Page 99 of Rogue Riders Duet

We’re in sync with every breath, every rushing heartbeat, and it wrecks me.

Not only because she’s beautiful and standing half-bare in front of me, letting me touch her, but because I wasn’t there. Because she went through hell alone.

But I’m here now.

And I will never look away again, not even if it kills me.

My hand shifts instinctively, splaying wider across the edge of the scar, and my thumb brushes the swell of her breast because my hand wants to feel all of her, even the pieces that still tremble. Her breath stutters, then breaks entirely into a small, startled hiccup.

“I didn’t know it was this bad.” The words fall out of me, rough with guilt. “Fuck… I didn’t know.”

She should hate me for it, for not being there for her, for not trying harder, but she’s still here, right under my hands, letting me in anyway.

My face hovers just above hers, so close I can feel the heat radiating off her skin. I lower my lips, pressing them to the soft curve of her cheek. “Fuck, baby girl, I’m sorry.”

I mean it to stop there. To be just that, a moment of being close enough to say everything I can’t put into words. But she turns and slides her hand behind my neck, buries her fingers in my hair, and she kisses me.

Not tentatively.

Desperately.

She presses her mouth to mine like she’s been holding this in her lungs for years.

My small gasp of surprise is brief, and before I even realize what I’m doing, my hands slide up along her sides until they find her face. Cupping her jaw with both hands, my fingers brush through the ends of her sweat-damp hair, and my thumbs graze the edge of her cheeks, wiping away her leftover tears like she’s something delicate, even though I know she’s not.

I return her kiss without hesitation, pouring everything I didn’t know I’d been carrying into it. Every moment I missed. Every second I failed her. Every scream I didn’t get to hear. Every broken breath I didn’t hold for her.

My hand skims down her throat, and when I find the pulse point just beneath her jaw, a gasp escapes her as I press my thumb there. It’s proof that she’s real, that she’s here, that this is happening.

I press closer, like maybe if I hold her tight enough, I can go back in time and stand by her side through all of it. She leans into me, her mouth parting under mine, one hand still tangled in the back of my hair, the other curled into my hoodie, holding on like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.

I deepen the kiss, not to dominate, but because I need it. Because I’ve spent the last seven years thinking about what was lost, and the last two hours terrified I’d never see her again, and right now, this moment, her mouth against mine, her body pressed flush to my chest, it’s the first time since she came back that I’m not afraid.

Because she’s not just fire and grief and scars.

She’s warmth.

She’s want.

She’s home.

I pull back and take a deep, shuddering inhale, breathing her in. She still smells like her. That clean, sun-warmed Alaina smell, like summer rain and something unnamable that hits me in the chest like it belongs there.

And then it really hits me.

Because she’s still that Alaina, too, underneath the faint scent of sweat, massage oil, and secrets.

The girl who used to fall asleep on the team bus with her head on Dane’s shoulder and her sneakers kicked off into the aisle. The girl who carved her initials into a tree halfway up Snowshoe’s old black trail and dared me to do the same.

She’s that girl.

Dane’s sister.

My best friend’s little sister.

Fuck.

I jerk my hands from her skin like they’ve been scorched and pull back, too fast, and probably too roughly. She stumbles, her eyes wide and her hand still half-curled around my hoodie, not understanding what just happened.