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stars. Or the memories being stirred by just sitting next to him in Rhonda.
    Nostalgia was a bitch like that.
    “Can you still find the track?” she asked.
    He threw her his best boy scout look. “A man never forgets where he lost his virginity.”
    Jarrod had stumbled across the thick stand of trees, just off the road, when he’d been surveying for the fire service, and they’d snuck out to it whenever they’d been able. But it had been fifteen years. Surely it must have fallen back to the inexorable creep of bush?
    Unless … “Did you ever bring anyone else out here?”
    He glanced at her swiftly, his brow crinkled as he shook his head definitively. “ Never .”
    A sweet swell of relief washed through her system. Selena didn’t have any right to demand this place be theirs exclusively but she couldn’t deny how happy it made her that it was.
    Soon enough, Jarrod was taking the dual cab bush and they bumped along slowly through the undergrowth for a few minutes before the headlights picked out the ghostly outlines of tall thick trunks ahead.
    He flashed her a grin. “Ta da.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” She rolled her eyes.
    Within another minute he was wheeling the car around, positioning it within the horseshoe embrace of the trees, completely invisible to anyone passing by on the road to the springs.
    Not that anyone would be at this hour of night.
    He released his seatbelt then hit a switch, rolling both their windows down before he killed the engine. The moonlight projected overhanging leafy shadows against the windscreen as the smell of eucalyptus, warm bushland and dry earth joined the aroma of Jarrod’s aftershave.
    She inhaled deeply and she was seventeen again.
    Her pulse fluttered at her wrists and temple, joining a more primal flutter deep inside her. The hush of the night pressed in on them.
    “I am sorry,” she said, removing her seatbelt, staring out the windscreen as the silence stretched, conscious of him looking out his window at God knew what. “About just taking off like that.”
    He didn’t say anything, just gripped the steering wheel at the bottom and continued to stare out his window. Selena’s heart thudded loud in her chest. “I realise I never told you that, and I should have. Years ago. I was going to write, but then I didn’t know what to say, and when I did try, it seemed inadequate. I don’t know how many pages I screwed up and—”
    She stopped. Shit, Selena, shut up. She was babbling.
    But he wasn’t saying anything and she couldn’t bear the condemnation in his silence.
    “Then time went by and I promised myself next week, next month or for Easter or Christmas until it just got too … late to do it. And then I figured it was better that you hated me anyway.”
    His knuckles whitened on the wheel as he turned his head to face her. “What on earth did I ever do to you to make you think I wasn’t supportive of you moving to the city?”
    Selena shook her head. “Nothing.”
    “I knew you were leaving to go to college in February,” he said, his jaw tight. “I was fine with that. Well … I hated it, but I knew we’d figure it out. I knew you wanted a career in TV news and I wanted that for you as well. So I don’t understand why you just took off in the dead of night without a goodbye, a note, a phone call … nothing. Why didn’t you just tell me you were going?”
    Because she wouldn’t have gone.
    Hot tears pricked at the backs of her eyes but Selena refused to let them fall—she’d cried enough back then for both of them. She’d been running scared—terrified—and every action had felt justified at the time, but she’d hurt him and she had to own that.
    “I got my exam results that day. I just scraped through with passes.”
    Selena had been a straight-A student. She’d worked hard for them; she wasn’t naturally gifted but she’d always topped her classes. Until she and Jarrod had started having sex.
    And they’d both lost about a hundred IQ