I woke up from the most wonderful of dreams. Lew had come to me and we’d made up. In my dream he was carrying my child and my hand curved perfectly over the swell of his belly as we lay together in the warm sun. It even smelled like him in the dream, sweet musk with a hint of mint. I pulled him closer and felt his hands gently cover mine.

And then I woke up and realized that everything but the baby was true. Lew was there, cuddled up against me, and that smell was the smell of his hair and the soap he used.

“Lew?” I whispered. I kept my voice soft in case it really was a dream. I didn’t want to end it.

He let out a soft sigh, then stretched against me. “Damn. What time is it?”

“Holy shit, you’re real!” I jerked and whacked my head against the wall, then stared at him open-mouthed. “What are you doing here?”

He sat up and swiveled around to watch me. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“I thought you were done with me.”

Lew shook his head. “Thought about what you said last night. It took a while to dig through it all. We need to talk some more.” The words were ominous-sounding, but he reached back and took my hand, his fingers warm as they twisted themselves in between mine.

“Sure,” I said. “Here? Or you want to go to the kitchen and get some breakfast?” If I were to tell the truth, I’d rather go back to what we’d been doing, with Lew pressed up against me like we were still in high school.

“I’d rather talk here, unless you’re starving,” he said, a hint of unaccustomed shyness in his voice.

I hitched myself up with my back against the wall. A bit of gentle tugging convinced Lew to come sit beside me. He didn’t snuggle in under my arm like he would have in high school, but at least he let me keep hold of his hand. I piled the sheets up over my lap—just having him here in my bedroom, with all the memories of other times he’d spent in my bedroom, was having the expected effect. “You comfortable?” I asked him, not really sure where to start but figuring that if I kept the words going, eventually the ones we needed to say might come tumbling out.

He nodded and looked down at his lap, then raised his head to face me. “I need to understand what you were thinking when you called me that night. I know you went out with that blond after, I saw you on TV.”

“Yeah.” Well, he wouldn’t be Lew if he didn’t make you cough up the most difficult things you’d ever thought. “I’m probably going to make a mess of this. It’s really hard to explain.”

“Try me.” And Lew squeezed my hand, which gave me courage enough to start hunting the right words.

“I look back on it now and even I don’t understand what I was thinking,” I admitted. “But there I was, surrounded by people who remembered Grandma, or remembered who she’d been anyway. They were all people who’d been making a living in Hollywood since Grandma’s time and they… I don’t know, not exactly made fun of me when I talked about you. But they’d look at me, you know? And then they’d talk about these other young actors and the ones that succeeded always seemed to throw everything into their career. They cut their ties with home and just made the job the most important thing in their lives. And after a while I got to thinking that I’d never make anything of myself there if I didn’t follow this tried and true path.” I paused there, but Lew didn’t seem to have anything to add. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but I plowed on regardless. “Anyway, I’d gone a stretch without getting much work and then I got offered this low budget film, but it was a good part, you know? It had a lot of potential and the director was this new guy who had so much fucking talent he could turn a knock-knock joke into an Oscar-winning movie.”

“But he didn’t want you tied down to an omega,” Lew said flatly.

“He didn’t want me tied down at all. To anything. And my old agent told me that if I didn’t take this role, he was done with me, because I was obviously stupid.” God, that had been both the worst and the best decision I’d ever made.

“Was it worth it?”

Fucking Lew. The most uncomfortable omega ever. It was almost funny, but he deserved an answer and it needed to be the truth. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “The film was Two Days in Tripoli. It changed my life. As an actor anyway.” I rolled my head to the side so I could look at him. “It lost me you, though. And took a lot of the shine off everything that came after.”

“What would you do if you could go back there to that moment and make the choice again?”

“Probably something different. Maybe just stay here and do summer stock, work in one of the stores.”

“Would you have been happy doing that?”

“Yes. If it meant that I still had you, absolutely.”

“You are such a bullshitter, Micah West. You’d shrivel up and die without the spotlight.”

Again, that too sharp understanding of who I was. “Then I don’t know, Lew. I wish I could tell you that I did, but I don’t. I’m sorry, I know that’s probably not the answer you wanted to hear.”

He frowned and plucked at some lint on his jeans. “I don’t know what I wanted to hear. Mostly, I think, I just wanted the truth.” He looked over at me. “What would you do if they said that to you now?”

I shrugged casually, but I felt my heart bound with sudden hope. “I’m in a different place now. If they said that to me today, I’d tell them I was sorry, but I’d have to pass. And then look for a different project. I’d probably find one, too, but back then? I don’t know. I was a nobody—maybe they were right. Or maybe they were just telling me what was easy for them.” That was the scariest part of it, that I couldn’t tell what would have been the right thing to do. “I’m sorry,” I repeated. Not that the words would make it right.

Lew turned his head away from me again and closed his eyes, but he was still holding onto my hand so I had hope. “And what would you do now if I said that I was willing to move on from there? There’s no way I’m ever going to forget it happened, but I can try to forgive you.” He made a face, like he’d tasted something sour. “I want to forgive you, but…” He shrugged and pulled one knee up to his chest, which told me he was way more upset than his relaxed voice would lead a person to believe.

Which was totally my fault. “Yeah, I get it. I made you afraid of me.”

His eyes flew open and he turned to me with a snarl. “I’m not afraid of you!”

“Not physically,” I explained hastily. “But why would you put your hand back on the same stove that’s already burned you?”

His expression changed, became thoughtful, then sad, and he let his leg straighten out on the bed again. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

“I can live with that. If you do the crime, you need to be ready to do the time.” Inexplicably, that made him laugh, and I stared at him in bafflement. “What?”

“That’s what Mom always says to me,” he said in between giggles. “Every time I complain about the fire jokes.”

“Fire jokes?” I asked, not a whit wiser.

He sobered almost immediately. “Yeah. I’m surprised you haven’t heard.”

Ah. “About the fire? Yeah, I heard.”

“I’m sorry about the letterman jacket.”

I suppressed a wince. “I deserved it.”

He rolled his eyes in my direction. “Yeah, you did. The jacket was innocent, though.”

“Fair enough,” I said evenly.

We both fell silent then. I didn’t know what Lew was thinking, but the only thing on my mind was whether he could find it in his heart to forgive me, give me a second chance and let us try again. But that was Lew’s decision and I was afraid that if I said anything, if he felt pushed at all, that old Lew temper would pop up and that would be the end of us. So I played it safe and kept my mouth shut, though every cell in my body was screaming for me to beg him to take me back.

After what felt like forever, Lew pulled his knee up to his chest again and let go of my hand. My heart sank—I’d really blown it. He couldn’t get past everything I’d done.

Then he looked at me and said, “Kiss me.”

“You’re sure?”

“No. But do it anyway.”

My heart pounding, I reached for him with shaking hands and gently guided his mouth to mine.