NOTE: This episode is set after the season five episode "Namaste", episode 5x09. It is my first LOST Fanfic, so all criticism is welcome.

It was a simple kiss. She could recall several kisses between the two back then. Three years ago now when he'd almost begged her into bed to ease his pain. It was right after they'd gotten away from the Others' camp. Right after Jack had risked everything to get them out of that awful place.

So, what was so wrong with this kiss? She felt his resistance and with every tug apart, a sense of mystery grew, until finally, Sawyer's firm but hard hands wrapped around her and pulled apart. And as she looked up with longing eyes into his face, she felt a mix of sorrow and regret. Why was he resisting? She thought he'd wanted this.

"Look, frec – Kate," he whispered.

He called her Kate. It was almost weird hearing her own name. From him anyway. All the time before – or after, technically, considering they were thirty years away from home. In all of that, she'd begged him to use her real name, but now it felt so.. Serious.

"Do you like me?" Kate demanded.

"Please, freckles."

"DO you like me!?" she repeated.

"Of course, I like you, freckles, but things just aren't that-"

But Sawyer was interrupted to the electrifying feeling that was Kate Austin's lips. How he'd missed those lips, sometime ago, but how forbidden they were now. Kate didn't understand just how forbidden she was to him. Kate had been away all this time. Sawyer had moved on.

He tried to break away, but Kate reinforced her kiss, and Sawyer found himself kissing her back. Even as alarms rang in the back of his head, and as pictures of Juliet's face ran through his mind, Sawyer couldn't help it. He kept kissing her. He needed to warn her. He needed to stop.

"Kate," Sawyer weakly said, almost moaning, breaking away from her kiss.

"Shh," Kate hushed, smiling as she looked up at him.

"Kate. I.. I love Juliet."

Sawyer tried to glance away. He tried to take his mind away from the porch to the small cabin in the compound he knew one day would be the living place for the Others. Still, Kate's face glowed through his imagination, and his eyes were glued to her hurt face. She began to pull apart from him, searching for the words. And Sawyer waited for her, like he'd done for the last three years.

"LaFleur!" yelled Radzinsky over a radio, standard for DHARMA workers.

"Yeah," Sawyer answered back, holding up his radio as he put some distance between himself and Kate.

"Code 14-J. Get over here, pronto."

"Cool your horses. I'll be right there."

Sawyer's get-out-of-jail-free card. Still, as he walked toward the blue van on the side of the small cabin he called home, he couldn't help but glance up to the porch he'd stood on just before. Kate's hurt face now illuminated anger as she glanced at him. He tried to manage up some kind of half-assed wave. She simply turned and began to walk away, leaving him to wonder what could have been as he drove away in the night.