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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - RELEASE

'Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away … Now it looks as though they're here to stay … Oh, I believe in yesterday… Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be … There's a shadow hanging over me … Oh, yesterday came suddenly … Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say … I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday … Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play … Now I need a place to hide away … Oh, I believe in yesterday … (The Beatles: 'Yesterday')'

Beach. Costa del Sol. Afternoon.

A dark shadow crept across her body, obstructing the sun's rays from reaching her. She looked up to find Reno towering above her.

"Strife's standing over there. You want to kiss me again?" Reno asked from where he stood above her, purposely blocking the sun's bright rays, trying to hide both the edge that kept creeping into his voice and the fact that he was ogling the skin exposed by the red bikini. Holy, how that brought back memories. Memories he would gladly entertain had circumstances been different.

"Only if you want me to." Tifa replied to him from where she lay on a towel, trying to add some color to her too-pale skin and slightly irritated that he was blocking the sunshine, even if he had finally shed that awful blue suit for more appropriate beach attire. She had to admit to herself, if not to him, that he looked good.

He plopped down in the sand next to her. "Go ahead." He stated, keeping all anticipation out of his voice. He'd wanted so badly to kiss her again since their encounter at the Chocobo Races and her antics at breakfast the next morning, but he had kept his distance from her purposely as they'd negotiated with Barrett for an equitable coal contract.

Reeve was happy with the terms he'd gotten, and they had stopped to spend a few days at Costa del Sol. Strife had agreed to come along to help clear out the Mako reactors, and Jessie had already refused to go back to her "boring life" in Junon. The pilot and his assistant would be joining them in Midgar as soon as the Corel Reactor was properly "tweaked". Life appeared to be slowly returning to normal. And he was still alone. Normal.

Tifa moved her body so that she was straddling his lap. Feeling almost bad for continuing the charade and messing with the hearts of all three of them, she removed his sunglasses and looked into his eyes as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her lips against his. Her fingers danced up his neck and into his hair, drawing him closer to her. Shocked that she'd actually straddled his lap, his arms snaked around her back, holding her to him while she kissed him with an emotional abandon that he didn't think she'd possessed. His thoughts clouded together into one huge jumbled mass as he kissed her back, enjoying once again the closeness of her.

All too soon she broke away from the kiss, feeling the hunger she had felt days before creep back into his kiss with a growing urgency. She glanced up to find that Cloud had been watching them, and when her eyes met his, he turned and stalked away up the stairs leading towards town.

"Don't kiss me like that unless you fucking mean it!" Reno hissed at her after Cloud walked away, all the disappointment, hurt, anger, and bitterness he'd worked so hard to keep inside all these years, expunging itself in his constrained yell. It felt good; it felt right. It was cleansing. "Don't kiss me with that kind passion when you're only trying to make that asshole jealous!"

He raked his hands through his already-messy hair and refused to meet her gaze. If only she knew what she was doing to him just kissing him like that.

Tifa was startled by Reno's sudden, and uncharacteristic, emotional outburst. To be honest, so was he. It was everything. Holy, how he just wanted to rewind the last five years… walk away from Shinra, make the woman in front of him his wife. But that was the past, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

She looked at him sitting in front of her looking so vulnerable, and she knew it was now or never. If she didn't say what he needed to hear, what she truly felt, she doubted she'd get the chance to again. The charade could go on no longer. Tifa took a deep breath and whispered softly, touching his cheek with the backs of her fingers. "I do mean it, Nathan."

'Nathan.' Every time she spoke his name it was a benediction to his heart. His head snapped up, not believing what he had just heard.

"Don't lie to me, Tifa." His tone was cold, tired of having his mind messed with. He wanted to believe, but the past made it so hard to do so.

"I'm not lying to you." She lifted his chin with her fingers and looked into his eyes, cold with years of hurt, but searching for the truth. "I'm not trying to make him jealous."

He searched her eyes, looking for the betrayal of her words in those beautiful chocolate-cherry depths, but he could find nothing but truth. Holy, could he believe her? His heart screamed at him to accept the truth that it knew she was telling him. His stubborn pride wouldn't let him let the hurt go. His heart ached for her embrace, her touch, her kind words, her body wrapped around his. His pride demanded an explanation for the hurt and an apology for the murderous accusations, even though he was just as guilty of flinging those, and worse, as she. Even though he knew why she had left him before. He was a Turk, a hired killer of the company that had destroyed her life.

She was still sitting there, looking at him, her body straddled on his lap waiting for an answer. How easy it would be to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight, letting the forgiveness his heart had already granted flow between them. How easy it would be to kiss her and taste the tang of passion that he had experienced only moments before. So simple to tell her what he felt. To say those words he had said before, words he had meant from the depths of his heart, only to be rejected.

"Nathan?" She asked when he didn't say anything.

'Nathan.' She'd spoken his name again, soft and tender, another benediction to his heart. Did she know what that did to him- hearing his name uttered from her lips?

"I … can't." He spoke the words out loud without realizing he had.

"You can't what?" She asked softly, confusion crossing her features.

"I can't… I can't do this." Holy, how he wanted to tell her. But there was no way he could speak those words to her again. Her rejection of him the last time still scarred his soul.

"You were right." She said, nearly choking on the words. She took his hands in her own. "We both have blood on our hands. I realized that in the mines. I'm … I'm sorry."

Reno smiled a genuine smile as relief flooded over his heart hearing those words from her. Jessie had been telling the truth. Not that he'd doubted his sister's word, but hearing those words from the mouth of the woman that drove him insane with desire meant more to him than anything else.

His arms wrapped around her again, an unconscious, automatic gesture that felt completely like the right thing to do.

"Nathan," She lifted his head from her shoulder and looked him in the eye once more. "There's something else that I need to tell you." Tifa bit her lip before proceeding, having no idea how to tell him what he needed to know or no idea how he would react. Jessie had been hinting at her for days to tell him this.

His eyes met hers, seeing the uncertainty and fear in them. His fingers brushed lightly against her face, encouraging her to continue. He didn't know where all of this was headed, but anything had to be better than the constant fighting or, as Jessie had pointed out, the ridiculous game of "cat and mouse" that they had been playing. However, all of his years as a Turk couldn't prepare him for her next confession.

"You… we... we have a daughter." Tifa spoke, fear still in her eyes, fearing for the worst as she told him what she had kept hidden from almost everyone for nearly the last five years.

Everything in his body went cold and numb as she spoke the words he'd most never wanted to hear from a woman. He had no clue what to say to her at this moment and although part of him screamed at him not to, Reno left her lying in the sand as he stormed off towards town.