Summer Island

That surprised Ruby. She rolled onto her side and faced Dean, but he didnt look at her. “You guys were always so close. ”

“Things change, dont they?”

“What happened?”

He stared up at the sky. “I seem to have a problem with really knowing the people I love. I get blindsided. ”

“Youre talking about his being gay?”

Finally, he looked at her. “Thats part of what Im talking about. ” She understood, and knew that it was time. For more than ten years, shed sworn to herself that if she ever got the chance with Dean, she would say the thing that mattered. “Im sorry, Dean,” she said. “I didnt want to hurt you. ”

He rolled onto his side, facing her. “You didnt want to hurt me? Jesus, Ruby, you were my whole world. ”

“I knew that. I just . . . couldnt be someones world then. ”

"I tried to take care of you after your mom left, but it was hard. You were constantly picking a fight with me. But I kept telling myself it would be okay, that youd get past it and come back to me. And I kept loving you.

Ruby didnt know how to explain it to him. How could she? Shed only barely begun to understand it herself. “You believed in something I didnt. Every time I closed my eyes at night, I dreamed about you leaving me. In my nightmares, I heard your voice, butI could never find you. I couldnt stand waiting for you to stop loving me. To leave me. ”

“What made you so damned sure I would leave you?”

“Come on, Dean . . . we were kids, but we werent stupid. I knew youd go off to some college I couldnt afford and forget about me. ”

Their faces were close together, and if shed let her self, she could have lost her way in the blue sea of his eyes. "So, you dumped me before I had a chance to dump you.

She smiled sadly. “Pretty much. Now, lets change the subject. This is old news, and we both know it doesnt matter anymore. Tell me about your life. How is it to be a jet-setting superbachelor?”

“What if I said I still love you?”

Ruby gasped. “Dont say that . . . please-”

He took her face in his hands, gently forced her to look up at him. “Did you stop loving me, Ruby?”

She felt the soft exhalation of his breath against her lips. A second later, she heard his question. She wanted to say Of course; we were just kids, but when opened her mouth to answer, the only sound she made was a quiet sigh that tasted of surrender.

His lips brushed against her, and it was a sensation at once familiar and new. She melted against him, moaning his name as his hand curled around the back of her neck.

It was the kind of kiss theyd never shared before. The kind of achingly lonely kiss a pair of teenagers couldnt imagine, the kiss of two adults whod been alone for too long and knew that God had given them this moment, and that it was a gift too precious to ignore. And for a few brief, heart-stopping seconds, their past faded like a photograph left in the hot sun.

When he drew back, she opened her eyes and saw the missing years drawn in lines on his face. Sun . . . time . . . heartache . . . they had all left imprints on his skin.

Ive waited a long time for a second chance with you, Ruby. "

If he said he loved her, she would believe him, and she would love him back. She closed her eyes, battling a wave of helplessness. She wished desperately to have grown up, to have been profoundly changed by all that shed seen and learned in the past days. But it wasnt that easy.

Her fear of abandonment was so deep it had calcifed in her bones. She couldnt get past it. Shed discovered a long timc ago why the poets called it falling in love. It was a plunging, eye-watering descent, and shed lost her ability to believe that anyone would catch her.

She pushed him away. "I cant do this. Its too much . . . too fast. Youve always wanted too much from me.

“Damn it, Ruby,” he said, and she heard the disappointment in his voice. “Have you grown up at all?”

“I wont hurt you again,” she said.

He touched her face. “Ah, . . . . . . . just looking at you hurts me. ”

She had never felt so alone. When hed kissed her, shed glimpsed a world shed never imagined. A world where passion was part of love, but not the biggest part. Where a kiss from the right man, at the right time, could make a grown woman weep. “I cant give you what you want. Its not in me. ”

He brushed the hair away from her eyes, let his fingertips linger at her temple. "You ran me off when I was a boy. Im not seventeen anymore, and we both know, this thing between us isnt over. I dont think it ever was.