Bones

God, she looked as beautiful as always. Her hair was brown now, and her figure had filled out in all the right places. The box she was holding fell out of her hands. I used my vampire speed to catch it, and she winced at the sudden motion. I straightened up, echoing what I'd said to her so many years ago in that cave, when she was still terrified of me. "Think I'd strike you? Aside from teaching you how to fight, I'd never lay a harsh hand on you." Then I stared at her, drinking in the face that had haunted my thoughts, my dreams, nearly driving me mad with missing her. She stared, mouth agape, in the pouring rain. I put the box on the edge of the truck, and wiped away some water from beneath her eyes. It was impossible to tell in the rain, of course, but I'd swear it was a tear.

Cat

This couldn't be real. It couldn't be. I had obviously suffered a head injury while fighting a vampire and was now hallucinating. But that was OK. Because if I was imagining this, it was certainly better then whatever reality had in store for me. He reached forward and touched me. If this was a hallucination, I didn't want it to end. I didn't want to wake up. I refused to wake up. I would play this out like it was real, like what I would do if only this were real and he was here.

Rain ran down my face as the skies poured out onto us. After 30 seconds of staring at each other, I reached out a hand and gently laid it along his cheek, cupping his face. God, he felt so real. "I don't know if you are real or not, but maybe we should get in the truck. I'm getting wet, and I want to see you better." I blushed at that. Damn, years since I've seen him and I still can't stop saying embarrassing things and blushing. It's just like we were back in the cave. Well, aside from being drenched.

Bones

I was a professional whore for years when I was a human, and have nearly two and a half centuries of experience with women. Thousands certainly, tens of thousands potentially. Yet I've never enjoyed a touch from a woman more than when she touched my cheek. I turned my face into it, breathing in her faint, rain-soaked scent and gently kissing her palm. At her excellent suggestion of getting into the truck, I pulled her close to me and jumped inside, not willing to break the contact for anything.

Cat

I kept telling myself that this had to be a dream. Men you love, men you cruelly left, don't just walk around a corner and land back in your life. It doesn't happen that way. But he smelled like him, and I could feel the energy of his aura. I had thought it was the lightning brewing, but it must have been him. I was soaking as well, not a feeling I would generally have in a dream. I could feel the textured floor of the van, and taste the rain that had run into my mouth. There were only two explanations. I was either having the most vivid hallucination in my life, or the hit man who had every reason in the world to be furious with me was now inches away. I stepped back, suddenly afraid.

Bones

The wind was whipping the rain inside the truck, soaking and weakening the cardboard boxes near the door and getting on the furniture. I didn't want to ruin Randy's belongings, so I reached up and pushed the door down, plunging us into pitch black at the same time that she gave a start and backed up. Kitten tensed at the sudden darkness. Her night vision was far better that a human's, but not as good as mine. She knew that, and hated to be at a disadvantage.

"Are you here to kill me?" She asked outright. I winced.

"Of course not. Oh, I'm mad as blazes for you running off like that and leaving me with nothing but a Dear John note and some memories. And I've been offered a hell of a lot of quid to kill the famed 'Red Reaper' cutting swathes through the undead community. But I told you years ago, and I told you two minutes ago, I would never strike or lay a harsh hand on you, unless I was teaching you how to fight. And as angry as I am, that hasn't changed."

She relaxed, slightly. "I didn't think so, but I had to be sure." She looked around. "Is there a light in here? I want to see you."

Luckily I'd been hanging around Randy long enough to know he had a very stinky habit. I took in an analyzing sniff, then walked to a box on top of a stack and opened it, revealing far more Yankee Candles than any person should have. "There we go, luv. Do you want Green Apple, Crème Brule, or Brownie Batter?"

She laughed at that. Bloody hell, I'd missed that laugh. "Crème Brule. It smells kind of like you. Sometimes I thought I caught a whiff of you when I passed a bakery."

I pulled out the candle, and lit it with a lighter from my pocket. The dark compartment filled with a small soft glow. For most humans it would have been nearly useless, but for us freaks it was all we needed. I looked at Kitten, drinking in every detail. I liked her better as a redhead than a brunette, but it was so good to see her again that I really didn't care.

Cat

The reality of the situation hit me, the smells and the touch and the ache in my heart that seemed to ease for the first time in years. This was Bones. I had thought of him every day in the last four years. I had thought I would never see him again. And I had thought my heart would break from it. In the back of my brain the part of me that was always on the lookout for danger was worried that he was here to kill me. After all, I had left him in such a cruel way. And I wasn't surprised there were bounties on my head. There was a reason I dyed my hair and often wore colored contacts. But Bones had taught me to trust my gut, and my gut said that he was almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him, and that he wasn't here to hurt me.

He was still so gorgeous. And those hands…those hands that had done so much to me. I gently reached out and took one, tracing around each of the fingers with my index, then making small circles in his palm with my thumb. He gasped in a breath. No idea why, it's not like he needed to breathe. Something felt so familiar about this scene; when I realized what it was, I nearly doubled over laughing.

Bones

Oh Cain, her touch was amazing. Her skin was so soft, even with the years of fighting. I brought in her smell, it was even more wonderful than I had remembered. It even overpowered the damn candle. Then she started laughing so hard I was worried she would fall over. "What? What is it?" She just laughed harder. "Well, let me know when you decide to let me in on what is obviously a bloody good joke."

Kitten managed to get herself under control and looked around the moving van. "Does this remind you of anything?" At my blank look she elaborated. "Our first job. Killing Sergio." Of course. The job where we then spent an hour in the back of a truck, and told each other our dark secrets. The same night when I'd almost gotten to kiss her for the first time, if our ride hadn't shown up with bloody awful timing. I smiled.

"I think that's the first time you really started seeing me as a person, instead of just a vampire. That's when I started really having hope that I might be able to get you to love me."

Her eyes misted over, definitely not rain this time. "It's when I started to, though it took me a while to admit it." She signed and sat on a chair that was still in the truck. I sat down on a couch across from her, our knees almost touching. Every nerve in me was on fire, and it took all 240 years of learned restraint and patience to not sweep her up, crush her to me, and never let go. But I had waited far too long to see her again to risk having her bolt again.

Cat

My thoughts were tied up in knots. How many times had I thought about this, about what I would say if I had the chance to explain why I had left? I had explained the bare outline of the circumstances in my note when I had left him, but I'd been trying so hard not to cry that I hadn't been able to say much. I was worried that if I wrote down everything I would convince myself not to go.

"I owe you an explanation."

"Too bloody right you do. I thought we were going to start a new life together, and I come home to an empty house. Until I found your note I thought the government had taken you, then I did find it and discovered you had left with them of your own free will!"

God, this was going to be even harder than I had imagined when I lay awake at night in the months after I left. I had relived those last 12 hours in my head so many times I knew every expression on his face, every touch of his hand on my skin that we shared before I left. After I had used his jacket to make it look like Switch's body was Bones' I snuck it out of the holding facility. I had put it around a pillow, and held it while I cried myself to sleep for at least a month. Eventually it had lost his scent, and my nights had become even lonelier.

I took a deep breath and started. The hundred times I had played this out in my head helped, I could just go on autopilot. Just as long as I didn't actually have to look in his eyes and see the hurt there. "The men at the hospital knew all about me. They knew my personal history, my genetics, even my grades. They threatened to go after you, and said that both the mortal and supernatural community would be after us." I struggled to hold back tears as I kept going. This was the hard part.

"At first I told Don no, and then they brought in my mother. And she told me she wished she'd died instead of learning she had failed as a parent, because I was with a vampire. That the darkness had awakened in me, like she was afraid of all these years. That it was your fault that her parents were murdered. That you would turn me into a vampire at the first opportunity. She said she didn't want to see me ever again if I was with you! She just said the most horrible things to me. And then Don told me that he would protect her, and that without that protection vampires would go after her to get to me. Plus, I had just murdered the Governor, and the police don't look too kindly on that."

I stared at the floor. It was oddly cathartic to actually say this, to get it out in the open. "I know the two of us could have run away together, but we would have been looking over our shoulder for the rest of our lives. And my mother wouldn't go with us. You saw how she was for the one day we were all together! She would have run away, and given away our location to whoever she could in an attempt to get you killed. She thinks if you die, it will break the hold you have over me. This was the only way I could think of to keep you both safe. And it's eaten me up ever since." I finally lifted my eyes to his face, afraid for what I would see.

Bones

Several emotions were warring inside of me. I was angry at Kitten, but not nearly as angry as at Don and her mother. She was injured and traumatized, and they had played on her fears for their own gains. What kind of mother would say such a thing to her child? I was also angry at myself for not getting her out of the hospital earlier, or noticing the strange behavior when I left that morning. But beyond that, I ached for her in sympathy for what she had been through and the difficulty of the choice she had been forced to make while incredibly vulnerable. The scent of her grief was filling the enclosed space, even over the scent of the candle.

"Kitten, why didn't you tell me any of this that day? We would have figured it out. You should know by now that you don't need to protect me. And I would never force you to become a vampire, I'd welcome it, but I wouldn't pressure you." Cain, she smelled so good. I desperately wanted to pull her into my arms and stroke her hair, and then I wanted to kiss her and drink from her and show her what she had been missing all these years.

Her gaze locked with mine. "Because I was afraid that you would convince me to stay, and I didn't see how that would work. I knew if you looked at me the way you are looking at me now I'd never be able to leave. And that might get you killed."

Bloody hell, she was frustrating. But so brave and brash. It was infuriating, but that was why I had fallen in love with her. I didn't know if she still felt the same way, but I knew I'd never stop. "Do you still love me? You told me the morning you left that you would love me until you died."

Kitten got a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face.

Cat

Jesus, what do I tell him? Do I tell him that he's still the most important person in the world to me? How can I say that, when in many ways I picked my mother over him? My emotionally manipulative, neurotic, prejudiced, child endangering mother over the man who had tried to heal the damage she had caused. He was the first person to love me for who I was, all of me, including the parts that made my mother despise me sometimes. But in the end, our situation hadn't changed. It still put him in danger. If Don found out I was dating a vampire, especially that vampire who had broken me out, he'd send a team after him and have him killed. I couldn't live with myself if that happened. And as angry as I have been at my mother, I can't just abandon her. The only thing I can do is lie. It's the only way I can keep him safe.

I started to lie, I really did. But I couldn't. The truth came spilling out of my like water breaching a damn. "I still love you. I never stopped. I've been miserable without you. I even took your name and got your tattoo." I flipped down the hip on my jeans to show the skull and crossbones. Then I looked back at him, pleading in my eyes, and his had turned bright green.

Bones

I had been barely holding myself back from taking her from the moment I saw her, but some of that control broke when I saw the tattoo on her hip. It wasn't just the mark that showed that she truly still loved me, it was the simple act of seeing her body. It wasn't even that revealing, wasn't anywhere I hadn't seen on a thousand girls wearing low-riders at a bar or club. But to see her skin, and so close to my favorite place in the world to be, was just too much. I stood up, bent down, and crushed my mouth to hers. For half a heartbeat, she seemed startled. I was so worried that she would push me away. Please, please, don't push me away. Show me you want this too.

Then she opened her lips and pulled my tongue into her mouth. Bloody hell, I had missed this. She stood as well, then pushed me back onto the couch I had been sitting on. Believe me, I didn't complain. Our mouths were locked together and it was hard to tell where I ended and she began. I could barely believe this was real. Her heart was racing, the sound of her blood rushing in her veins made mine run in a distinctly Southerly direction. She was straddling my hips and had her hands on my chest. Mine were running through her hair, that soft hair that I had missed so much.

And that's when everything got all bolloxed up. I hadn't been paying attention, but the rain had stopped, and Randy and Denise had come back outside. They opened the back of the truck to see Kitten on top of me, pinned down with her hands on me. "Cat, No!" screamed Denise, rushing into the truck. "Don't kill him!" We both stared at her, Kitten straining her neck around to see the open back door.