The raw sound of flesh slapping against flesh heightens my arousal, and a coil begins spiraling within. Cayden peers at where we’re connected, a primitive growl overtaking him as he loses control. He isn’t gentle, and nothing but unadulterated need exists behind each stroke. He is a true beast, a wounded warrior as he drives into me with a passion so fierce, I see stars. But I embrace it, knowing our story has just begun.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper, barely holding on. “Let go.” I mean that in every literal meaning of the word. Whatever secret Cayden is holding, I know it’s to protect me from the pain. That’s all he has ever tried to do. “I’m right here, and I promise I’ll never leave you again.”

  My pledge is our undoing, and a rumble spills from Cayden as he sinks into me relentlessly. I grow lax, not in control of my body as it’s no longer mine. Cayden punishes me with each wicked stroke, and when he reaches down to rub my clit, I scream, completely undone.

  He doesn’t slow down, however. It appears he was waiting for me to detonate first. “It was you, always,” he reveals as he plunges into me over and over again. “Whatever I did…it was always for you.” I’m too far gone to question what that means as I’m reaching another pinnacle, and this time, the downfall will be far worse.

  The sight before me is my final tether, and I come so hard that tears leak from my eyes. Cayden is fierce and feral because it’s evident his love for me knows no bounds. This isn’t just sex; this is belonging to another. And whatever obstacles we face, bring it. I came back here to find him. He’s always been my beacon of light.

  He reads my thoughts because Cayden knows me. He owns me. He always has. “Oh, fuck,” he grunts, leaving fingerprints sunken into my flesh as he grips my waist, pistoning his hips. “I love you,” he professes before letting go.

  Seeing him this way, exposed and vulnerable, I understand why I cherished this man with every fiber of my soul. Running my fingers over his tattoo, I hope that one day, I remember that love because being loved by Cayden is something I never want to forget.

  He presses us chest to chest as he kisses my lips, his skin prickling as I continue to stroke his flank. We’re silent, our heavy breathing filling the space, but no one needs to speak—we both know this changes everything.

  I’m finally home.

  I didn’t have the heart to wake Cayden. It was the first time since knowing him that he truly looked at peace.

  My sore muscles protested as I scampered around his bedroom, attempting to find my clothes. My underwear sat in a ruined heap on the floor, so with no other choice, I decided to go home and change. I snuck out of his house with every intention of returning after a hot shower and some coffee.

  The water feels wonderful against my heightened flesh, sparking memories of what I just did. I suppress a whimper. I don’t know what happens now. Cayden may have told me the truth, but I know there is still so much more to explore.

  With that thought in mind, I decide to dry off and wake Cayden with a kiss. I may have loved Snow White, but I don’t need Prince Charming to save me anymore. I saved myself. Processing over everything Cayden shared, it’s still hard to believe all that happened. But I don’t doubt Cayden’s retelling of events.

  It pains me to know our relationship was so strained, and I can’t help but wonder what exactly led to us hurting one another in the ways that we did. Cayden said the night of my accident, I came here, revealing I was pregnant. The thought is still too painful to fully comprehend. But why did I lie when I clearly knew the baby was his?

  He said we fought and words were spoken? But what was so bad that I left here, resulting in me almost ending two lives? How I wish things were different. I rub over my stomach, a sadness overtaking me. However, I’m quick to dispel those thoughts. I need to get to the bottom of it before I can grieve.

  As I walk into my bedroom, the hair at the back of my neck stands on end. I spin around, certain someone is standing behind me, but I don’t find anyone. Tightening the towel around me, I disregard my frayed nerves as just my edginess from the past few weeks taking a toll.

  Not wanting to be presumptuous but armed with the notion to better be safe than sorry, I hunt through my underwear drawer for the pair of black lace boy shorts I bought during my need for retail therapy. They are brand new, so I know they’re not in the wash, but I can’t seem to find them. Tossing aside the other pairs is to no avail because they’re nowhere to be found.

  Weird.

  Dropping the towel, I step into a red pair instead.

  As I’m fastening the matching bra, a creak sounds softly behind me. If not for my heightened state of awareness, I would have missed it, but I’ve come to learn the creaks of this house like the back of my hand. It came from the loose floorboard in my living room.

  A shiver passes through me.

  “Hello?” I call out, thinking that maybe Cayden has come to find me. But my voice echoes back.

  Flight or fight instinct takes over.

  I rip a summer dress down from the hanger and throw it over my head. I don’t bother with makeup as I slip into a pair of flip-flops and race out of the room. However, a hallway has never looked more daunting as I peer down it, wondering how many steps there are to the front door.

  I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not alone.

  Adrenaline rushes through me as I stand rigid, eyes focused down the corridor. It’s peeking at dusk, so the shadows are settling over the horizon, wreaking havoc on my imagination. Blindly reaching for the light switch, I turn it on, hoping it’ll settle my nerves.

  The blood whooshes through my ears, and everything falls silent as I’m suddenly hit with a memory that I know took place in front of these very walls. Blood, so much blood. A fight. Someone hitting their head. I cradle my forehead, a scream ripping from my throat, but then the unmissable feeling drags me under once more.

  I’m sinking to the bottom of the lake. Watching the world getting smaller and smaller. I’m running out of breath. Clawing my way to the surface, I smell the ocean. The glow from the star on my ceiling flickers brightly. I see the red ribbon…

  “Everything is always better after a thunderstorm…”

  What the hell is going on?

  Gasping for air, I stagger down the hallway, using the walls as my guide to lead me through the house and out the front door. I don’t bother locking it because the fresh air calms me somewhat, but when a malicious snarl vibrates around me, I almost trip over my feet as I run for dear life.

  I tear down the road, only focused on the sanctuary of Cayden’s front door.

  My heart is in my throat when I dash up his front steps and bang wildly on the woodgrain. Whoever is at my back, chasing me, they’re getting closer…and closer.

  I bang harder, screaming, pleading with Cayden to let me in.

  The moment the door opens, I throw myself into the safety of Cayden’s arms, hysterical. “Peyton? Hey, hey, what’s wrong? Shh, it’s okay.” He rubs my back while I sob a guttural cry. “Talk to me. What happened?”

  He closes the door with one hand, ensuring the other is still wrapped tightly around me, and I take what feels like my first breath in minutes. “That’s it, just breathe. It’ll be all right. No one is going to hurt you.”

  His comfort is endearing, but alarm bells sound loudly at his choice of words. I’ve pulled myself from far worse situations such as this, so I steady my ragged breathing and refuse to give light to the demons. “Why di-did you s-say that?” I ask, still nestled in his arms. He stills, which just makes this looming premonition worse.

  Untangling myself, I don’t bother wiping away my tears because I have a feeling many more are yet to follow. “Cayden?”

  He appears freshly showered, and when I see his truck keys secured tightly in his hand, I wonder where he was off to before I blew in here like a storm. “What happened?” he questions, refusing to answer me.

  But I won’t back down that easily. “No, answer me. Why did you automatically think someone was going to hurt me?” My voice is still choppy, but I push past it, needing to get to the bottom of this.

  When he sighs and runs his fingers through his damp hair, the wind gets knocked from my sails. “Peyton, I need to tell you something…”

  Swallowing down my queasiness, I nod, indicating he has the floor. But his cheeks bellow as he blows out a deep breath. Whatever he’s about to reveal, he’s held on to for a very long time. It has the potential to change both our lives forever.

  “Cayden…what did you…” I close my eyes for the briefest of moments, hoping to keep out the truth, but it’s no use. “What did I do?” He hisses, and any doubts I ever had have just been put to bed for good. “Ten years are unaccounted for. Why?”

  I may not remember my past, but this moment in time, I’ll never be able to forget. “The reason is…” His sentence remains unfinished when Lacey enters the foyer, clutching a folder to her chest. From the browning of the paper, it’s been in storage for a while.

  She doesn’t look her usual bubbly self. Quite frankly, she appears as if she’s seen a ghost. She glances back and forth between Cayden and me, blanketed by sheer confusion. “Maybe you could explain why Peyton’s mom bribed you with twenty thousand dollars to stay away from her.”

  I blink once, unbelieving of what I’ve just heard. “What?” Cayden’s gig is up. He reaches out to console me, but I immediately recoil, jarring out my palm. “No, don’t you fucking touch me!” I don’t understand what’s going on. “Is that tr-true? Did my m-mother bribe you?” There must be some mistake.

  But there isn’t.

  “Yes.” His voice cracks while my entire world shatters before me.

  But his next answer will cement our fate for good. “And did you take her money?”

  He at least has the common decency to look at me when he splits my heart into two. “Yes.” He peers down at the folder Lacey holds and pinches the bridge of his nose. “That was in storage for a reason.”

  “I can see why,” she bites back. I’ve never seen her this angry with her brother before. “I knew there was a reason you told me to stay in Myrtle Beach. Now”—she waves the folder in one hand—“I know why.” She meets my baffled stare as I play ping-pong between them, attempting to decipher what the hell is going on and hold back my tears.

  She’s been in Myrtle Beach? I thought she was making herself scarce because of the shit that went down.

  “And now, she needs to know, Cayden. She needs to know it all.” Our eyes finally lock. She looks fatigued and completely shattered.

  “Wh-what’s going on?” My falter betrays my utmost fear.

  Cayden is riddled with whatever he’s about to reveal. He thumbs the corner of his mouth, attempting to gather his thoughts before he speaks. With his face downturned and shoulders slumped, he finally delivers me the final piece—the piece which connects us all together.

  “Everything I told you last night was true. But there is a common denominator.” I gulp as the walls begin closing in on me. “My father.”

  Lacey’s whimper has me rubbing the goose bumps from my arms.

  “Us meeting when we were kids wasn’t by chance. I knew who you were the entire time. Not just because your surname was notorious, but because my father told me about the white house and the woman inside.”

  “The woman?” I wet my lips twice, afraid I’m about to be bled dry.

  “Your mom. Just like you and me, your mother and my father met here when they were kids. But unlike us, their relationship was one-sided. My father was smitten by your mom. But your mother saw my father for the parasite that he was, though he never took no for an answer. He saw her rejection as her playing hard to get. But there was no way someone like Stella Lane would be caught dead with someone like my dad.

  “No matter how hard he tried, it didn’t make a difference…until one night. Your mom knew he ran with a bad crowd, hell, he was the bad crowd, but she asked if he could score her some weed.”

  My eyes widen, and I pull back, stunned. “Are you sure you have the right person?” The notion of my mother smoking pot is just unfathomable.

  But Cayden nods once. “Yes, this is what triggered a chain reaction that affected us all for the rest of our lives. In my dad’s own twisted way, he loved your mom even though he knew he could never have her.” I bite my bottom lip as this tale sounds a little too close to home. “But when she sought him out, asking him to meet her by the oak tree with some weed, he thought she’d had a change of heart.”

  “She doesn’t have one,” I bitterly counter, hating she has a part in every aspect of my life.

  “And my father was soon to find that out. He wore his best shirt, which would have looked ridiculous to someone like your mom. He picked a bunch of flowers, hoping that night was the night the girl of his dreams finally felt the same way he did. I almost felt sorry for him because back then, I wanted to believe he wasn’t the motherfucker he grew up to be.”

  Cayden’s resentment toward his father has always been evident, but this hatred is something else.

  “He waited, ready to lay all his cards on the table, but what he was greeted with affirmed his place in the world. It was and would always be us versus them.

  “A group of guys your mother was friends with jumped him and stole his weed. They gave him a good beating, the message clear—stay away from your mom. Someone like him could never have someone like her.”

  “She set him up?” I don’t know why this shocks me. I suppose I want to see the good in everyone. But Stella Lane is clearly the exception to that rule.

  “Yes. After that, his love turned to hate. He resented her, but most of all, I think he resented himself. That single event was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. He grew to hate your mother and all that her ‘kind’ represented. She was a reminder of everything he wanted but could never have.

  “In the crowd he ran with, he was the tough guy. No one said no to my dad—no one bar your mother—and he never forgot it. For as long as he lived, he promised to make her pay for everything she did.”

  Lacey and I stand mute, as there are no words to describe what we’ve just heard.

  Cayden interlaces his hands behind his neck, peering up at the ceiling. “I was curious about your mom. I wanted to meet the woman my father would mumble about late at night when he was near passed out from the bottle of whiskey he drank. I was curious, but I should have just stayed away.

  “The moment I saw that lemon tree…well, you know the rest. And that, like so many other events, is the biggest regret of my life. If only I stayed away, none of this would have happened.”

  I catalog over everything he shared. I knew I was missing the vital piece. I’m about to find out what.

  “I tried to keep our relationship on the down low because, as you know, you’re the spitting image of her. But when my father saw you, his lifelong obsession with your mother turned a corner. He no longer wanted her. He wanted…you.”

  He clenches his jaw, fists bunched by his sides. “If I’d known that, I would have tried harder to keep you away. But you were a bird, caged in that house. You rebelled, and look what happened. You met me, and your whole life changed. I tried pushing you away, but a selfish part of me was happy when you pushed back.

  “One night, you had snuck into my bedroom, and my father caught us. I’ve never seen him like that before. Usually, he ran on pure anger, but something else was behind his gaze. A longing for what he lost? I’ll never know. You introduced yourself, not knowing what you just did. But I leaped to your defense…I didn’t want you anywhere near him. I told you to leave, and for once, you listened. But it didn’t matter.”

  “And that’s why he beat you?” Lacey’s small voice draws us back to the now. “He couldn’t understand why Peyton wanted you when her mother didn’t want him.” She has just connected all the dots, but we both wish she was wrong.

  Cayden nods, standing tall. He doesn’t want pity. He doesn’t want to be a victim. But he isn’t. This man is nothing but a warrior through and through.

  I cover my mouth with a quivering hand while tears sting Lacey’s eyes. “He beat you all the time. I remember. I thought they were just a dream, but they weren’t. Oh God, Cayden. I’m sorry. I should have…”

  “No, don’t you dare.” He charges forward, cupping her cheeks and leveling her with nothing but sincerity. “I would rather it was me than you. I’m your big brother. It’s my job to protect you. To protect you both.”

  I can’t listen to this without wanting to curl into a ball because there are so many layers. But Cayden withstood so much, and now, it’s my turn to do the same.

  “Every time Peyton was here…he beat you? Didn’t he? As punishment or jealousy? Or maybe both?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says, gently wiping away Lacey’s tears before laying a kiss on her forehead.

  “It does matter,” I counter softly, barely holding it together. “You being hit because of me matters a lot.”

  Cayden sighs as he meets my eyes. “Being with you, touching you…it was worth every beating.” Even now, just as he did years ago, he’s protecting me, shielding me from a reality paved with sorrow. “The months my father went missing were the best months of my life. We did rough it, but we survived. All three of us. A family.”

  Lacey sniffs back her tears while I barely keep mine at bay. “What happened when I was seventeen?” I’ve asked him this before when he filled in the blanks.

  Up until that point, even though our relationship was hidden kisses and stolen nights, we survived our messed-up circumstances together. Cayden tried to push me away, to protect me, but I didn’t listen. But something heinous changed that.

  The color drains from Cayden’s face as he shakes his head slowly. This memory is one he relives every day, and it’s the reason we’re here. “It was the type of night when the earth crackled with electricity. The moon was full. I had just done a drop across the lake and was running late, thanks to some Ivy League assholes fighting over who would pay for their ounce of weed.