“I guess it was. Maybe I’ve got to do some more. But for right now, I’d like to put things back the way they were.”

“I’d like that, but I need you to know I’m going to talk to Nell. On the record.”

Ripley pressed her lips together. “That’s up to Nell. It’s just that she’s . . .”

“I’ll be careful with her.”

Ripley looked in his eyes. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “You will.”

“And with you.”

“I don’t need you to be careful with me.”

“Maybe I’d enjoy it.” He slid his arms around her waist, rising to his knees. Drawing her up to hers. In the back of his mind he could hear the monitors pick up again. He could have cared less. He wanted one thing at that moment, and only one thing. His mouth on hers.

As their lips met, her arms wound around him. Her body fit to his, like the last piece of a complex and fascinating puzzle.

For a moment, it was soft, and it was warm. And it was everything.

Shaken, she drew back. Something inside her was trembling. “Mac.”

“Let’s not talk about it.” His mouth brushed her cheeks, her temples, skimmed down to graze her neck.

“After a while talk just intellectualizes everything. I ought to know.”

“Good point.”

“It has to be soon.” His lips crushed down on hers. “Soon. Or I’m going to lose my mind.”

“I need to think about it a little more.”

He let out one ragged breath before he gentled his grip. “Think fast, okay?”

She laid her palm on his cheek. “I’m pretty sure I’m about done with that section of our program.”

“How odd,” Mia said as she strode into the cave. “And how awkward.” As she watched Ripley and Mac draw apart, she tossed her hair back. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”

Even as she spoke, Mac’s equipment began to shrill. Needles slashed like whips. As one of his sensors began to smoke, he scrambled up.

Saying nothing, she spun around and walked back into the sunlight.

“Jesus, it fried it. It f**king fried it.”

Since he sounded more excited than distressed, Ripley left Mac to his equipment and followed Mia outside.

“Hold up.”

As if she hadn’t heard, Mia continued over the shale to where the water of the cove lapped and retreated, where small tidal pools teemed with life.

“Mia, wait a minute. I didn’t think you walked over this way anymore.”

“I walk wherever I please.” But not here, she thought, staring blindly across the water. Never here . . . until today. “Did you bring him here?” She spun around, hair flying, eyes brimming with a terrible grief.

“Did you tell him what this place is to me?”

The years fell away between them, for that moment. “Oh, Mia. How could you think that?”

“I’m sorry.” One tear escaped. She’d sworn never to shed another over him, but one escaped. “I shouldn’t have. I know you wouldn’t.” She dashed the tear away, turned to face the water again. “It was just seeing you in there together, holding each other, and in that particular spot.”

“What—Oh, God, Mia.” Ripley pressed her fingers to her forehead as she remembered the carving. “I didn’t realize. I swear, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Why should you? It shouldn’t matter, anyway.” She crossed her arms over her br**sts, hugged the elbows tight. Because it did matter, and it always would. “It was long ago when he wrote that. Long ago when I was foolish enough to believe he meant it. To need him to.”

“He’s not worth it. No man’s worth it.”

“You’re right, of course. But I believe, unfortunately, that there’s one person for each of us who’s worth everything.”

Rather than speak, Ripley laid a hand on Mia’s shoulder, left it there when Mia reached back, held it.

“I miss you, Ripley.” The grief of it trembled in her voice, like tears. “The two of you left holes in me. And neither of us will be pleased tomorrow that I said that today. So.” Briskly she released Ripley’s hand, stepped away. “Poor Mac. I should go make amends.”

“You smoked one of his toys, I think. But he seemed more jazzed by it than upset.”

“Still, one should have more control,” she replied. “As you well know.”

“Bite me.”

“Ah, we’re back. Well, then, I’ll go see what I can do to patch things up.” She started back toward the cave, glanced over her shoulder. “Coming?”

“No, you go ahead.” Ripley waited until Mia disappeared into the shadow of the cave before she let out a long breath. “I miss you, too.”

She stayed there, crouching at a tidal pool until she pulled herself together. Mia had always been better, she thought, at smoothing her ruffles. And Ripley had always envied her that degree of self-control. She watched the little world in the water, a kind of island, she supposed, where each depended on the others for survival.

Mia was depending on her. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to accept her connection or the responsibility it put on her shoulders. Refusing to believe it had given her a decade of normality, and cost her a cherished friend.

Then Nell had come, and the circle had formed again. The power of that had been so brilliant, so strong. As if it had never been locked away.

It had been hard, very hard, to turn the key again.

Now there was Mac. She had to decide if he was the next link in a chain that would drag her down, or the key to another lock.

She wished with all her heart he could be just a man.

Mia’s laughter drifted out of the cave, and Ripley straightened. How did she do that? Ripley wondered. How did she turn herself around in such a short span of time?

She started toward the cave just as Mia and Mac stepped out. For an instant she saw another woman, hair bright as flame, sweep out of that dark mouth. Bundled in her arms was a sleek black pelt. The vision wavered, blurred, then slid away, like a painting left out in the rain. It left behind the vague headache that those images always brought with them.

Ten years, she thought again. For ten years she’d blocked it all. Now it was seeping back, liquid through cracks in a glass. If she didn’t shore up those cracks it would all break free. And never be contained again.