Note: The title of this chapter is from the song "Go Long" by Joanna Newsom.

Bobby got as far as putting his keys in the ignition, but he couldn't bring himself to actually drive away. Paralyzed by an array of terrifying options, he stared out the windshield, wide-eyed. The cabin was stiflingly quiet. His shirt was still wet from MC's tears. And there was no way he could leave her again.

Fuck it. He opened the car door and ran back up to the house. He rang the doorbell, heart pounding, and body tingling with fear that she wouldn't open the door.

But she did. Her face was fraught, but she opened the door. Before he could decide it was a bad idea, he stepped through entrance and pressed his lips into hers. To his great surprise, she returned the kiss eagerly, feeling a sob roll its way out her mouth and into his. He relished the familiar taste of her mouth and urgently pushed his tongue between her lips.

Almost immediately, she pulled away. "No, no, no, this is wrong. This is a bad idea." She shook her head, walking away from him and into the living room. "We can't do this. I don't want to do this. This isn't right."

"This is the only thing that's right." He stepped close behind her, tentative, afraid of scaring her into action, and slowly wrapped his arms around her waist, his lips hovering over her neck. She gasped at his touch, just as he remembered. The way she did in the days when they were in love and happy and her body was his alone to please. He moved his mouth to the side of her neck and nipped at the skin, pulling her closer, pressing his hips into her, feeling the soft curve of her ass against him. She arched into him, and he began to explore her body with his long, agile fingers.

He felt her shoulders suddenly tense, as she roughly knocked his arms away. She turned to face him, her body heaving and pressing into his, rage scrawled across her face. Bobby couldn't tell if she wanted to fuck him or fight him. She reached a hand into his dreads and gripped hard, pulling his face to look at hers. He normally would have averted his eyes, cowered away from her anger. Instead, he took a deep breath, and forced himself to look at her.

"You don't get to come back here and just take whatever you want, when you want it." Fury and grief causing her voice to shake. "You don't get to just have me." She pulled him down by the hair, sitting him on the couch. Bobby's cock pulsed with excitement and need. "You don't want me. Remember?" She glowered at him.

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her closer, pressing his head into her stomach, crying again, "You're all I want. Please, lass, I need you" he pleaded desperately. He kissed her stomach and squeezed her hips with his hands. She didn't pull away, but her arms hung limply at her sides. He breathed her in, burying his head into her, groping against her hungrily, pressing his lips hard into her hip bone, her rib cage, below her navel.

Her lips parted and she closed her eyes as she let out a slow breath. She rested her hands on his shoulders. Slowly, he began gathering up the material of her dress, pulling the hem higher and higher up her body. He felt a frantic longing in his body, desperate to see more of her. He wanted to see her thighs, the protrusion of her hip bones. He longed for the sight of her legs falling apart as she let him in again after all this time. He needed to taste her, and hear her breathe his name.

She didn't stop him. He pulled the dress up above her hips, and his breath quickened as each inch of her became visible. He kissed the now exposed skin and slipped his hand under her waist band, sliding her underwear down. He pressed his tongue against her, and nearly wept from the relief of getting to have her in this way again.

She released a guttural, sad moan at his touch, but grabbed his hair in both hands, pulling him harder into her as he rolled his tongue over her clit, between her lips, sucking and kissing, unable to get as close as he wanted to. He ran a hand up the inside of her thigh and slid two fingers deep into her, curling them against her.

Her nails dug angrily into his scalp. He could taste her pain as she writhed her hips, sometimes bucking towards him, other times casting away. He moved skillfully with her erratic movements, maintaining contact. Not letting her go. When she came, her moans transformed into deep, heartbroken sobs.

He stood up, clutching her close to him as she cried. He'd never been able to bear the intensity of her emotions before, but now he couldn't get enough. He wanted to burn up in her anger or passion or whatever she was willing to give him. As she caught her breath, he kissed her passionately again, tears streaming down his face, this time in gratitude. He wanted to spend hours worshipping her body, making up for all the time he had refused to look at her, to see her, to hear her. He wanted to reclaim her. Make an inventory of every part of her that he'd missed. He wanted to fuck the memory of Noah out of her body. Wanted to feel and lick and thrust into her until she forgot everyone who had ever touched her, except for him.

She shoved him away suddenly and walked away, down the hall, to her bedroom. He followed her. The walls seemed to breathe around her, responding to her presence as she passed them.

As he turned the corner into her room, he saw her dress falling to the floor. It took his breath away to see her like that. The soft curves of her body, the ridge of her spine, the warm color of her skin. He stood in frustrated admiration, overcome with her beauty, desolate that it could not be captured, the way your heart breaks looking at a landscape, knowing your feeble memory will never be able to do it justice as you sadly search for its remnants in your mind later.

He rushed to her, but she put out a hand, signaling him not to come too close.

"You don't get to decide when you touch me."

He nodded, saying nothing.

"Take your clothes off," she ordered.

He did as she said.

He stood before her, naked, vulnerable. She took her time looking at every inch of him. He felt her eyes rake over every part of his body. He could see in her face that she had missed him. That she was hungry for him.

"Get on the bed" His cock hardened even more at her words. He laid down, looking up at her. She towered over him, completely naked.

He risked saying something. "You're breathtaking. I could look at you all day." He reached for her and she slapped his hand away, her face pinching in anger and hurt.

"Don't touch me." Her tone was icy. "Is that how you touched June when you wanted to fuck her? How did you make her wet? Did you try all the same tricks you used on me?"

She climbed on top of him, straddling his body.

"Did you think about me the first time you put your dick in her? Did it feel different from me?"

She slid herself down his cock. He drew in a sharp breath as he was enveloped in warmth.

"Did you remember how I felt? Did she feel better than I did?" Her muscles tensed tightly against him as she moved her hips.

"No, no one has ever felt as good as you." He gasped.

She began to rhythmically grind her hips. He closed his eyes, falling into the feeling.

"Open your eyes. Look at me." she demanded.

He snapped his eyes open. Her gaze was wild, her skin flushed.

"Did you regret all the times you didn't fuck me?" She said as she rode him harder. He thrust his hips to match her rhythm.

"Yes"

"All the times you ignored me?" Her pace quickened. He clutched the sheets under him, bracing himself in response to her movements, as his legs buckled and his toes curled.

"Yes"

"How you forgot how to love me?" Her voice was guttural, heaving.

"Yes"

"Do you remember now?"

"Yes!" Every twitch of tension he'd felt since finding out about MC and Noah accumulated and tightened. Each muscle in his body contracted for one excruciating moment, and then released. He cried out as the orgasm ripped through him. He pumped his hips deeper and deeper, needing her to feel every spasm and know that no one had ever made him come like this. No one had every stripped him away so thoroughly and made him feel so much. She pressed her hands hard into his chest, eyes far away, as bliss, regret, and relief, all rolled through him at once.

She climbed off of him and laid down, facing away from him. He rolled to his side and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. "I love you lass." He said softly. "You're the love of my life. I'll never leave you again."

He reached to touch her, eager to make her come, as she had made him come. But the edges of her body began to blur and dissolve. He couldn't seem to make contact as she dispersed into thin air.

Bobby startled awake. Drenched in sweat, alone, in his newly rearranged bedroom, his cock achingly hard.

Loss crashed over him as he realized it had been a dream. The feel of her evaporated as the memory of the day before invaded his mind. How he had sat for several minutes, hands on the steering wheel. How he'd almost gotten out of the car again. How he'd lost his nerve. How he left her, broken and alone, again.

He clenched his eyes shut, as if trying to will the dream back into being, clinging tight to the smell and feel of her. He began running his hand along his cock, trying to simulate her pressure.

He summoned a vision of her in his mind. The feral look in her eyes as she took him into her. The dark skin of her nipples. The way her breasts bounced when she moved against him. But the image twisted away from him. He grunted in helpless frustration.

He quickened the movements of his hand and instead, remembered the heat of her body next to him, rewriting the ending, trying to make it right.

"I love you lass. You're the love of my life. I'll never leave you again." He imagined her rolling toward him. Releasing a happy sigh, the wild rage gone, and replaced by a face full of light, love and joy cascading out towards him. He tightened his grip and pumped harder as he imagined pulling her into him, but the image slipped to the periphery, just out of reach, no matter how he contorted his mind to get to her.

He spit into his hand, and ran it over his shaft, trying again. He beckoned the sound of her laugh from his memory, from those times they rolled around on soft sheets in a sunlit bed first thing in the morning, while he made her laugh and whimper with pleasure. But it wouldn't come. He wouldn't come. It wasn't real. He couldn't hold on to it. He let go, and rolled onto his stomach in frustrated misery.

Is this how it felt, he wondered, when she said what they had wasn't real? Is this the helpless defeat she felt as she tried so hard to save what they had? Realizing it would never work, because there was nothing there to hold on to?

She's never coming back.

A wail of mourning contracted through his body as he finally lurched clumsily into the realization. He heaved, the sobs muffled by his pillow. The dream floated into his mind again. He had never seen her like that before, because he had never had the courage to truly look at her. He had never stripped himself down in that way. Even when he thought he was going to win her back, he hadn't really shown up. At every opportunity, he had chosen to shield himself, at her expense.

And now, she was gone.

Bobby wept openly, making no effort to suppress his grief. Loud, agonising cries tore free from his body. His chest ached from the release. He pulled in desperate breaths as the heartbreak poured out.

Once he had emptied himself, he lay prostrate on his bed, feeling his cock give up and soften beneath him. Sweat and fatigue blanketed his body. His brain could only manage a rush of white noise as he stared blankly at the wall.

Eventually, he sat up, and rested his head in his hands, swaying with the effort. After a few breaths, he stumbled numbly to the shower, and washed his swollen, puffy face. As the water ran over him, his thoughts coasted down the current of his grief, bumping into tiny reminders of her. An occasional dry heave of mourning escaped his lips as he made brief contact with her ghosts. He did his best not to cling to these remnants, saying goodbye, letting them go, and continuing on downstream.

As he dressed, his conscious mind began to flutter back to the surface. Who knew him? Who saw past his jokes and agitation? Who could look at his naked grief and not make him feel like a fool, because she understood so well the impulse to push away, to hide, to distract. And who knew exactly what kind of love he'd given up for the sake of self-preservation?

Bobby got into his car, and typed Priya's address into his GPS. This time, he turned the ignition without hesitation, and drove away.