Page 21 of Against the Wind

And I had no idea how I felt about it.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Well, I wanted to prove I was serious before I came to grovel and apologize. I know I’m falling down on the groveling portion of the program, but I can work on that. The essential point here is that I love you, Gabi. I’m in love with you, and I miss the hell out of you. Of us.”

My breath caught. Love. He loved me. The word I’d bitten back a hundred times during our time together, afraid of scaring him off, afraid of being too much. The word that had threatened to spill out when he’d hold me close after a long shift, or when we’d dance in his kitchen to old jazz records, or when we lay curled in bed together, talking long into the night.

I’d known I loved him for months before he’d left. Had ached with it, carried it like a burning coal in my chest that both warmed and scorched me. But we’d never said the words. Never crossed that line that would’ve made everything real instead of existing in that undefined space between casual and committed.

Now here he sat, speaking the words that would’ve changed everything back then. The words that might’ve made me fightharder when he’d announced his transfer to Seattle. Might’ve made him reconsider taking it in the first place.

My fingers trembled against the paper plate in my lap. The remains of our impromptu hurricane picnic blurred as tears threatened. Because I still loved him. God help me, I’d never stopped. I’d buried it deep, tried to forget, tried to move on, but seeing him again had ripped open all those wounds I’d done my best to stitch closed.

But love wasn’t always enough. Sometimes timing was everything. And our timing had been spectacularly wrong before. The question was whether it was right now.

He shifted, drawing in a breath that told me he wasn’t finished. That there was more he needed to say.

“I want another chance. I know I don’t deserve one. I know it’s gonna take a long time to earn back your trust, to prove that I’ve changed and won’t do the same thing again. That I won’t take you for granted. But despite all that, I’m here. To earn my way back into your good graces, whatever, however much it takes.”

I’d spent so much of the past few months trying to put Daniel LaRue out of my mind. To focus on my own plans for the future. On the clinic and coming home to my family and the island that had always held my heart. But a piece of me had still been in New Orleans, mourning the personal future I’d been forced to give up.

Suddenly, that future was no longer out of reach. He washere, claiming to love me. A man willing and ready to do the hard work with no guarantee of success. That was a heady offer. One that a part of me wanted to leap for. But leaping without looking had been how I got into this mess in the first place, and I was nothing if not a woman who learned from her mistakes.

Was there room for him in my life here?

For all that I’d been very transparent with him about my intention to come back to join the clinic here, we’d never discussed a future where he came with me. In a sense, I’d assumed as much as he had. But my assumption was that we were on the same page. That he’d want to follow me here. Make a life here. I wanted to believe I’d have discussed it with him before making firm plans. That was the difference between us, wasn’t it? I believed in talking things through, in careful planning and mutual decisions. Maybe that’s why his unilateral choice to take the Seattle position had hurt so much, even though I’d already been planning my return to Hatterwick. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Nag’s Head was two hours north by boat. While that was a damned sight closer than Seattle, it still wasn’t close. Unless he’d been hiding some secret billionaire status and had a helicopter at his disposal, his job still wasn’t commutable distance. He couldn’t live here any more than I could or would move up there. Which left us where, exactly? Even accounting for good weather and the fastest ferry service available, the math didn’t work. A four-hour round trip commute would be brutal for anyone, let alone someone in the military who needed to be alert and ready for emergencies. Daniel’s dedication to his Coast Guard duties had always been admirable, but even he couldn’t bend the laws of geography and time.

I realized I’d let the silence go on too long when he rubbed at the back of his neck.

“I’m realizing now I made another grave miscalculation, because you’ve had every opportunity and right to move on with somebody else. And I’ve changed my world again without consulting you.” One corner of his mouth quirked in a wry smile that I wanted to taste. “It felt like an appropriately grand gesture at the time. Sorry ’bout that.”

It was a grand gesture. I’d learned long ago that talk was cheap. A person’s actions told you where they really stood. He claimed to love me, and he’d moved heaven and earth to get here to tell me. To prove it. That meant something. It meant everything.

Come on, girl. You miss him, and you love him, too. Are you really going to let a little thing like logistics get in the way of this?

FOURTEEN

DANIEL

Well. I’d gone and fucked up again.

At least I’d made an apology and done something to make things right between us, even if what was right wasn’t what I’d been hoping. What had I expected? That I’d show up with supplies and an apology, and she’d fall into my arms? That walking away from the Seattle promotion would somehow erase the fact that I’d taken it in the first place without even talking to her?

She didn’t owe me a second chance just because I’d finally gotten my head out of my ass. Hell, she didn’t owe me anything. I’d made my choice three months ago, picking ambition over what we had. The fact that I’d realized it was the wrong choice didn’t change that.

My career would recover, eventually. The Coast Guard wasn’t known for holding grudges, and my record spoke for itself. I could do good work here. But God, being this close to her and knowing she’d never be mine again? That fucking stung.

“I’ll just?—“

My words cut off as Gabi launched herself at me. Her body collided with mine, toppling me over on the mattress where I sat. My arms automatically came around her to stop us bothfrom crashing into the wall. Her hands fisted in my shirt and her mouth found mine.

Thank God. Thank God.

My heart hammered against my ribs as the kiss deepened, desperate and hungry, carrying the weight of all our months apart. Outside, wind howled, but I barely registered it. My world had narrowed to the press of her body against mine, the taste of her lips, familiar yet somehow brand new.

Her teeth caught my lower lip, and I groaned, pulling her closer. One of my hands slid up her back, feeling the tension in her muscles. She arched into my touch like a live wire.

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