Page 43 of Red Boar's Baby

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to step closer. Abruptly their difference in height was more obvious than usual. Diana was a fairly tall woman, so she could look him in the eyes at a normal conversational distance, but this close she had to tip her head back a little.

He put a hand on the side of her face and drew her closer.

They had kissed for the first time in this pasture. They had done a lot of “firsts” in this pasture. Their families had both assumed they would marry, had been surprised when they went their separate ways after high school.

All these years later, his lips found hers again.

Her mouth opened to let him in. Her lips were soft, her return kiss tentative at first, then heated and eager.

And then she abruptly pulled back.

Just like she’d pulled away all those years ago. And maybe it was being here, where it was harder to put the past aside, but the pain he’d tried to tamp down for all those years hit him again with a crushing sense of rejection.

CHAPTER15

What was she doing?

Diana wrenched herself back to her senses, out of the seductive vortex of Costa’s lips, his hands in her hair, his body against hers.

By the time regret crashed in a few seconds later, as the parts of her he had been touching a moment ago felt cold even in the desert sun, he had already stepped back too. They regarded each other from a few feet and twenty years apart.

“Do you think ...?” Costa began. He wet his lips. He looked hurt, angry, and she honestly couldn’t blame him.

“It’s just being here,” Diana said quickly. “All the memories.”

“I know, I have them too. But Diana ...” He looked at her painfully, almost desperately. “Could it work? Between us, I mean.”

It certainly worked physically. She didn’t need the memory of their one, fumbling loss of virginity in the pasture to know that. It had been clumsy and exciting in the way teen sex was, both of them were still figuring out how all the parts worked, and it was over too fast and not fast enough. And she would give almost anything to have him on top of her again, the fully realized promise of the lean muscles and deft hands of his late-teenage self, grown into strength and sureness.

And she couldn’t go through losing that again.

“We broke up for a good reason.” Her lips were dry in the arid breeze, and she kept touching her tongue to them. Or maybe it was that her mouth wanted to find his again. “Remember that, Quinn? You wanted to stay on the ranch. I mean, more than that.” The old betrayal swept over her, the sense of realizing all those years ago that he wasn’t the person she thought he was. That he didn’t love her like she thought he did. “You were determined to stay on the ranch. You wouldn’t accept any compromise.”

“I had to,” Costa shot back. “You were the one who didn’t understand.”

“No,youdidn’t understand!” The feeling of being trapped slammed down on her again. Just like all those years ago, she could sense the future—Costa’s future—closing around her like the jaws of a bear trap: staying on the ranch, being miserable like her mother had been, having kids and raising kids, never doing all the things she’d dreamed of doing. “I had to get away. Go out, see the world, do things that weren’t this! Didn’t you ever want that too?”

“I did go out,” Costa shot back. “I did see things. Just because it’s not two thousand miles away doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing. Or doing! I have a life here. Ihada life here. And your—your life was somewhere else, and we both knew that.”

“I told you we could compromise!” she flared. “You could come with me to college, or?—”

“I couldn’t be gone that long, and we both know why!”

“—or,” she forged on, feeling the scarred-over wounds of those old arguments tear open and bleed, “I could go away for a couple of years and comeback?—”

“We both knew you wouldn’t!”

Diana recoiled as if slapped. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No!” Costa said sharply. He reached out a hand, then let it drop. “But you didn’t, did you? Not for fifteen years. I wasn’t going to do a long-distance relationship for fifteen years, Diana. It’s not in me.”

She stared at him across that great gulf between them, helpless with fury and grief. “I would have come back if I promised.”

“I know. And you would have been miserable. Just like I’d have been miserable if I went with you.”

She knew it was true—on both sides. She’d had to go live her life, see the world, explore all the things she had been able to explore. And yet somehow all of that had circled around in the end and she’d wound up standing here again.

“You always let your family take up too big a chunk of your life,” she said, and she saw Costa’s face close off, pushing the argument away just like he had all those years ago. “Maybe you would have—maybe if you got away a little, you would have learned you didn’t have to?—”

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