“Have you tried to walk much faster than this?” Malone asks as she and I walk swiftly around the high school track. She takes a drink of the water she’s carrying, waiting for me to answer. The sun is setting in the distance and a storm must be coming, if the loud noises of the frogs and crickets are any indication. Instead of hurrying to get done, I enjoy the pace we’re keeping.

“Nah.” I shake my head.

“Is there a reason why not? I know you, you’re not even breaking a sweat. Where’s the guy I know who won’t let anything stop him? The guy who was competitive about everything?”

My brain swirls as I think about what she’s said to me. Sad as it is, I’ve wondered this about myself too. Why am I holding myself back? “I’m scared,” I admit softly, letting her in on something I haven’t shared with anyone else. “Scared that I won’t be the same and that I won’t be able to do what I did before. Scared of getting hurt again. That pain…” I stop shaking my head. Nobody will ever know what that felt like, how I’d laid in my bed by myself at night, moaning until I’d finally given in and taken some of the pain medication they’d given me. “That fuckin’ pain right after it happened was unreal. I don’t wanna live through that again.”

She jogs ahead of me, turning around to face me while I walk forward and she walks backward. I can’t see her eyes because of her sunglasses, but I know her gaze is on me, can feel it from the goosebumps on my arms. “Slade, we all change. Things happen, we get older, sometimes the things we once did aren’t the things we always do. Take us for instance.” She extends her finger and points to me and then her. “We were so used to one another, it was everything we always did. We had to figure out how not to be a couple. We had to learn how to be individuals. I don’t know about you, but for me that was hard.”

“So hard.” I nod. Thinking back to those days when all I wanted was for her to be at my side. “I was at a new school, in a new town. I knew nobody,” I remind her. “With a totally new roommate. Luckily, he was a cool guy.”

“Was he an athlete too?”

“Yeah.” I think about Caleb. The friend I’d needed as soon as I got to college. He’d helped me get over the gut-wrenching pain of losing her, the loneliness of being away from home for the first time. “He was a member of the football team, and we helped keep each other in check. He was there on a scholarship just like I was. Neither of us liked to go out and party, so we’d hang out together,” I explain. “Not to say we didn’t tie one on every once in a while, but for the most part we kept to ourselves during the season.”

“And during the off-season?” Her tone says she’s really interested in the answer.

A smile spreads across my face. “During the off-season we weren’t such good guys when we shoulda been.”

Her deep, throaty laugh raises the hair on my arms. “Oh so that’s when you lived the college life?”

I can tell she’s baiting me, and that’s fine. After we broke up, I don’t owe her anything. “It is, I learned lots of things.” I wrinkle my nose.

She tilts her head to the side, looking intensely interested. “What kinda things?”

“Like that I sucked ass when I went down on you before.” I’m honest to a fault when it comes to what I’ve learned since I grew up.

She snorts, turning around so I can’t see her face turn red, and I know her, so I know it’s definitely reddening. “You had things to learn,” she concedes. “But so did I.”

“And have you?” I’m being deliberately coy, wanting her to come right out and ask for it.

“Have I what?” She tilts her head, a cute grin showing the smile lines around her mouth.

“Learned things you didn’t know back then?”

“A few, just like you.” She bites her lip.

We’re quiet as we walk for another half a lap.

“Back then, were you scared?” she asks, breaking the silence.

“About what?”

“About what you didn’t know. Not knowing the directions to the grocery store, not knowing which gas stations were safe? Not knowing exactly where you were going, but knowing you had to get there.”

For a few seconds I think about what she’s asking. “I was scared, but I was a sponge, absorbing everything anyone would teach me.”

“Well maybe that’s what you have to be now.” She grabs my hand, and it’s like lightning flashes between the two of us. I feel a spark in my gut, an arousal I haven’t felt in years. There’s always been something about Malone, about the way I react to her - I’ve never reacted to anyone else the same. “A sponge. Willing to absorb everything you can. This doesn’t make you damaged, it makes you resourceful. You figure out what you need to do in order to take yourself back to the level you were. You worked hard at what you wanted back then, whether or not that was going down on a girl or learning how to pull a ball foul. You worked at it until you got it. Am I right?”

She’s making sense, she’s taking doubts I’ve had about myself, and she’s turning them around. “You’re right, I did work at it until I got it.”

“So why is this any different?”

I stop walking, putting my hands on my hips, deciding to be straight with both me and her. “Fear. Complete and total fear.”

“Then push through it, Slade. Isn’t that what you did before? When we broke it off, didn’t you push through it? I did, and you had a lot more going on than I did.”

The side of my brain that wants to push fights with the side that wants to turn over and let this defeat me.

“What does your PT tell you?”

“I can’t run yet, but I can walk at a comfortable pace. Everything is good as long as I don’t experience any swelling or extreme discomfort.”

She grabs my hand in hers. Ten years, it’s been, since we held hands in a romantic, comforting way. So many times I wondered if it would feel the same. This scene has played out in my head a million times over the years. It’s gone many different ways, especially as my anger has lessened, as I’ve grown up, and as I got further away from the hurt. But I can honestly say I didn’t fully imagine how this would feel.

The spark is still there, it sizzles under the surface of what we once had. I’ve never felt with anyone else the way I feel with her. It’s a realization I’ve always known, yet never wanted to admit. My eyes move down to where our fingers are clasped, I clear my throat, not sure of what I’m going to say.

As I open my mouth, a loud crack of thunder rents the sky and the heaven’s open up as rain begins to pour. The kind of summer thunderstorm northern Georgia is famous for. We’re on the opposite side of the track from where our cars are parked, but there’s a field house not far from where we are. “Think it’s open?” I yell over the thunder and the rain falling around us.

“Could be.” She grabs my hand, helping us get to the building. When she tries the doorknob, surprisingly it opens, and she turns around giving me a grin. “Jackpot!”

“At least it’s not stuffy.” I drop his hand as we enter, rubbing my palms along my arms.

“It’s because there’s an open window over there.” He points to the left, and I immediately hope that no critters have found a home here.

“This has happened to us once before.” Amusement tinges the edge of his voice as he speaks. “Remember?”

I do remember; we’d snuck out and met up at the football field to spend some time alone together when a storm, much like this one, came rolling through. “I do.” I grin at him. “That was the first night I…”

My memory trails off as I fully remember what that night was.

“C’mon, Mal, you don’t have to be embarrassed.” He moves so that our bodies are close together.

I’m feeling the confines of the space as he comes to stand in front of me. Slater has always had a confidence about himself, even when he was a fumbling virgin who couldn’t get the first two condoms on without breaking them. He still had a heat to his gaze, something about him that had turned me on immensely, before I even knew what that meant.

Standing here, in the dark, with the rain pouring outside, his body close to mine, his scent the only thing I can smell, and the heat from his body the only thing I can feel. It takes me back, to those stolen moments we had, when nobody knew where we were and nobody knew what we were doing. Those moments were pure. It was just two people who wanted each other so badly they couldn’t stop it.

“I’m not embarrassed.” I take a step back, hitting the wall of the field house.

“You are, I can always tell with you. It was the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten.”

“It was my first, there’s no way it could have been the best.” I roll my eyes, trying to put some space between us.

But there’s nowhere for me to go, and if I’m honest with myself, I don’t really want to put too much space between us. I’ve missed him, his touch, and the way he knew exactly how to make my body fly when he touched me. My eyes are on his lips as he reaches out with his tongue to wet the skin.

“Mal,” he warns. “Don’t look at me like that if you don’t want me to act on it.”

His brown eyes are dark, heavy with the same arousal I’m feeling. Without meaning to, I reach out, fisting the wet material of his shirt between my fingers. I want to pull him into me, want to feel his lips against mine again. I’ve missed it so much.

Standing up on tiptoe I tilt my head toward his. I can feel his breath on me, can smell the mint of his toothpaste. Our lips barely touch when he groans and pulls away.

“Not that easy, Mal.”

Feeling a coldness I’ve never felt before, I step to the side, getting away from his gaze that’s so intense I can’t even look at him. It’s awkward as I look around the room. There are two chairs and a table set up, along with what looks like extra sports equipment. “Well, at least we have some place to sit.”

We both have a seat, and that’s when things start to get uncomfortable. The silence is deafening, broken only by the cracking of the thunder and the beating of the rain against the roof. I jump as a particularly loud boom shakes the building.

“Still scared, huh?” He puts his arm around my neck.

“It’s one of the things I’ve never gotten over. Even as an almost thirty-year-old, I’m still scared of storms.”

“I’m here to protect you.” His voice is quiet in the room.

It takes me back to all the other times he told me he was there to protect me. Until he wasn’t anymore, until I ruined it. I’m ready to admit that now. Ready to admit I’m the one who ruined what we had.

“Who’s there to protect you?” I ask softly, because I’m interested. Does he have someone he can count on now? “Some girl you’ve got waiting for you back in Birmingham?”

Those soulful eyes of his are tortured as he turns his cellphone on. I watch as he uses his finger to shuffle through some stuff, then he turns it to me, showing me the radar. “This storm cell is almost past us.”

“Nice avoidance of the question.”

He inhales deeply as he gets up, walking toward the door. When he opens it, the rain has almost stopped, just a slight drizzle. I watch as he puts his hands on the top of his head, gripping his hair in his hands. “There’s nobody, Mal. Nobody’s there to protect me. Since you?” He turns around. “Since you I haven’t let anybody get close. Not really. I haven’t trusted anyone with the most important parts of me. You still own them, and I’m not sure how to let them go and give them to someone else.” His voice is wrecked as he speaks to me.

“Slater…”

“No.” He puts his hand up. “You asked, now you can hear it. It’s a lonely life I lead. There’s been women, one who gave me more than I ever deserved. She wanted the fucking ring, hell she was willing to be in your shadow, but I couldn’t.” He pulls his lip between his teeth. “I still carry that fucking pebble of a rock in my wallet. Your engagement ring stays on me at all times.”

The confession rips at my heart.

“So no, there’s no one there. I won’t let there be, and that’s way more than I ever fucking wanted to admit to you.”

He walks right out the door. My fingers ache to reach out and stop him, but I know I can’t. These minutes together are too raw, too heavy, and I know that we both need time to process what went down here today.