Of course there had been clues. A bite of the lip. An indrawn breath. Wrinkled brows and shrugged shoulders. A few false starts at conversations about work and balance, but the real alarms should have gone off when all of that faded.Silence chilled like nothing else.

Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past. You won't be able to forgive yourself for not doing things differently until you stop wishing things were different

She'd just had the best sex of her life, with an ex-boyfriend she'd spent the last decade pretending didn't exist, in his adorable half-finished, renovating-by-himself one room schoolhouse. Unsettled wouldn't even begin to describe how Laney should be feeling, and it didn't matter, because how she actually felt was pretty damn good.

There weren't any promises of a future life together, either, but he didn't need to live like a monk anymore. Two years was more than enough time for soul-searching and penance. As long as Laney was close enough to touch, to breath in, to taste like his goddamn last meal, he would take whatever she offered and not ask any questions about what it might cost him when she inevitably left.