His hand found her wrist in the dark before she heard him cross the room. Callused thumb pressing against her pulse, and she felt the tremor in his fingers—not hesitation, but the physical cost of restraint. She didn't pull away. The flannel was still there, half-hidden, a confession between them, and when she looked up at him, she saw something broken in his eyes, something he'd been holding together with willpower and whiskey for fifteen years.
"You came back." Her voice was barely a whisper.
"I didn't leave." His thumb moved once across her pulse point, a question. "Not really. Not since you walked into that kitchen."
She should say something about Elena. About the wedding. About how wrong this was. Instead she said, "The shirt smells like you."
Something shifted in his face. The broken thing he'd been holding together—she saw it crack further. "I know."
The radiator clanked, steam hissing into the cold air. Outside, wind rattled the frost-laced window. Inside, the silence stretched like a held breath, and she felt the weight of his body, the heat of him, the impossible nearness. Her pulse beat against his thumb, and she knew he could feel it—knew he could feel everything she wasn't saying.
"Harper." Her name in his mouth. Rough. Resigned. Like he was letting go of something. "Tell me to leave."
She didn't.
The bed groaned as she stepped back, her thighs hitting the edge of the mattress. He followed, not chasing but surrendering, like he'd been fighting this current his whole life and just decided to stop swimming. His hand stayed on her wrist, thumb still pressed to her pulse, and she watched his chest rise and fall too fast for a man who was supposed to be in control.
"I should hate you," she whispered. "For making me want this. For making me want you."
"I know." His jaw tightened. "I've hated myself for fifteen years."
She reached up. Her fingers found the collar of his flannel—the red-black one he'd worn that first night, the one she'd pressed her face into and breathed. She tugged. Once. A question.
He answered by stepping closer, his body against hers, his hand sliding from her wrist to her waist, and his forehead dropping to hers. His breath was hot, unsteady, and she felt the tremor run through him.
"Don't ask me to stop," he said. "I don't think I can."
She didn't ask him to stop. She leaned into him, into the heat, into the wrongness, and let her eyes close.
She broke the kiss. Her palms pressed flat against his chest, not pushing him away but holding him at a distance she could think through. The heat of his mouth still burned on her lips, and she could taste him—coffee, salt, the sharp edge of the whiskey he'd been drinking earlier.
"Mason." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Elena's ring. On her finger. The diamond you gave her." She watched his face in the dim light filtering through the frost-laced window. "When did you ask her?"
He went still against her. His hand on her waist stopped moving, and she felt the muscles in his jaw tighten beneath her fingertips. For a long moment, he didn't answer. The radiator clanked. The wind pushed against the glass.
"September." The word came out rough, pulled from somewhere deep. "Before the leaves turned. I took her to that overlook on Miller's Ridge—"
"I know the place." Harper's voice cracked on the last word. She'd been there with him once, fifteen years ago, before everything went wrong. Before Elena. Before he became off-limits.
His eyes searched hers in the dark. "I didn't know you were coming home, Harper. I didn't know you'd walk into that kitchen and make me remember what it felt like to be alive."
"But you proposed." Her hand slid from his chest to his collar, fingers curling into the fabric. "You put a ring on her finger. You set a date."
"I know." He didn't look away. "I know what I did. I've been telling myself the same things you're thinking—that I'm a coward, that I should have waited, that I should have—"
"Should have what?"
His hand came up to her face, callused palm cupping her jaw, thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone with a tenderness that made her chest ache. "Should have known you'd come back."
The radiator hissed. The frost on the window caught the moonlight, and she saw the broken thing in his eyes again—the fifteen-year crack he'd been papering over with duty and distance and the quiet resignation of a man who'd given up.
"You're still engaged," she said. "She's still my sister."
He didn't answer. His thumb traced her jaw again, slow and deliberate, and she felt the tremor in his hand—not hesitation, but the cost of every word he wasn't saying.