Black Hills

deepening blue of the sky. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand any of this?”
    “I didn’t understand half of it, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I loved you, Lil. I’ve loved you every day of my life since I was eleven years old.” He reached in his pocket, drew out the coin she’d given him at the end of their first summer. “I’ve carried you with me, every day of my life. But there was a time I didn’t think I deserved you. You can blame me for that, but the fact is we both had to make our way. We wouldn’t have made it if we hadn’t let each other go.”
    “You don’t know that. And you didn’t have the right to decide for me.”
    “I decided for me.”
    “And you can come back now, a decade later, when you’re ready? I’m supposed to go along?”
    “I thought you were happy—and believe me it sliced up a part of me when I’d think about you going on, doing what you wanted to do, without me. Every time I’d hear about you, it was about the name you were making for yourself, how you were building the refuge, or off to Africa or Alaska. The few times I saw you, you were always busy. Heading off somewhere.”
    “Because I couldn’t stand being around you. It hurt. Goddamn it.”
    “You were engaged.”
    “I was never engaged. People assumed we were engaged. I lived with Jean-Paul, and we traveled together sometimes if our work coincided. I wanted to make a life. I wanted a family. But I couldn’t make it work. Not with him, not with anyone.”
    “If it makes you feel any better, anytime I heard about him, or about you seeing someone else, it killed me. I had a lot of miserable nights and days, hours, years, wishing I hadn’t done what I thought—still think—was the right thing. I figured you’d moved on, and half the time I hated you for it.”
    “I don’t know what you want me to say, want me to do.”
    “Neither do I. But I’m saying to you I know who I am now, what I am, and I’m okay with it. I did what I needed to do, and now? I’m doing what I want to do. I’m going to give my grandparents the best I have, because that’s what they always gave me. I’m going to give you the best I have, because I’m not letting you go again.”
    “You don’t have me, Coop.”
    “Then I’ll fix that until I do. If for now all I can do is help you, keep you safe, sleep with you, and make sure you know I’m not going anywhere, that’s okay. Sooner or later you’re going to be mine again.”
    “We’re not who we were.”
    “We’re more than we were. And who we are, Lil? Still fits.”
    “It’s not all your decision this time.”
    “You still love me.”
    “Yes, I do.” She faced him again, studied him with eyes that were both clear and unfathomable. “And I’ve lived a long time knowing love isn’t enough. You hurt me, more than anyone else ever has, more than anyone else ever could. Knowing why? I’m not sure if it makes it better or worse. That’s not an easy fix.”
    “I’m not looking for easy. I came out here because my grandparents needed me. And I was ready to let go. I expected to find you the next thing to married. I told myself I’d have to suck that up. I’d had my chance. The way I look at it, Lil, you had yours, too. Take your time if you need to. I’m not going anywhere.”
    “So you keep saying.” She stepped back, started to turn toward the horses, but he took her arm, swung her back.
    “I guess I’ll have to, until you believe me. Here’s one for you, Lil. Do you know how many ways love can hit you? So it makes you happy, or miserable? It makes you sick in the belly or hurt in the heart. It makes everything brighter and sharper, or blurs all the edges. It makes you feel like a king or a fool. Every way love can hit, it’s hit me when it comes to you.”
    He drew her in to take her mouth, to give in to that endless ache while the wind swept the air with the perfume of sage.
    “Loving you made a man out of me,” he said when he let her go. “It’s the man who came back for you.”
    “You still make my knees weak, and I still want your hands on me. But that’s all I’m sure of.”
    “That’s a start.”
    “I have to get back.”
    “You’ve got color in your cheeks, and you don’t look so tired now.”
    “Well, yippee. That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off at the way you got me out here.” She mounted her horse. “I’m pissed off at you in so many ways right now, on so many levels.”
    He studied her face as he