I made it back to Sydney in under two hours. I had no idea how I hadn’t picked up a speeding ticket along the way.

The stairs to Reese’s apartment creaked as I thundered up them two at a time. Hesitation slowed me when I reached her door, though, and I stared at it for a long moment, catching my breath. My heart felt like it had travelled north and lodged in my throat. I forced my fingers into a fist and knocked on the door, giving her a few minutes, then knocking again harder when nothing happened. I pressed my ear to the door, resting my hands and chest against the scratched wood surface. Nothing. It was possible she wasn’t home, but something told me she was.

“Reese!” I yelled, then strained my ears for even the slightest noise coming from inside the apartment. “It’s me. Low.”

Nothing.

“I know I’m the last person you want to see, but I just need to know you’re okay.” My voice cracked. “As soon as I see you are, I’ll go. I swear.”

More silence from the other side. I slumped against the door and turned my forehead into the wood. The tiniest of noises came from the other side and my heart leapt into my throat. What was that? A hiccup?

“Reese! Open the damn door. I’m not leaving until you do!” I thumped the door again, in earnest this time. “I swear I’ll break this damn thing down if I have to.” Now that I knew she was inside, there was no way I was leaving until we hashed this out. It had been too long coming.

I pressed my ear to the door again and immediately wished I hadn’t. Her muffled sobs ripped my chest open as physically as if I’d been stabbed with a knife, my insides spilling out right there on her doorstep.

The lock clicked next to my ear and I stepped back as the door cracked open. One beautiful brown eye appeared in the gap, the whites shot through with red. Her skin was bare of makeup, and her dark hair tousled in a messy halo. She looked like hell. And yet she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

“Go away, Low. I’m not interested in anything you have to say.” Yet she’d opened the door. Not for Bianca. Not for Jamison.

For me.

It had to mean something. She went to shut the door, but I grabbed it before she could. She pushed against me for a second before she walked away and let it swing open behind her. Her feet were bare, a pair of sleep shorts sitting low on her waist revealing long tan legs and a hint of smooth skin where her shirt rode up. I stayed in the doorway, studying every inch of her while trying to give her space. She turned as she reached the lounge; the circles under her eyes were so dark that from a distance they could have been mistaken for bruises. Exhaustion weighed heavy in her voice.

My hands balled in an attempt to stop myself from striding across the room and reaching out for her. I wanted to touch every inch of her skin until I was certain she was really right here in front of me after so long. If I could just pull her into my arms, I could start to make this better, and maybe I’d get some relief from the constant ache I’d carried around since the day I’d left. Fuck, I’d missed her.

“Well, come in if you’re going to. No point standing there after you’ve made such a big show about letting you in in the first place.”

It wasn’t really an invitation. Beneath the exhaustion, I heard the underlying anger. Anger that was warranted and well-deserved. I stayed still, unable to let myself get close to her until she honestly wanted me in her space.

She sat down on the floor, between the lounge and the coffee table and flashbacks of sitting in the same position in my own apartment pounded through my skull. It felt like a lifetime ago. She tucked her legs up tight to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as the silence between us drew out. It was a long time before she looked up, and when she did, her eyes were full of pain and unshed tears.

That one look smashed whatever willpower I’d mustered, her pain consuming me as surely as if it were my own. I slammed the door shut and took three long strides into the room. I fell to my knees beside her, the soft carpet cushioning the blow. “Talk to me? Please?”

She pulled her legs tighter to her chest and laid her cheek on her knees. Her eyes were huge when they met mine. “What do you want from me, Low? You up and left without a word, and now you’re here, out of the blue, wanting to talk? Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that?”

“Maybe.” I edged closer, ignoring the way my skin hummed as my arm brushed hers. “But I’m going to try anyway. I’ll try every damn day if I have to. If that’s what it takes. And even if you hate me, I’m not going anywhere until you’re okay.”

She snorted. “You might be waiting awhile then.”

This couldn’t just be about me leaving. Not solely, and not after this long. She wouldn’t quit showing up at work and lock herself in her apartment over me. I knew her better than that. She was stronger than that. Whatever had happened was bigger than just me and my bullshit.

A tear rolled down her cheek and I brushed it away without thinking. She blinked, her eyes closing as she leant into my touch. A flicker of hope lit up within me, and my heart began to beat again. Needing more, I tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear, fingers trailing over her skin. Our gazes locked as my palms found the back of her neck and I paused before I pulled her closer. My brain shut down and before I could analyse what was happening, my lips crashed down onto hers. Her mouth melded to mine as if we’d kissed this way a thousand times, and I wondered how I’d gone two months without this. Without her.

She let out a tiny noise that sounded an awful lot like a cry, and my heart stopped. I pulled back an inch to investigate, but her mouth chased mine, claiming me again, and so instead I pulled her closer, feeling a shudder run through her as she relaxed into my arms.

There was no time to analyse or dwell on everything we still needed to sort out. Nothing had changed between us. I knew that. The heat and connection between us burned so brightly, I thought it would engulf me. Her lips sent a shot of molten lava right to my heart, every emotion, every feeling I’d suppressed about her for months exploding free. And I kissed her as if it were the last time, because it was already more than I’d dared to hope for.

It took a long time for my head to clear and to find the willpower to pull away. And when I did, my lips hovered only centimetres from hers, our breaths mingling in the tiny gap between us.

“Reese,” I breathed, my gaze flicking over her as I tried to read her expression. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Being this close to her was torture. All I wanted was to pull her into my arms and do that again and again, for the rest of our lives.

Reese’s gaze lifted from my lips and she stared at me with those sad, glassy eyes. Neither of us moved for a silent moment that seemed to drag on for an hour.

“Do it again,” she finally whispered.

“Do what?”

“Kiss me.” She said it so quietly, I could barely hear her, despite being only inches apart.

I inched forward, bypassing her mouth, and placed a kiss to her temple. My lips lingered over her warm skin, and I fought the urge to trail more kisses along the side of her exposed neck. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking when I wasn’t looking into her eyes. And I needed to know how she felt more than I needed to kiss her.

It was Reese who moved next. In one fluid movement, she lifted herself from the floor, straddling herself across my thighs. Her hands locked around my neck and she pulled my head down, the same way she had the last time she’d kissed me, just moments before the doctor had told us I was HIV positive. She kissed me hard, her mouth unrelenting on mine. I pulled away again.

“Reese?” I tried to regain the eye contact we’d had a moment earlier, but she avoided my gaze.

“Shut up, Low.” Her voice was husky as she silenced my questions with her mouth. My brain warred with my body. This wasn’t right. I’d started the kissing, but fuck, we were avoiding the problem in the same way we always did. We couldn’t keep doing this. We needed to talk. But dammit if my body would listen. My lips responded, opening and allowing her access as my hips ground up to meet hers. My cock hadn’t seen any action in months, and my hands itched to grab her by the hips, lay her out on the carpet next to us, and take her hard. I groaned into her mouth, as her hands frantically grasped at my shirt, tugging it over my head, before our lips crashed together again. She had one hand down my pants and wrapped around my aching cock before I came to my senses.

“Jesus, stop, Reese!” I grabbed her hand and jerked away from her all too tempting lips.

She pulled away, panting. “What?”

“This isn’t what I’m here for.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Isn’t it? Then why the hell are you here? Because unless you’re here to fuck, I’m not interested.” She stood up, anger radiating from her in waves, and moved to the kitchen, grabbing an unopened bottle of bourbon from the table on her way. My gaze followed her.

“Don’t do that. Don’t pretend all we are is physical. I’m not going to sleep with you just so you don’t have to think. Whatever it is, you’re going to have to talk about it first.”

She cracked the cap on the bottle of bourbon. “You know, I’ve been thinking about drinking this for days. But I haven’t. I didn’t want to go back to that. But what’s the point? I don’t want to feel like this! I just want it to stop. Just for a while, and since you don’t want me...”

She shrugged and poured a shot, but her fingers trembled, and she made no move to lift it to her mouth. I scrambled to my feet and crossed the small living room, placing my hand over hers. She glared up at me, those brown eyes blazing, all sass and defiant, daring me to stop her.

And then her entire facade broke. Her face crumpled, her chin dropped to her chest, and a sob burst from her mouth.

I gathered her in my arms, tucking her head to my chest and cradling it with my hand as her misery poured from her. “Sshhhh,” I soothed, running my hand up and down her back over and over. Nothing I did helped, but she made no move to leave my arms, so I just kept doing what I was doing and pressed kisses to the top of her head.

Her slight frame shook with grief, and I lost track of how long we stood there like that, her tears soaking my chest. It could have been minutes; it could have been hours. But all I knew was there was nowhere else I wanted to be. No one else I wanted to be holding. This felt right. For the first time since I’d walked away from her, I was complete again.

The sobs became hiccups and not long after that, she became still and quiet, her breathing evening out. Her head became heavier on my chest, her knees buckling. I scooped her up in my arms, frowning when she weighed less than nothing. Had she lost weight? Her arms came around my neck and I carried her down the hall to her bedroom.

I laid her down, pulling the ruffled grey blanket from the end of the bed over her shoulders. She watched every move I made, her dark eyes following me around the room as I laid down facing her.

“Gemma’s still in the wheelchair,” she whispered softly.

“Your sister? How do you know?”

“I saw her. Bianca and I. When we were shopping last weekend.” She bit her lip and swallowed hard as her eyes filled with tears again. “If she was going to make a recovery, she would’ve done it by now. Her injuries must be permanent.” For a second, I thought she was going to burst into tears again. But she sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Why her? It was me not paying attention. It’s my fault.” She took another shaky breath. “I’ve ruined her life.”

I sneaked a hand across the gap between us, and one by one entwined my fingers between hers. I squeezed them gently. “It was an accident; you know that. And how do you know you’ve ruined her life? Even in a wheelchair, people still have good lives.”

“It’s hardly the same as being able to walk.”

“No, it’s not. But I have some experience with long-term conditions that change your life forever. You can choose to be happy with the hand you’ve been dealt.”

I smiled at her softly, as her face paled.

“Shit, I didn’t mean…”

I pulled her blanket up around her shoulders, tucking it around her. “Ssssshhhh, I know. But my life isn’t over, and neither is hers. It was an accident. People make mistakes.”

I shifted on the bed and sighed. “Me especially. I made a huge mistake. I’m so sorry about the text message and for taking off. And everything else I put you through. I just had to be alone and work out what this all meant.”

She played with the fringe on the blanket. “Did you do that? Work it out, I mean? Where have you been?” The anger from earlier had evaporated, replaced by honest interest.

“At the clinic. The one in the brochure you left me.”

“Oh.” She looked down at our fingers still joined together. “I hoped that’s where you were. But then you were gone so long, I thought... Did it help?”

I reached out, tucking one finger beneath her chin and tilting her face so she had no choice but to look at me.

“I’ve done more counselling than any one person should ever have to do in a lifetime. But it helped. I learned. I talked.”

“So you’re good?”

I smiled for what felt like the first time in months. Maybe it was. “I’m good. But you aren’t and that breaks me.”

She looked away again, as if the truth of the situation hurt her further, and the smile fell from my face.

“I’ve lost them. I saw this Facebook post Gemma wrote, and I was stupid, but I thought that maybe it meant she was okay. I convinced myself that something had changed—that she’d had a successful surgery, or maybe the injury hadn’t been as serious as the doctors first thought. I read all these articles about injuries that looked serious early on but after a few weeks the patient regained feeling. And I let myself think I’d be able to go home. I was saving up to buy her a new horse, and then I was going to show up with it, and everything would just go back to the way it was. I’m such an idiot.”

“Don’t say that. You let yourself hope for the best outcome. There’s nothing wrong with that. What did your dad say when you saw him last week?” An inkling of anger began to rise in me. Her dad was a jackass for the way he’d treated her. He was no better than my mother. You didn’t treat your child that way, no matter what they’d done. I didn’t need to be a parent to figure that one out.

Reese shook her head. “I didn’t speak to them. I couldn’t. My feet were made of cement and I just stood there watching them, hiding behind some stupid pot plant.”

I frowned, taking a moment to think that through rationally. Maybe she couldn’t see the other side of this. Fuck. I didn’t have any right to waltz back into her life and start handing out advice like I was some sort of expert. But if I didn’t say it, who would? Reconciling with her family was the most important thing. Even if it meant the gap between us widened.

“Reese, look at me. If you didn’t talk to them, then you really don’t know how they feel. It’s been a long time. Things might be different now that everyone has had time to calm down and get used to the situation. You’ve been gone a whole year without a word. Maybe they’re worried about you. This is what I was trying to tell you months ago. You need to resolve this. Even if your father disowns you for good, don’t you want to at least find out for sure? Don’t you want the chance to talk to your sister? To your mother? This can’t have been easy for them either.”

She was quiet.

“Stop living in limbo. Positives only, right? Let’s go there. Right now. Let’s just leave and see what happens. You could have your family back by the end of the day.”

“Or I could have no one.”

“You won’t know unless you face it. And you’ll never have no one. You’ll have me. If you want me.” The words fell from my lips effortlessly, because it was nothing but pure honest truth. But those words terrified me. I was terrified she wouldn’t care I was trying to ask her for a future together.

“I don’t have you, Low. I don’t even know what this thing between us is.”

“You’ve always had me. And I know I fucked this up a hundred times over, but I’m here, trying again. And I’m going to keep on trying until you believe I’m in this for real this time. All you have to do is let me.”

A tear dropped from her eye, but the tiniest of smiles pulled at the corner of her mouth.

“You really want this?”

“I was always planning to come back to you, Reese. I had to fix myself first, but I was always going to fight for us. I want this. I’m willing to beg for it.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” She smiled softly and everything within me exploded—lust, love, regret, fear, happiness, hope. And relief. A tidal wave of emotion.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” I growled as I pounced on her, fusing my mouth to hers and pushing her onto her back.

“I hated that you weren’t here. I’ve wanted to talk to you every day, and not being able to sucked,” she mumbled between kisses.

I dropped my lips to her again. “I know. I want you to choose me. The HIV will make even simple things harder for us, but I want to be selfish. The thought of you being with someone else fucking eats me inside. I’ll keep you safe, I swear it. I know I don’t deserve your trust yet, after the way I left, but I’m asking you for it anyway.”

Her warm breath misted over my lips. “I never doubted your ability to keep me safe. It was you who doubted yourself.”

I buried my face in her neck, loving the way I could feel every inch of her beneath me. I lifted my head and waited until her eyes met mine. And everything I loved about her was right there, staring back at me.

“I love you, Reese. I have for a long time, and I should have told you before this all happened, but I was an idiot and I was scared. I know you said it once, but you need time and—”

She pressed a finger to my lips. “I hoped every day that you were at that clinic, and that you’d come back when you were ready. I’m not saying a phone call wouldn’t have been nice.” She rolled her eyes. “But I get it. I did the same thing, so I can’t fault you for running when your back was against a wall. But my feelings for you didn’t just stop when you left. If anything, they only increased.”

“Yeah?” My spark of hope ignited into fireworks.

“Yeah.”