elemental appetite that could never be sated. Never mind the smoke that filled the air and crawled down his throat and compromised his lungs. Lana's words rang in his ears, cannoning off the inside of his skull. His blood pumped as a new adrenaline dump flushed through his system and threatened to take him over.

He felt panic. He felt anger, and terror, red burning bursts of emotion that painted his mind's eye until he couldn't see the way forward. And then he felt . . . joy. A joy so pure and wonderful that he thought it would burst out of the seams of himself, the same way they had been hoping for the return of the sun all these months. It was all too much and not enough, and in the wake of Lana's confession, it left him paralyzed.

"You left me, Hank!" Lana's voice had risen in volume to a shout. All at once, Hank found himself pulled back into the moment. He realized she was shouting over the roar of the fire, but the tears streaming down her face also told him in no uncertain terms that he was the reason she had to give vent to her words in a scream. "You left me again!" She succumbed to a violent coughing fit and doubled over.

Hank raised his forearm to cover his mouth and nose, took as much of a breath through the cloth of his shirt as he could manage, and lowered his arm to say, "Lana, now is not the time or place!" He reached for her, hands encircling her waist to try and hustle her out of the way, but Lana pulled herself away from him, and he found he was too afraid to go after her. What would happen to the baby if he used all his strength to corral and carry her off the premises? What would become of her, of the baby, in the next five minutes, if he didn't?

"I won't budge from this spot until you tell me why," she said. The tears that streamed down her face reflected the living light of the fire behind them. "Why did you leave me again? What are you so afraid of?"

"Lana, I never wanted to leave you. Not ever." Suddenly the words were pouring out of him, the words that had lived inside him for years like a virus no amount of distance could ever inoculate him against. The words were rising up, breaking their chains, and he was helpless to drag them back down to the dark place he had buried them. He wasn't their warden anymore. He didn't want to be. He let the words take him over and fill the night air between them. "I left because of Michael."

"Why?" Lana hiccupped. "Michael died, Hank. We all miss him! There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of him. But he's gone! There's nothing any of us could have done . . ."

"That's not true!" Hank exploded like the bursting of the building foundations just up the street. "Michael died because of me! I was supposed to drive him home that night, Lana! From the party! I knew full well that was supposed to be the arrangement, and I blew him off. I blew him off because I wanted to be with you. I knew where our night was going, and I couldn't walk away from you! Hell, I couldn't even look away from you. You were so beautiful, and I was . . . I was so stupid. That was the first night we spent together."

"I remember." Lana's tears had all dried now. Hank watched her, and his stomach gave an awful twist as he saw that she was no longer in the moment with him. She was listening to every word that came out of his mouth, and filling in the blanks of that long-distant night with the real version of events.

But he couldn't stop. He couldn't leave Lana in the dark any more than he could walk away from her now.

"I was so in love with you that I blew off my best friend, Lana. If I had taken Michael home that night—like we had planned—he wouldn't have died. His death is my fault. I'm the one responsible for taking your brother away from you."

Lana gave a cough. He didn't know if it was a sob or a hard outtake of air.

"And when I went after the driver . . . everyone thought I stopped short of killing the man. But I didn't. I thought I had killed him. I had wanted to do it with all my heart." Hank clenched his hands into fists as if he could imagine them wrapped around the other man's throat, even now. "They never should have let me out of prison. And I never should have thought I could come here. I have no place in your life."

Lana's eyes steeled suddenly, and Hank thought he knew what was coming. She was going to slap him. His cheek already tingled from the impact that was about to occur. He waited. He wanted it. He wanted whatever punishment she of all people could hand down to him. It would absolve him of nothing, but maybe he could finally stop punishing himself, every day of the week he woke up without Michael, without her, in his world . . .

Lana reached for him, grabbed his collar, and pulled him in against her. Hank went. Her arms were slim, but he was already falling into her before he could think to do otherwise. He let the circle of her embrace cradle and enfold him. He shut his eyes, not believing in the moment that it was happening, but surrendering to it all the same.

"I forgive you, Hank," Lana said. Her voice couldn't have been anything above a whisper, but it drowned out the clanging in his head, the maelstrom of feeling that he couldn't take on his own. It all went away, as if Lana's whisper was the much-needed gust of strong wind to disperse the storm. "The past is the past. We need to move on from it. All three of us. Together." She pulled his hand between them and placed it on her belly. "It's what Michael would want. I know that you love me, and that you loved Michael. Neither of us would ever want to see you suffer this way. It's time to let go."

A sob hitched in his throat. The noise startled him. He tried to tamp it down, but it was no use; it came again, and this time he didn't fight it. He let his suffering pour out of him, and Lana shouldered it—as she shouldered him. He clung to her as if he wasn't half a foot taller than she was. He clung to her like a child, crying like a child, and the hands that held him made gentle circles on his back. Tears he didn't know he was capable of streamed down his face, and . . .

Water. Drops of it, falling from the sky, catching in his hair and running beneath his shirt collar.

It was raining. The sensation was so extraordinary that Hank took a step back, and so did Lana, although their arms never left each other. The roiling sky opened up above them and poured forth a rain like he had never seen before. The deluge was almost biblical. It felt like standing beneath a waterfall with barely a break in the stream.

"The fire! Hank!" Lana tugged at him earnestly, and Hank diverted his attention to the burning houses behind them. The fire hissed beneath the onslaught of rain. It shied away, and looked to be retreating beneath the burning rafters of the roofs.

"My God. It's going to put the fire out," he breathed.

And just like that, he knew the rain had done something more. It had washed away him, and all that had made him Hank Logan for the past tormented decade: washed away his fears, his worries, and his guilt. The feelings bled away from him like rainwater runoff, until all that remained was the present. He was cleansed of the past, gifted with an unexpected, extraordinary future.

He was going to be a father. He was going to be with Lana.

"Forever," he said as he turned back to her. "Lana, I want to be with you forever. Even that won't be enough time. Lana, I want you to marry me."

"Yes." The tears streamed anew down her face, or was that just the rain cleansing her, as well? Hank folded her in his arms and she kept saying the word: "Yes. Yes."

They stood together as one in the rain. All thoughts of leaving, now or in the future, vanished from his mind.

He didn't know how long they stood there.

The people of Cedar Springs began to trickle back slowly, one by one, to watch as the rain put out the fire and washed the air clean.