“Bye, guys,” Jenny shouted as she left the home. “Be good.”

She looked up at the sky as she stepped out onto the porch. Finally, the awful rain that had been pounding down on them for what felt like a week straight had finally cleared up, but the darkness reminded her that even though it was only four thirty, winter sucked.

“What are you studying all the way up there?” Nik said, pushing his foot off the garden wall and coming to stand at the bottom of the steps to look straight up at her.

Would her heart ever not skip a beat when she saw him? With his dark coat, dark jeans, dark hat and hair, he reminded her of one of those spy movie heroes, the ones who could disappear into the background but had the class of James Bond. “I was thinking how winter is just around the corner.” She wondered if she should say something, apologize maybe for not responding to his messages on Monday, and pretending to be too tired on Tuesday. She should have known when he had asked her when she would be finished today that he would come and find her.

“Come here,” he said and held out his hands toward her.

Taking the two days to herself to figure out what exactly Nik meant to her had proven only two things. They still had unfinished business between them, and it was unfair to herself to pretend otherwise and not explore what they could be. She’d been planning to call him that evening to explain it to him, and perhaps apologize for not communicating with him. So she took his hand and joined him at the bottom of the stairs, for the first time fully embracing the way his skin felt against hers without worry or fear of what she was letting herself in for.

“Are you done hiding from me?” Nik asked.

He knew exactly what she’d done. Of course he had. She hadn’t even tried that hard to hide it. “I think I am,” she answered truthfully. “But you need to know, it isn’t going to take much for me to decide this is a bad idea. I don’t even know how I’ll handle pictures of you meeting fans, going on tour, girls crawling out of the woodwork selling your stories.”

“You’re off work tomorrow, right? When do you have to be at work on Friday?” Nik asked, placing his thumb and index finger around her wrist. His touch scorched in ways such a light touch shouldn’t.

“I’m on the later shift on Friday, but I’d like to be there by noon. Why?” She held her breath the way she had when she was fifteen and Nik had slid his hand into her hair and cradled her gently as he’d kissed her in Queen subway station the day after they’d first gotten together.

“Come away with me. Just you and me. I promise I can have you back in plenty of time on Friday, and I have a million dates to make up for. Please let me cram a couple of them into the time you have off.”

When he looked at her like that, with his eyes so wide and honest, she was lost. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he asked.

“Okay.”

Less than two hours later, Jenny was strapped into a helicopter wearing headphones with a microphone, a small bag tucked into the tiny hold. Muskoka Airport was coming into view through a break in the trees. “Was I a sure thing when you planned all this?” she said, taking in the tail end of the fall show as they passed over another small lake.

Nik raised his hand to her lips and kissed her fingers. “If it makes you feel any better, I only arranged this an hour before I showed up to meet you.”

For the first time since they’d been reunited, she wondered exactly what kind of financial freedom Nik actually had. Not that it mattered. In fact she wasn’t entirely certain that money wasn’t going to be one of their ongoing problems. They’d both started with so little, and while she was financially stable, she was nowhere near Nik’s level of earning. There was no parity between them—and she certainly found surprises like this a little overwhelming—but if she was going to be honest with herself, she needed to unpack all the baggage that they had, including where they were at in their lives. Instead, she reached over and placed her hand on Nik’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said, her stomach flipping as they came in to land.

“Just made it,” a member of the ground crew said as they entered the terminal. “Your car is waiting outside, Mr. Monture.”

“Thanks,” Nik said as he took her hand and led her toward the door. “The airport closes in five minutes, but I didn’t really want anybody here when we arrived.” He stopped in front of a black town car. “For the next day and a half, I want it to be just you and me.”

Jenny had just begun to doze against Nik’s arm, lulled by Michael Bublé’s teeth-hurting Christmas carols, when the car pulled to a stop. “We’re here,” he said, nudging her gently.

The driver opened the door, and she stepped outside to find a beautiful cottage set back against the trees. The wood-clad building was small and welcoming, with warm orange lights illuminating the pathway to the door. Nik came around the car with both of their bags, which he placed at her feet, pulling her into his arms as the driver reversed out of the driveway.

“Nobody knows we’re here except a couple of people paid remarkably well not to tell anyone. It’s just you and me for thirty-six glorious hours.”

She looked up at him and was struck by all the good in him that she’d forgotten over the years. Her memories blighted by the pain of having been abandoned by him, she’d forgotten his capacity to take care of others. “That sounds perfect,” she said. A cool breeze wrapped itself around them in the darkness. “I think it might be a bit too cold for a dip in the lake though.”

Nik laughed and slipped his jacket off before placing it around her shoulders. “I brought a few extra hoodies, just in case you needed one.”

What had once been a bad memory, the packing up of his hoodies when she’d left, had the makings of being a good one again. “Do we need to meet someone to pick up a key?”

“No,” Nik said as he bent down and grabbed both bags again. “The door should be open, and the key should be on the table. And I arranged for food to be brought in along with wood so that we could make use of the fireplace.”

They walked up the path, and quickly let themselves inside.

Jenny stood speechless in the entrance hall. For a cottage whose exterior looked so unassuming, it was surprisingly beautiful inside. A tall vaulted ceiling ran the length of the main floor, lit up periodically by beautiful golden glass light fittings. The walls were white and the furnishings a pale blue, but the main feature was a giant ceiling-to-floor series of windows at the opposite end of the room. It was too dark to see anything right now, but she could only imagine how beautiful it would look in the morning.

“Nik, look at that fireplace. It’s huge, and it’s open on both sides so you can see it from the kitchen and the living room,” she said as she took in the large stone fireplace with baskets of wood, paper, and kindling on the floor next to it. “It’s stunning, absolutely stunning.” She turned to look at him, but found him staring at her.

“I was thinking exactly the same thing,” he said roughly, reaching for her hand.

His words hung between them as she tried to figure out a response. The heat of his gaze had left her throat dry. She stepped closer toward him, willing him to kiss her, to show her the storm that swirled behind his eyes.

“Let’s go explore,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it.

She did as he asked and tried to pay attention to the marble counter in the kitchen and the light fittings that looked like huge goldfish bowls that hung above the island. But instead, she found herself studying the way his jeans hugged his butt yet hung low on his hips. And when they opened the doors out to the large patio that was linked by stairs to a dock they couldn’t see properly, she attempted to make all the right murmurs of appreciation while trying not to think about the way his hair, which currently was flipping around in the wind, had looked spread across her thighs.

“Maybe I should get that fire going,” Nik said as they stepped back inside out of the cold. “And there’s a games room on the lower floor. Want a game of—”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Nik said, returning to the entrance and picking up the bags. “Maybe I should put these in our bedroom first and . . . fuck. Shit. I don’t mean we should fuck. I mean, I’d like to, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to. And that all came out wrong. Never mind. I’m gonna drop these in our room.”

This time she stopped him. “Nik. Talk to me.”

Nik closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “You know that saying about squeezing a bar of soap? How if you squeeze too hard it will pop out of your hands?”

Jenny nodded and stepped toward him. He enveloped her in his strong arms before kissing her gently on the top of her head.

“I feel the same way about you, Jenny. Now that you’re back, I’m terrified you’re going to go again . . . that I’m going to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing. I knew when I dropped you off on Monday that you needed space, but by Tuesday when I didn’t hear from you, I . . . Well, nothing is making sense in my world right now but you.”

She wrapped her arms even more tightly around his middle. “And I’m scared that you are going to head off on this tour of yours and you aren’t going to come home to me. Again.”

He flinched at her words. “We’re going to fix us.”

“Let’s just take it slowly. Like you said. Let’s date. We can’t go from where we are to somewhere like we were in on giant step.” She took his hand and led him to the living room. “You start on the fire, I’m going to see what food was left for us. We’ll eat and go from there.”

From behind her, Nik playfully slipped his hands around her waist and under her light sweater. “Do the dates have to happen in the right order?” he asked.

Jenny grabbed his hands and removed them. “I’m pretty sure they should.” No matter how badly she had the same urges, their sex life wasn’t what needed attention. It was everything else. She wasn’t ready to open her heart to him just yet.

Nik nudged her head to one side with his nose and ran his lips along the side of her neck. “I like breaking rules.”

“Well, I’m hungry and you promised me food,” she said, tugging away from him and laughing as he groaned.

The fridge was packed with all sorts of goodies. She pulled out steaks along with some vegetables. “Do you feel like lighting up the grill outside?” she asked.

“Sure thing, babe. Just let me get the fire going.”

As she watched him arrange the crumpled paper, kindling, and a couple of the smaller logs in the fire place, she prepared the vegetables, chopping them and covering them with olive oil and seasoning so they could be grilled too. The familiar rasp of a match being dragged along the box edge was the only sound she heard. This felt normal, domesticated even, and it made her smile. Perhaps they could find their way back to an even footing.

As the fire began to take, Nik came into the kitchen. She pushed the steaks and veggies over the island. “If you want to grill those, I can make a salad.”

Nik placed his hand over hers for a moment longer than was necessary, and she looked up at him. He smiled, a genuine one that reached his eyes, and she could see the happiness coming from him.

She felt it too.

Once the food was prepared, they sat down at the wooden table. She’d found some candles in a drawer and some glasses for their sparkling water. While she’d been making the salad, she’d made the decision to tell him about her dad.

“My father has been in touch with me recently. He sent me a letter through my lawyer,” she said. “You remember he tried when I turned eighteen and then he tried again when I was twenty-one, both of which I ignored. But he wrote me again about a week ago.”

“What did the asshole want this time?” Nik asked.

“Same old. Wanted to talk, felt like he changed, and was being transferred to Millhaven Institution, a max-security prison. I wrote back to him and told him that I wasn’t interested, and now I’m questioning why I even did that much.”

Nik waited until he had finished chewing. “Why are you second-guessing?” he asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know. It’s not like I said anything mind-blowingly interesting. Just that there would never be enough water under the bridge between us. That I didn’t want any kind of relationship with him.”

His hand reached for hers. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but I once got a letter from the man who stabbed me and killed my mom. Said the same kind of thing. How he was sorry, that he’d suffered from mental health issues, and that he wanted to know how to make amends.”

Jenny loaded some of the roasted vegetables onto her fork. “How did you handle it?”

“I didn’t. It happened when I was thirteen, and I honestly thought somebody was going to try to make me see him. I guess with all the other shit that was happening in the foster home I was living in the time, it just felt like the last straw. It was part of why I ran.”

“Oh, Nik. I hate that that happened to you.”

“Neither of us had it particularly easy.”

They ate the rest of their dinner in a comfortable silence. As they cleaned up the kitchen, she decided to tell him the truth. “I think I do know why I replied to him,” she said. “I know it’s totally messed up, but it’s been a long time in my life since somebody has wanted me for being me. I’m not looking for pity or anything like that because we’ve all had pretty messed up lives, but I’ve never really been enough for anybody. I was the odd one out at the commune, and then I suffered from those dissociative episodes at school, and everyone thought I was a freak. Then you and I . . . so many examples. I mean . . . I don’t want to speak to him, but for a second it felt like someone wanted me or . . .”

“Jenny, stop,” Nik said. “Come with me.” He led her outside and pointed up to the sky. “What do you see up there?”

Jenny shook her head. “You know me better than that, Nik. I try not look up there unless I’m trying to figure out if it’s going to rain. When we lived at the compound, I had to spend hours looking up at the sky waiting for the comet that was supposed to save us.”

“Humor me. Just look up.”

She did as he asked and saw a million bright white stars in the inky black of the sky. She shivered as she did so, partly in memory of all the nights she’d been part of the watch—the women sent out in thin white dresses to act as sentinels to watch for any unidentified comets—and partly because it was cold out by the lake and her sweater too thin.

“Those stars have been in those positions on this date and at this time for, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of years,” Nik said, pulling his hoodie off over his head. “Every culture has different names and stories about them, but regardless of what we call them, they’ve always been there.”

He slid his hoodie over her head, and she immediately felt the benefit. It smelled of him. Then he surprised her by taking the T-shirt off he’d worn underneath. “Nik, you’re going to freeze.”

He ran his hand over the tattoo on his shoulder. “See these lines and dots? They are those,” he said, pointing upward while keeping his focus completely on her. “They’re star maps, the location of stars on a certain day and time.”

Jenny gasped. “Why would you do that?

“Because there is permanence to them. Something neither of us knew. Something I wanted more than anything else on the planet. I needed to know there was some kind of constant to all this, even when life was crazy. I wanted something to remember the moments.”

And immediately she knew the answer of what they represented before she even had the chance to ask the question.

“This one right here,” he said, pointing to the one that also featured a tattoo that said what’s past is prologue. “This was the day I met you at the psychologist’s office. This one”—he pointed to the ribs on his right side—“was the first day I kissed you.” His finger trailed over his body and paused periodically as he explained. “Your sixteenth birthday. The day we moved in together. The last day I saw you. The day I came home off tour to an empty house and my hoodies on the bed.

“I know you hate them, but they were the only connection I had to you, knowing you were underneath them just like I was.”

Tears filled her eyes. He used his thumb to wipe the ones that spilled over away. She was all over his body in the same way he was stamped all over her heart.

“Don’t cry, please.” He tugged on the strings of her hood. “You’re enough, Jenny. You always have been.”

* * *

As much as his dick, which was currently standing at attention, had other plans, Nik quietly slipped out of the large four-poster bed and left Jenny sleeping. There would be time for showing her physically just how much she meant to him, but after the emotional purge she’d gone through the previous night, he thought it best to let her rest.

He walked downstairs and found their bags, still in the hallway where he had left them when they’d arrived. The house was chilly, and he quickly pulled on track pants, a hoodie, and some warm socks. In the living room, as he turned up the thermostat, he found the evidence of how the night had ended. When Jenny had dissolved into tears, he’d brought her back inside and found tissues in the bathroom. Then the two of them had talked for hours in front of the fireplace. She’d finally fallen asleep, her head resting on a cushion on his lap, at around two in the morning.

Carefully, he’d lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed, where he had gently removed her clothes but left her underwear on so she didn’t feel completely exposed. Talking had been good for them. He folded the blankets they’d pulled from the back of the sofa, replaced the cushions, and collected the tissues that had been left on the floor. On the way to make coffee, he dropped them into the garbage.

Once he had coffee and one of the blankets, he opened the sliding doors and stepped out into the cold November sunshine. He headed down to the dock, where four red Muskoka chairs sat facing out over the water and took a seat, putting the blanket around him. A slight mist hovered over the lake, and the call of a loon drifted by. Nik took a sip of the coffee as he planted his feet firmly on the dock. The low-grade headache he’d had for weeks was beginning to lift.

Jenny had no idea how much he’d understood what she was going through. The one thing he’d realized talking to Steve, the TV show producer, was that he’d spent most of his life feeling unwanted. That he didn’t belong anywhere. He lived in a no-man’s land. But where Jenny had gone off to create the life she’d wanted for herself, an action he admired, he’d molded himself into what he thought everyone else had needed.

Now, as he looked over the lake, he knew he didn’t want to be that person forever. He was fed up of dealing with everyone’s disagreements and fallouts. He was frustrated that he didn’t get to make the kind of music he wanted. He didn’t even want to go out on tour again because he needed more time with Jenny to rebuild everything he’d eroded before he left her again feeling vulnerable.

“Hey,” Jenny said roughly as she came to stand in front of him. Her hair was all mussed up, her eyes heavy, her lips still plump from sleep.

His heart thudded solidly in his chest. You love her.

He couldn’t believe she was here, that her very presence was her taking a chance on the two of them, something he would never take for granted ever again.

She wore his hoodie with plaid pajama bottoms she must have brought with her. Her feet were bare, and she hopped from foot to foot, pulling the other blanket he’d folded earlier more tightly around her.

“Come here,” he said, offering his hand.

Carefully, so as not to spill his coffee, she sat on his lap, and he tried not to groan at the delicious way her ass now pressed up against his dick. “Hold this,” he said, handing her his cup while he fixed the blanket so it was wrapped around her toes. “Better?”

“Much.” Jenny took a sip of his coffee then handed the mug back to him before snuggling against his chest.

This was what all of their days should have been like. Waking up together, talking together, doing nothing but sitting in silence together. Between Jenny and the peace of the dock, of being one with nature, he could feel his soul being filled slowly but surely.

“Thank you for taking care of me last night,” Jenny said. “And for this.” She tipped her head in the direction of the lake. “It’s perfect. I mean, I love my work, but sometimes it’s nice to lose all labels, especially when so many of them don’t always fit. Like ‘employee,’ ‘daughter,’ ‘friend,’ ‘student.’”

“I know exactly what you mean. ‘Musician,’ ‘brother,’ ‘celebrity.’ They’ve somehow come to define who I am.” Nik sipped at his coffee. “I don’t know if I want to record another album with the band.” His heart pounded at the admission. It was the first time he said it out loud to anyone, and even as he said it he wasn’t certain it was completely true. “I mean, maybe I do, or maybe I just want to go off and do some other things for a little while. It just feels like I’ve been living my life for everybody else so long that I’ve forgotten who I really am.”

Jenny gave him the one thing he really needed. Silence. But she did wrap herself a little tighter around him and place three kisses on his jaw.

His coffee cooled as they shared it, sitting bundled together and watching the sunrise burn away the mist over the lake. There were no cottages in sight, as per his request. It was completely private, their own little hideaway from the world.

“Who do you want to be, Nik?” she asked.

He ran his fingers along her thigh under the blanket. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I know the answer to one thing for sure. I want to be yours, Jenny.” He placed his knuckle beneath her chin to urge her to look up at him. “Everything else is driving me crazy right now. There’s a constant buzzing in my head of shit that needs to get done. But sitting here with you, it’s all silent. I see the woman you’ve become, I see the way you care for those kids, and I want to know her better. And it’s important that you know I love you, even though you can’t say that back to me yet.”

Jenny’s eyes went wide at his words. He ran his thumb over her lip before he kissed her gently, feeling the way she softened against him.

“You asked who I want to be. I want to be the man you say ‘I love you’ to eventually.”

Jenny slid her hand around the back of his neck and wrapped her fingers into his hair, tugging on it gently to bring him closer. “Take me inside and make love to me,” she whispered, her breath warm against his lips.

Nik left the coffee cup and blankets on the dock and stood with her still in his arms. Gently, he walked back into the house, pausing only to grab condoms from the top of his bag, and took her straight up to their bedroom, which was now filled with the most glorious sunlight. He laid her down on the bed, her golden hair spreading out across the pillow.

“Do you know what you do to me?” Nik asked as he stripped out of his clothes and ran his palm along the length of his dick. “You make me so fucking hard that it’s almost unbearable. And when I see you lying there, I can barely believe we found each other again. The last time I ever made love to a woman was May 23^rd, 2009. Everything else in between has been a draining distraction, meaningless.” A cycle he’d chased for years until he’d seen sense. But seeing her lying there, looking up at him like he was fucking hero, he regretted every single moment. Yet they had all led him to here.

To this.

To her.

“But you,” he said as he reached for his hoodie and slipped it off over her head. “You fill me up.” He took off her pajama bottoms next. Sometime between putting her to bed and her arrival down at the dock, she’d gotten rid of her underwear. Nik slid his hand along her stomach, between the valley of her breasts to her neck, where he caressed the pulse he found beating fast. “You always were the softness to my hard edges, Jenny.”

Jenny opened her arms to him. “So, come join me then,” she said quietly.

Unable to resist, he crawled onto the bed to join her, then pulled the covers back over the two of them. Jenny ran her fingernails down his spine, which made him shiver. “God, I love it when you do that,” he said, pressing his lips to hers. He didn’t rush, didn’t hurry to the next base or to getting off. Just enjoyed the feel of Jenny’s naked body pressed up against his. He savored the lazy way his fingers stroked up and down her back as he reacquainted himself with her body.

“Nik,” she whispered breathlessly as he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. “Can you feel what you do to me?” She placed her knees on either side of his thighs and sat astraddle.

He sucked in a breath as she slid along the length of his cock, coating it in her wetness. “Show me,” he answered, his voice gruff. Nik ran his hands along her thighs and let his thumb brush her clit, causing her to gasp.

Jenny raised onto her knees. Gripping him firmly in one hand, she slowly lowered herself onto him. Just a fraction of an inch, enough for his head to rub mercilessly against her opening. Unable to do anything else, he watched as she took him further, and as fucking hot as it was, he sat up quickly, placing his hands on either side of her face and kissing her as if his very life depended on it. Because in a way it did. “As incredible as it feels being inside you unprotected, we need a condom, babe. But you should know I’m always safe and get tested ahead of each tour for the insurance company. I have the papers on my phone if you want to see them.”

“I’m on the pill, and I’ve always used condoms, but I’ve never had a reason to get tested. Nik, I—”

“I trust you. More than anyone else in my life . . . I trust you, Jenny. Let me feel every part of you. I want to know what it feels like to come buried inside you. I want to feel how wet you get. Let me,” he pleaded. He placed his hand on her hip and urged her to lift as his other hand lined up his cock with her opening. “Open for me, Jenny. In every way that matters. Let me in.”

With her breasts pressed up against his chest and his hands gripping her ass and holding her close, she lowered back over him. God, she was so wet as she took all of him until he was seated so deep inside her that he could barely breathe. For a moment, she stayed there, pressed tight against his groin. Their hearts pressed against each other so tightly Nik could swear he could feel the beat of hers in time with his.

Jenny wrapped her hands around him and rested her forehead against his. “I didn’t think it was possible for this to get better between us.” Slowly she lifted and slid back down on him, making him groan. “But somehow it has.”

He knew she meant physically, not necessarily emotionally like it was for him, but he pushed it to one side. She was here, and that was all that mattered.

Nik lay back down on the bed, taking her with him, holding her tight against him while he took control, easing in and out of her, holding back from the need to flip her over and take her so he could savor what she was offering him. Connection. Intimacy. Love. He could barely speak. Knew he couldn’t trust his voice. So he kissed her, cradled her head in his hands. His thrusts began to speed up as she began to press down against him.

“Oh. God. Nik,” she gasped, breaking free of his hold to rise above him like the fucking angel she was. She leaned back, her breasts high and proud, nipples tight, and began to ride him.

He watched the way his cock, shining with pre-cum and her own juices, slid inside her. Fuck, he’d never been more turned on.

She squealed as he sat up quickly, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her back down so they lay facing each other on their sides, her legs still around his waist. Her eyes were heavy with lust, her body flushed with need, need he wanted to take care of.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, pressing his thumb to her clit as he continued to thrust deeply inside her, watching the way she shed her inhibitions to move against him, gripping him, taking him deeper until he groaned from the pressure of it.

“Nik,” she gasped. “Don’t stop, please, I’m—” Her own cry of pleasure cut her off as she clenched against him, her orgasm tensing her entire body.

Reveling in the enormity of it all, he came deep inside her.