Molly Compton Herwood

The night was dark, but the sky was clear. Stars littered the heavens, and part of a moon played hide and seek with the Jeep between the branches of the trees crowding the edge of the road. The highway wound uphill through the forest. Tripp turned on the radio to some sports talk station. Hey, he was driving. His choice.

I thought about Caitlin, Foggy, and going to work later that morning. I was so engrossed in my misery, I wasn't paying attention to Tripp or the road until we mowed down a strip of weeds and briars growing next to a deep ditch.

"Tripp!" I screamed and shoved the steering wheel as far to the left as I could.

His head jerked up. "Whoa," he said. He took control of the wheel before we hit the ditch on the opposite side of the road. "What are you doing?"

"Keeping us out of the ditch!" I kept my hand on the steering wheel. Insurance. "Did you fall asleep?"

He pulled to the side of the road and stopped. "I might have nodded off for a second," he admitted.

Oh God, if we'd been on the Thruway doing 65 or 70 miles per hour, we'd have been killed.

"We're swapping places," I announced. "Get out."

"I'm fine."

"You're going to get us both killed. You could barely keep your eyes opened when you came to get me."

"You can't drive with a sprained ankle."

"It's my left foot, I can drive just fine." I unbuckled my seat belt, then reached for his. I can be very stubborn.

He thrust my hands toward my lap. "This is a stick. A manual transmission. Even if you know how to drive one, you can't use the clutch with that ankle of yours."

Well, nuts. He had me there. But only partly. "I know how to drive a standard. My grandmother didn't raise any stupid granddaughters."

"That's debatable," he muttered.

"I heard that," I said. "Now let me drive. I had a long nap, you've been working all day, and you probably had a drink or two with your cronies. Doing business, of course, but you didn't get much sleep last night, and -"

He shut me up the only way he could. He kissed me. I mean, really kissed me. I tried to crawl over the console so I could plant myself on his lap, but banged my knee on the gear shift. He lifted me until I straddled him, my skirt hiked up to my waist.

"Jesus, Chelsea," he said a minute or ten later. "I haven't done it in a car since I was seventeen. I don't have any protection."

I rested my forehead against his. Breathing was really difficult. I thought about telling him I was on the pill, but that was a lie, and then there were STDs. Not from me, but . . .

"Let me drive," I said.

"I'm okay now," Tripp said. His voice trembled. "Especially if we just go back to Cooperstown. It's your call, but if we go back to Cooperstown, we're making love."

I needed to go work in the morning. My cat needed feeding. My cell phone was dead. I had banking issues that required immediate attention. I had the most beautiful man in the world wanting to bang my brains out.

Brain banging won.

"Carrie Thorpe."

I still heard that voice in my dreams. I buzzed him in, then opened my door and watched him lumber up the dimly lit stairs.

He was larger than life, filling my doorway with his height and bulk, bringing the cold and the scent of winter with him.

I didn't offer to take his coat. "What do you want?"

His dark eyes glittered in the flickering candlelight. Flakes of snow melted in his black curls. "Carrie Thorpe."

"There's no such person," I said.

"No wonder I couldn't find you." His deep voice rumbled through me. "I looked, you know. For years. Facebook. MySpace. Google. But no Carrie Thorpe ever popped up. Now I learn Caroline Maplethorpe was slumming it." His tone was bitter.

"Caroline Maplethorpe was trying not to trade in on her father's name," I retorted, stung by his accusation. The truth was far less dramatic.

Win still had the power to annihilate me, but I'd never let him know how vulnerable he made me. Survival. That was my priority.

"You've done well for yourself," I said. I'd followed his career to the majors, his injury, and subsequent surgery.

"If you mean better than Flash, then yeah."

Flash. Jordan "Flash" Gordon. He'd introduced Win to me, in a manner of speaking.

"I got called up for three games, and you just disappeared," Win said. "I went a little crazy."

"It was time for me to leave. College was starting. The timing had nothing to do with your getting called up." That was the truth. Part of it, anyway.

He stared at me. Through me. He'd always been able to peer into the crevices of my soul.

"What do you want?" My voice shook.

The intensity of his gaze never wavered. "I don't know."

That was new. Win Winston always knew what he wanted.

"I thought I wanted you, but now you're telling me you don't exist."

I could have said a lot of things. I could have asked him if in seven years he hadn't had a meaningful relationship with another woman, but that would imply he'd found our relationship meaningful. While it was certainly memorable, I doubted it had much meaning for him.

Didn't he understand the rules? What we'd had that long-ago summer was a fling. He'd been a young, good-looking, up-and-coming-pitcher, and I'd been a young, out-of-control, self-destructive girl on the run from emotions I couldn't handle. I would have done anything to be able to feel.

Let me rephrase that: I did everything I could in order to feel anything.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"Why are you surprised I am?" he countered. Although I guess that should tell me something."

We stared at each other for several silent moments.

"You sent your boyfriend home," Win finally said. His voice was husky. "You must have known I'd be knocking on your door."

I struggled for cool. A third party had never stopped us in the past. "I think you'd better leave now."

Was it the muted light or did his expression darken? I couldn't tell.

"I meant what I said to you that summer."

The problem was that he'd said a lot of things. We both had. I hadn't meant anything I said, so I'd assumed he hadn't, either. Besides, it wasn't what he hadn't said that defined the rest of my life.

I wasn't prepared for his hand to hover over my cheek. Heat from his palm drew my face like a magnet. His thumb flicked a stand of hair off my brow. When his lips brushed mine, a shock of familiarity, of yearning, bolted through me.

"You're right," he said, his voice a harsh rasp in the quiet of the room. "I'd better leave while I still can."