CHAPTER ONE
Jack
The small town of Dayton was only about a hundred miles away from downtown Chicago. The highway wrapped around Lake Michigan and the scenic drive wasn’t a bad way to spend a Friday afternoon in early October. Jack drove with the windows down, loosely following the driving instructions on his phone.
He had never been to Dayton. In fact, Jack had never even heard of the town until Cassie moved there. He could still perfectly remember the day she had told him she was leaving. It was July 5, almost nine months after the day he found her. Jack hadn’t anticipated the news of her impending departure, but he also wasn’t exactly surprised. If anyone had a reason to leave town suddenly, it was Cassie Miller.
Jack first crossed paths with her a year ago on an abnormally cold October day. In contrast, it was at least seventy degrees today. The weather wasn’t the only thing that had changed dramatically in the last year.
The farther that Jack moved away from the city, the more he began to understand why Cassie had chosen to move to that area. As the sun danced over the surface of the lake, Jack took a deep breath and savored the fresh, unpolluted air. Following the directions that Cassie had sent him, Jack pulled off the highway at the exit that looped around Dayton. On the outskirts of town, he took a right onto an unpaved road and found Cassie’s home at the very end, over a hundred yards back from the main road. If she hadn’t given him explicit directions, Jack never would have found it. That was probably the whole reason she had chosen to live in that house.
It was exactly the kind of home he could picture Cassie living in. Crisp white paint and a large wrap-around porch with two rocking chairs where Jack could imagine her drinking her morning coffee. He climbed from the car and stretched, enjoying the feeling of the sun on his skin. There would only be a few more days like this before a chilly autumn would make a brief appearance, only to be replaced by a brutal winter.
A movement in the house caught Jack’s eye and made his heart flutter. He could see Cassie’s silhouette as she moved behind the thin curtains. When she finally opened the front door, Jack’s eyes found her face and his breath caught in his throat. She looked so flawlessly beautiful that Jack could hardly believe it was the same woman he had found in a filthy alley just a year ago.
When she smiled, he knew it was the same Cassie that had captured his heart so long ago.
“Jack,” she said, her soft voice causing his head to spin. It was then that he realized just how much he had missed Cassie. It was also that moment that he let himself remember Cassie, really remember her, and the terrible circumstances that had brought them together.
The day Jack met Cassie he had already been a detective for five years. He had seen a lot of terrible things on the job, but none of that compared to what he would see that day. For six months, he had been hunting for a deranged serial killer that was targeting young women in Chicago. The killer was brutal and efficient. He had left a trail of three bodies and zero evidence pointing to his identity or motive. When the call came in that another body had been found, Jack wasn’t expecting much.
His shoes crunched loudly over the dead leaves when he stepped into the alley. A neighbor throwing away his trash had found the body next to the dumpster. Over the last week, the news had been playing endless loops of Cassie’s disappearance, so it hadn’t been hard for the man to identify her. He claimed that he called the police immediately and hadn’t disturbed the body. Jack had the faintest glimmer of hope that maybe he would find something useful at the scene.
A pair of feet was just visible around the corner of the dumpster and Jack recognized the red and purple sneakers. Cassie Miller’s boyfriend, Ben, had mentioned them at least a dozen times during questioning. He had been the last person to see her alive, but had never seriously been considered a suspect. Cassie’s disappearance had been too similar to the others and it had to be connected to the serial killer, but that didn’t stop Jack from grilling Ben. They were racing the clock to find Cassie while she was still alive and Jack had believed that Ben would be able to remember a key detail that would crack the case open. Instead, it had been a man taking out his trash and Cassie’s signature running shoes that had brought Jack to her.
At the beginning of the case, right after she went missing, Jack spent hours staring at pictures of Cassie. He memorized her face, knowing that when times got hard and felt hopeless he would be able to rely on that to keep him motivated. It wasn’t hard to stare at Cassie. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Dark, flowing hair and wide green eyes with plump, pink lips that became slightly crooked when she smiled. But the Cassie he found by the dumpster was unrecognizable.
She was lying on her back, her head facing away from Jack. He walked slowly around her outstretched feet to get a better look. When he saw her face- that once lovely and captivating face- a wave of nausea hit him. That face was now mangled, bruised and bloody, with her dark hair covering part of it. As Jack got a good look, he fought the wave of sickness rumbling in his stomach. To be good at the job, you learned to bury that part of your humanity. It was the only way to survive. But that day, all of Jack’s training disappeared.
He crouched next to Cassie slowly, careful not to disturb anything while staring at her battered face. Swollen eyes surround by dark bruises and a busted lip. This wasn’t the woman he had spent days studying- this was evil personified.
Another wave of nausea rolled through him and he fought back the urge to vomit. He thought that he saw the slightest movement of Cassie’s hand, but blamed it on his dizziness. But then Cassie opened her eyes. It was almost impossible to tell considering they were nothing more than slits surrounded by swollen tissue, but Jack detected a sliver of green.
“She’s alive!” he yelled louder than he had ever yelled. He completely forgot that he was in the middle of a crime scene as he scooped her into his arms. It was then that he realized that she was covered in blood. It soaked through his suit jacket and stained his white dress shirt a vibrant shade of red. For the blood to be that fresh, she couldn’t have been out there very long. Her body was cold and frail in his arms as he searched for the source of the blood. Dozens of shallow cuts covered her body, but none of them appeared to be life-threatening.
Jack yelled again for help and Cassie raised a shaking hand, touching his cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved me.”
Now Cassie was standing before Jack, looking more beautiful than he remembered. The bronze tinge of her skin made her look alive and full of energy. She looked stronger, too, and Jack speculated that she had taken up running again. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans with a white tank-top, her feet bare. Her hair was longer and it fluttered in the breeze.
Jack was completely frozen- paralyzed by her beauty. He wanted to run to her and pull her into his arms. He wanted to tangle his hands in her hair and kiss those perfect lips. Most of all, he wanted to tell her how much he had missed her and that he was madly in love with her. But he didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t have to, because Cassie acted first.
She tilted her head at him and her smile grew as she repeated his name, “Jack.” Then she sprang forward, taking the porch stairs two at a time as she closed the distance to his car in three long strides. Her feet left the ground as she jumped on him, her arms circling like a vice around his neck. Jack caught her easily, laughing into her neck and hair. He didn’t ever want to let go.
Cassie stayed in the hospital for one week. Jack visited her every day, sometimes twice in a day, under the guise of the investigation. The truth was that he wanted to make sure she was doing okay. She had just barely gotten away from her captor. During questioning, Jack learned that she had been kept in a house not far from where she was found. She had managed to escape, but she hadn’t gotten far because of the blood loss. When she felt her body beginning to fail her, she tried to hide behind the dumpster. The neighbor had just barely found her in time.
She was lucky, all the experts said so. Not only were her wounds superficial, but she also didn’t remember all the gory details about her time in captivity. For twelve days, she had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and starved. Once she was released from the hospital, it became clear that the psychological wounds had left deep scars. For weeks, she couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time and she couldn’t leave her apartment alone, and definitely not at night. Cassie had survived, but she was barely living.
At first, Jack spent nearly all his time searching for her abductor. Whenever he finally took a break, he used the time to check in on Cassie. Sometimes it was just a quick call, but other times he stopped by her place with Chinese food or pizza. Her boyfriend stuck around for a while, but he couldn’t take the night terrors and the way Cassie flinched every time Ben touched her. After a few weeks, he split. When she told Jack about their breakup, her eyes were vacant. It may have taken Ben a few weeks to call it off, but Cassie had been checked out of their relationship from the beginning. Neither of them was really to blame. It was an impossible circumstance.
After Ben left, Jack spent more and more time at Cassie’s place. He worried about her being there alone and the recluse lifestyle she had adopted. Reintroducing her to the world became Jack’s mission. He arranged trips to museums and coffee shops during the day. Eventually, dinners and movie nights were added to the repertoire. Jack worried that he might be pushing too much, but Cassie claimed that she felt safe with him. It probably didn’t hurt that he carried a gun.
Just three months after he found her by the dumpster, everything changed. It started as Jack’s marriage ended. Lillian and Jack had been separated for almost six months at that point. She was tired of sharing Jack with his job and Jack was tired of share her with her boss. Cassie took the divorce harder than him. She felt guilty about the time he was spending with her when he should have been working to save his marriage- Cassie’s words, not Jack’s.
At least a dozen times he explained to her that the marriage had ended long before Cassie came into his life, but Jack wasn’t sure that she ever believed him. Even though she felt guilty, Cassie never pushed him away. She needed him. In a perverse way, Jack needed her just as much. Before Cassie, his life was consumed by his job. One murder at a time, one criminal at a time. He had stopped seeing the victims, focusing only on the perpetrators. Jack had trouble sleeping and usually passed out after one too many glasses of scotch. He was angry all the time and was becoming his own worst nightmare- he was turning into his father.
Cassie brought him back to life. She gave him a purpose and a reason to straighten out his life. In many ways, she was so much stronger than him. But she was also incredibly broken and he wanted nothing more than to help put her back together. Somewhere along the way, Jack fell in love with Cassie Miller.
It was wrong. Jack knew that. He just didn’t care.
She may have figured it out before he did. One night, he went over to her place determined to admit his feelings for her, but she stopped him. That was when she told Jack that she was leaving town. She claimed that she didn’t feel safe in the city, which was understandable. But part of Jack wondered if she was really leaving because of him. Regardless, he didn’t try to stop her. If leaving was what she needed to do to feel better, Jack had to let her go.
That was three months ago. Three incredibly long, lonely months. In that time, Jack’s divorce had been finalized, his worthless father had called to let him know that he was dying, and Jack wasn’t any closer to finding Cassie’s attacker. He had returned to hating life and drinking away his troubles. But then his phone rang, and Cassie’s voice brought him back.
CHAPTER TWO
Cassie
Three months. That’s how long it had been since Jack and Cassie had been together. Now they were sitting next to one another on her rickety porch swing, sipping ice-cold beers and making pleasant conversation about the weather.
“How’s work?” Cassie asked, shooting him a side-long glance. She was only asking to fill the awkward silence. It wasn’t like she enjoyed hearing about the unsolved cases that tortured Jack. She didn’t want that kind of ugliness in her life any longer and she wished it didn’t have to be part of Jack’s life either. But she would rather talk about that than revisit her own unsolved attack. She had moved on in the last few months, even if she would never be able to completely forget.
“Work is fine,” Jack said noncommittally. Cassie took a long sip of beer, letting the coolness slide down slowly. Whenever she was around Jack, she felt the need to cool down. “You keeping busy?”
She nodded. “I teach a couple of classes at the local community college. English and journalism. Not exactly glamorous, but it keeps my mind off things.”
Prior to her abduction, Cassie had been a successful freelance copywriter and a professor at Northwestern University. Teaching a couple of classes at Dayton Community College was a big change, but the step down didn’t bother Cassie. It took a lot to bother her nowadays.
“That’s good. It’s good that you are getting out.” Jack sounded like he was talking about his elderly grandmother.
She laughed and slapped his arm lightly. “I’m not an invalid, Jack. I’m just a little crazy.”
“You and me both.” He reached for Cassie’s hand and she instinctively turned it over, palm facing up. He placed his hand on top and laced his fingers through hers. It couldn’t be a coincidence that their hands fit together so perfectly.
Jack sighed contentedly and said, “I’ve missed you, Cass.”
“I’ve missed you, Jack.” She squeezed his hand. “That’s why I called.”
Those first days and weeks after escaping her captor had been overwhelmingly traumatizing. Cassie hadn’t been able to process what she had endured. Her brain essentially shut down and she felt numb most of the time. It took all her energy to focus on the simplest of tasks. Getting out of bed was exhausting. Showering was nearly impossible. Sleep didn’t happen until her body was so tired she fell into unconsciousness.
Ben had tried to stick by her in the beginning. They had only been dating a few months before the abduction and it was a lot for anyone to handle. Eventually, he grew tired of her neuroses and inability to open up to him. When he told Cassie that he thought it would be best if they had some time apart, she agreed without protest. At that moment in her life, she didn’t believe she would ever be happy again and it wasn’t fair to impose her misery on someone else.
Then Jack came along. Technically, he was always there. He was the first face Cassie saw when she opened her eyes that day, but she didn’t really notice him at first. He was just another man who stared at her with pity in his eyes. One big difference though was that when he asked her questions about her ordeal, he kept eye contact the entire time, even when the answers were too painful to hear. The other men didn’t do that.
At first, Jack would call to see how Cassie was doing. His were the only calls she answered in those days because she knew that he’d already heard the gory details. There was nothing she could say that would shock him. The same thing couldn’t be said for most of her friends who tiptoed around the obvious and flinched whenever they saw one of her scars. Jack was different.
His calls turned into visits, and the visits turned daily after Ben left. Jack didn’t like her spending so much time alone. Cassie didn’t really like being alone either. She was afraid. But when Jack was around, that fear went away. She started to live her life again. He made her laugh and plan for the future. Sometimes he slept on her couch after a long night of watching movies. He would pretend that he was too tired to make the trek to his own home, but she knew he was lying. Cassie had told him about how she had trouble sleeping and he knew that she felt safer with him there, with his gun there.
The nights that he slept over were the only nights where she could truly rest. Slowly but surely, Jack was becoming the most important person in her life. That frightened her almost as much as her nightmares. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone. She didn’t want to feel happy again because then she would have something to lose. Misery was easier.
The first moment Cassie knew that she loved Jack happened seven months ago. It was a random Wednesday in March, and the weather was unseasonably warm. Jack stopped by to see how she was doing and he convinced her to follow him outside for some fresh air. Cassie’s building surrounded a courtyard with a large stone fountain in the center. She and Jack sat on the stone ledge and Cassie ran a hand over the surface of the water. The fountain was a couple of feet deep, and while the water was cold, it was not unbearable. Since everything had happened, Cassie had been drawn to extremes- too hot and too cold, bitter and sour. It was her way of getting past the numbness and feeling alive again.
“How long do you think you could last in that water?” she asked Jack, nodding to the fountain. It was around sixty degrees outside, but the water was colder. One of her neighbors had their window open and soft music floated down to them.
Jack considered her question for a minute and then shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out,” he said. Before Cassie knew what was happening, he was peeling off his socks and shoes. He swung his legs into the water and stood, holding out a hand to her. “You joining me?”
She laughed and shook her head. “You are crazy. I was just speaking hypothetically.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You can’t back out on me now.” Jack grinned, looking very much like a naughty little boy, and Cassie was tired of being mature and responsible. She wanted to play in the fountain.
Jack was surprised when she kicked off her shoes and grabbed his hand, but he recovered quickly. The water was much colder against the sensitive skin on Cassie’s feet than it had been on her hand and the shock of it sent a thrilling shiver up her spine. It only occurred to her later that the water hadn’t really been that cold and that it more likely had been the feeling of Jack’s hand around hers that had excited Cassie. But at that moment, she was still oblivious to the budding feelings that had been developing in the deepest corners of her body.
“This is crazy,” Cassie said, tilting her head to see Jack’s face. He was still smiling, and her hand was still entwined in his. The water came up to her knees and she kicked it playfully, spraying Jack. He returned the favor and soon they were both drenched.
She didn’t think either of them planned it, and Cassie knew neither of them suggested it, but soon they were dancing in the fountain, Jack spinning and twirling her like they were in the middle of a dance floor. Cassie laughed at something Jack said about his “amazing” dance moves and her foot slipped on the slippery stone. Jack’s reflexes were quick, his arm whipping around her waist to catch her before she could fall into the water.
They stood there for a long time, Cassie’s body pressed close against him, neither of them moving except for the hurried breaths that shook their chests. It was in that moment, as Cassie stared into his eyes, that she realized she loved Jack. She loved him for the quiet but persistent way he forced her to keep living her life and for the way he looked at Cassie like he didn’t see her scars, both the physical and the emotional. She loved him for dancing with her in that fountain and for making her laugh. But most of all, Cassie loved him because he was the best person she had ever known- smart, funny, selfless, and kind-hearted. He was everything she had ever wanted, and Cassie couldn’t have him.
So she was the one that pushed away, climbing from the fountain and shivering. She didn’t even feel the cold. The raw emotion running through her body shook Cassie all the way to the core. For the next four months, she was able to keep those feelings pushed as deep inside of her as they could go. Any time she felt them resurfacing, she shoved them back down. But then one day, Jack and Cassie were hanging out in her apartment watching a movie on television and she glanced at him, just in time to catch him watching her. It was just for a second, one flash of feeling in his eyes, but that was all Cassie needed to see to realize that Jack might be developing feelings for her, too. That was when Cassie decided that she had to leave town. She was a sinking ship, a preverbal Titanic, and she refused to take Jack down with her.
Cassie knew that she had hurt Jack when she left. In those months they spent together, they had become each other’s best friend. Jack had been the only person she trusted and in many ways, he was the only reason Cassie had survived at all. But Jack was also broken, and Cassie hadn’t been strong enough to put him back together while also fixing herself. He was still recovering from his divorce, and he was still struggling with his dependence on alcohol. Cassie decided it was best to leave and let Jack focus on himself for a while. But that didn’t mean it had been an easy transition for Cassie. She had missed him every single day.
“You look good, Cass. Really good.” Jack’s eyes masked any hurt or pain he may have been carrying around. The look he gave her was pure and genuine. “You have no idea what a relief it is to see you doing so much better.”
“I feel safer out here,” she confessed. It had taken her a long time to admit that she was letting fear control her life. In many ways, she was still being held captive. “In the city, everything was so intense. I was never able to really let down my guard, not even when I was with you.”
Cassie glanced at Jack to see how he would react. She had often told him that she felt safer with him around and that was true. But it was also true that she had never really let him in, never let him know how truly vulnerable she felt at all times. After what she had been through, Cassie wasn’t sure she would ever be able to expose herself to anyone.
Jack studied his empty beer bottle for a minute. “Cass, what you went through–”
She squeezed his hand to stop him from finishing. “Don’t,” Cassie pleaded. “I don’t want to talk about that, Jack.”
“What do you want to talk about, Cassie? You didn’t call me up here after three months of radio silence just to talk about the weather.”
I called you because I missed you and I wanted to see you. I wanted to hear your laugh and look into your eyes again. I need you in my life, Jack. That was what Cassie was thinking, but it wasn’t what she said out loud. “Do you know what tomorrow is?” she asked instead.
Jack frowned. “Of course. How could I forget that?”
She hadn’t seriously thought that Jack wouldn’t remember. That day, exactly one year ago, had changed both of their lives forever. “He’s still out there,” she said softly.
Part of her couldn’t believe that it had only been a year. She worked so hard to push it from her mind that sometimes she could convince herself that it had never happened. But then a sound or a smell would trigger the buried memories and it would rush back, just as brutal as if it had happened yesterday.
“I’ve tried so hard to move on, but just knowing that he is still out there…”
“I know, Cass. I know.” Jack’s hand tightened around hers. A few days after Jack found Cassie, he swore to her that he would find the man responsible. 350 days later, Jack was still trying to keep his promise to her. “I will find him. It’s the only thing I think about most days.”
She was instantly sorry that she had said anything about it at all. Cassie knew how badly Jack was tormented by the case. “I didn’t ask you to come to talk about that,” she said.
“You never answered my question. Why did you invite me out here?” Jack forced a weak smile.
Cassie didn’t answer right away. Looking at Jack, sitting so close to him that she could smell his cologne, everything came rushing back to her. His dark hair rustled in the breeze and his blue eyes were brighter than the summer sky when he smiled at her. Jack never knew the real reason she left town. She had told him that she needed to get away, that she didn’t feel safe there anymore, and that was true. But an even larger reason she had decided to leave was because she had fallen completely for Jack.
She pulled her hand away and stood. “I invited you to my house so I can make you dinner and we can catch up.” Her smile was as shaky as her voice. “Come inside and I’ll get you another beer.”
Two hours and three beers later, she was feeling more comfortable being with Jack again. They ate dinner at her small dining table and she made sure to keep the beer flowing. It helped alleviate the awkwardness and allowed them to joke and tease like old times.
Jack told her about his father’s illness, all the while trying to hide his true feelings about the dire situation. Cassie knew that Jack and his father had had a falling out a few years ago and hadn’t talked since, but now that he was so ill Jack was conflicted.
“I won’t tell you what to do, Jack. Obviously, you had your reasons for keeping him out of your life these past few years. But he’s still your dad.” Cassie didn’t have to tell Jack that she would give anything to be able to talk to her father again. Her mother had died when she was just a kid and her father had passed a couple of years ago after a sudden heart attack.
Jack’s forehead wrinkled as he thought about her advice. “It’s not that easy, Cass,” he said carefully. He always got a guarded look in his eyes when he spoke about his father. She knew that Jack hadn’t told her the most important parts of the story.
“I know. You’re right.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Besides, who am I to tell people that they need to let go of their pasts?”
After dinner, Jack helped her clear the table and load the dishwasher. Her kitchen was small and they bumped into each other at least a dozen times before Cassie called it quits. “Will you take a walk with me?” she asked with an exasperated laugh.
“I’d go anywhere with you,” Jack said, his smile much more relaxed now.
Part of the reason that Cassie had picked this particular house was because the property had direct lake access. When the weather was nice, she liked to take long walks along the shore. It was much more enjoyable with Jack by her side. As they walked, she looped her arm through his and told him about the beautiful sunrises she caught most mornings.
“Maybe we’ll have a good one tomorrow,” she said shyly. When she had extended her invite to him, she hadn’t exactly asked him to spend the night. She had been hoping he would just know that she wanted him to stay. Considering that it was getting late and Jack had made no attempt to leave, it seemed that he had understood perfectly.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “Cass, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Wait.” She pulled him to a stop and hurried on before she lost the nerve. “I want to tell you why I really left town.”
Jack tried to stop her. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I get it. Really.”
“No, you don’t.” She took a deep breath and let it out quickly. “The real reason that I left had very little to do with what happened to me. I mean, that was part of it, sure. But it wasn’t the big reason. It wasn’t the driving force that pushed me out of town. Sorry, I’m rambling. I always do that when I’m nervous.”
Jack eyed her carefully. “Why are you nervous?”
“Because of what I’m about to say.” When she looked him in the eye, she saw that he had no idea what was about to come next. She had always assumed that her feelings for him had been obvious, but Jack looked lost. “I left because of you.”
He blinked rapidly and took a step back. “I’m sorry?”
“That came out wrong.” She grabbed his arm. “I left because of the feelings I had for you. I fell for you, Jack.”
His mouth dropped open in surprise. “Oh.”
“I was so messed up back then and I knew that nothing could ever happen between us, but I couldn’t help my feelings. I was so dependent on you for everything. I couldn’t even leave my apartment without you. You were my whole world, Jack, and that scared the crap out of me. I knew that I had to find a way to take care of myself again even if that meant letting you go.”
Jack studied her with wide eyes. His cheek twitched and he ran a hand through his hair. She had caught him off-guard and he was carefully weighing his response.
“I’m sorry. I know this is awkward. I’m not telling you because I expect you to say anything back. I just wanted you to know the truth.” Cassie wasn’t sure what kind of reaction she had been expecting, but his silence was painful. She looked away, wishing that she hadn’t told him the truth. What if she had just ruined their friendship? Her life had been so empty without Jack.
He finally found words. “Cassie, I really don’t know what to say. I’m not allowed to get involved with the victims I help. In fact, our friendship has been risky on its own.”
“I know. I’m sorry I said anything. Just forget it.” She tried to walk away, but Jack caught her by the elbow.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just held onto her like he was afraid to let go. When she finally turned and let her eyes find his, she could see that he was struggling with his own feelings.
“Do you remember the day you told me you were leaving?” he asked.
“Of course.” Cassie remembered that it had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. Jack had looked at her with so much hurt that she nearly changed her mind.
He nodded slowly. “I remember it, too. That was the second time I thought I lost you and it broke my heart.”
Now it was Cassie’s turn to be surprised. “Broke your heart?” It had never occurred to her that Jack might have been battling the same feelings.
“When I first saw your picture after you went missing, it captivated me. There were moments when I couldn’t look away.” Jack’s voice cracked. “Then I found you and got a chance to know you. Even when you were so broken that you could hardly get out of bed, you were still so strong and beautiful. You were easily the most amazing person I had ever met. I tried so hard to deny it, but deep down I knew that I was in love with you.”
“You never said anything.” Her voice came out in whisper. “I had no idea.”
Jack smirked. “That was kind of the idea. I did my best to hide it, but I was planning to tell you that day.”
“Why didn’t you?” Would she still have left if he had told her?
“You didn’t give me a chance.” Jack shrugged. “Looking back, it just wasn’t the right time for us.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed. If Jack had confessed his feelings back then, she probably would have left even faster. She hadn’t been emotionally stable enough to handle that. But Cassie thought that now she might be ready. “Is now the right time?”
“Now?” Jack pretended to think it over before grinning. “I didn’t drive all the way up here for dinner, Cass.”
Returning his smile felt amazingly familiar. “Good.”
It would have been easy for them to go slow. Jack would have understood. But Cassie didn’t want to go slow. She was drawn to him like a magnetic charge. When she threw her arms around his neck, Jack jumped. When she pressed her lips over his, it took him a second to respond. But once he caught up, his passion matched her own.
His lips were soft and inviting, his body solid and warm. As his arms tightened around her and pulled her against him, Cassie melted into his embrace. When he pulled away slightly to look into her eyes, she knew that she was finally home.