I knew it made sense to start poking around in my past but I hated the idea of Dex seeing the sad, pathetic girl I’d been growing up.

I mean, I know I wasn’t the poster child for having her shit together but considering the stock I came from, I thought I was doing pretty good.

I learned we were about two hours outside of the city in upstate New York. Dex seemed to sense the heaviness in my heart as we traveled toward my childhood home and chose to remain silent.

I was grateful.

My thoughts were all tangled up — Dex, sex, who I’d been, who I’d become, my future, the possibility of being gunned down when I stepped out of the car — all those things were knotted and twisted in my brain.

And I didn’t know where to start plucking at the tied ends.

Normally, I would fill the silence with chatter but I couldn’t even do that.

I gave Dex directions and within the two hour window we were pulling into my old neighborhood.

Memories crowded for room and I frowned against the turmoil.

Want to know what I remembered about living here?

Loneliness. An entire childhood of loneliness, punctuated by odd moments of my mom returning to life and painting like a wild woman possessed, only to lose her again days later.

She’d never been formally diagnosed but sometimes I wondered if my mom had been mentally ill.

Maybe bi-polar.

I guess it didn’t matter either way.

Dex parked along the side street and we climbed out. I drew a deep breath and headed up the steps, fishing out my key from my purse. “We’re in luck. No tenants right now,” I told Dex as I stepped inside.

It smelled different than I remembered.

Tenants had come and gone.

It came fully furnished but the wear and tear was starting to show.

I ran my fingers along a gouge in the moulding where someone had likely jammed a piece of furniture against the wall by accident.

Dex did a quick perimeter search, returning when he’d determined it was safe and we were alone.

I appreciated his diligence. The minute I stepped over the threshold in this place, I was trapped by memories.

Which was another reason I never returned.

I gave him a quick tour because I didn’t know what else to do.

“Living room, sunroom/paint room, kitchen, and upstairs, what was my bedroom and my mother’s.”

Dex narrowed his gaze at the furnishings.

“Yeah, seems like my tenants weren’t so mindful of their surroundings,” I said, mistaking his silence for one of judgment. “It used to be pretty nice.”

But Dex was on a different track. “Someone had very expensive tastes,” he said, causing me to frown in confusion. He pointed to the vase that my mom always kept dried flowers in. “That vase is worth about $20,000, give or take.”

“What? No way.”

He nodded, his gaze taking in every detail I’d clearly missed. “This entire house is filled with expensive art.”

“My mom had a $20,000 vase and I had holes in my shoes growing up? That’s fucked up,” I muttered, freshly angry with my mother for being...well, her.

“Do you see a pattern here? You went to a private school, you lived in this Brownstone, with no discernible income to sustain it, and your house was filled with expensive items most people would never realize had value unless they were familiar with that world.”

Dex was right— something was fishy.

“Jinkies, Scooby, I think you might be onto something,” I retorted, climbing the stairs to my room, wanting to wring my dead mother’s neck for being so damn selfish and cryptic.

Would it have killed her to be a little more forthcoming with important information?

Dex was right behind me as I entered my room. The former tenants had painted it purple.

I grimaced but otherwise it looked the same.

Even my bed — a four-poster Victorian that dominated the room, lacy panels dripping from the top to cascade to the floor, eating up the square footage.

“I spent a lot of hours in this room,” I murmured, staring at what I’d considered my prison and my haven growing up. I turned to Dex, mortified by the tears that sprung to my eyes. “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. Not that my mom would’ve let anyone come over. She was a bit of a recluse.”

Understatement of the year.

Dex’s hand on my shoulder calmed my raw nerves. Now was not the time to gripe about my unorthodox childhood. I drew a deep breath and tried to stay on point.

I’d long boxed up anything that had any significant sentimental value. This bedroom was simply a room in a house I’d left behind a long time ago.

Before releasing me, Dex gave my shoulder a tiny squeeze, saying, “Someone was paying your mom’s bills with cash. We need to find out why.”

I nodded but I didn’t know how we’d find answers when the woman who had them, wasn’t exactly answering calls.

I pointed toward the other bedroom down the hall. “That’s my mother’s bedroom but she spent most of her time in the painting room. Sometimes she even slept there on the divan.”

Dex chuckled wryly, causing me to regard him in question. “You use words like divan and yet you didn’t know that your house was filled with rich person crap?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody uses the word divan anymore. Not since the Victorian age, I’m guessing.”

Catching on, I shared his amusement. “Yeah, I guess I can chalk that up to, yet another, example of my weird-ass childhood. My mom always called it her divan or ‘fainting couch.’ Imagine the confused looks if I’d called it that instead.”

“Fair point,” he agreed.

After doing a quick search of my mom’s room and coming up empty, we headed back downstairs to the sun room.

“My mom had it converted to her painting room. It was her most favorite place in the world. When my mom was painting, she was the closest to borderline normal. At least for a little while.”

“Do you have any of her art?”

I nodded. “In storage, in the attic.”

“Nothing you wanted to keep for yourself?”

I shook my head. It was hard to explain my relationship with my mom. Probably because I had conflicted feelings that I didn’t quite understand.

I caught Dex regarding me with brief tenderness and I nearly lost it.

I couldn’t say why Dex affected me the way that he did but it was something that sparked to life from the minute I laid eyes on him.

“My mom was...different.”

He nodded but didn’t press, saying only, “Aren’t we all?”

I matched his wry smile. Yeah, I suppose we are. “But I think my mom might’ve been mentally ill,” I shared, sinking onto my old bed. The mattress was firm, as if it’d been replaced recently. At least the rental management company hired to handle the details were doing their job.

Dex sat beside me.

I never in a million years thought I’d have a man like Dex sitting with me in my old bedroom.

Well, there was really nothing about the circumstances as of late that I could’ve imagined.

I regarded him quietly. I knew nothing about Dex. He’d shared nothing of his personal details and yet, I’d given him my virginity with hardly a blink of an eye.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He didn’t act as if he were confused by my question. I was grateful to be past all that, even if we did zoom past the normal hook-up rituals.

“Is Dex even your real name?”

He chuckled, admitting, “Dexter.”

“Like the serial killer show?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s embarrassing.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Thank you?”

I laughed softly, nudging him with my shoulder. “Who am I to judge? My name is Breezy.”

The amusement faded from his eyes. “What if it’s not?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a strong possibility that you’re not who you think you are. Your mother wanted to hide and someone helped her remain hidden. Changing identities is pretty par for the course if you’re trying to disappear.”

I’d always hated my name.

But faced with the possibility that I was actually named something else? It just didn’t sit right.

“Well, we don’t know that yet,” I said, shifting with a frown. “All we know for sure right now is that my mom had some mysterious benefactor who paid for her lifestyle in cash. Maybe she was someone’s mistress.”

But even as I said the words, I couldn’t buy into the theory. My mom was too wrapped up in her own fantasy bubble to lower herself to be at someone’s beck and call.

So where did she get her money?

Why was my house filled with expensive furniture and art?

I hated mysteries, period.

The fact that my life had become one big WTF? was more than I could stomach.

“Let’s check out the attic,” I said, wanting to be finished. The longer I stayed in that house, the more memories invaded my head.

Memories I’d worked hard to forget.

I didn’t wait for Dex.

I knew he was right behind me.

The knowledge gave me some sort of comfort as I pulled the trap door to the attic down. The springs protested as it opened, the smell of dust and neglect making my nose itch.

I wasn’t afraid of attics, but I really didn’t like the idea of rats so I let Dex go first.

His street cred went up a few more notches as he willingly took the lead.

It also gave me an excellent view of his butt, which was always nice.

Dex pulled the light chain and a dim, flickering bulb cast an eerie glow around the dusty floor.

I’d once asked my mom if we could turn the attic space into my bedroom but she’d put me off with vague answers that were neither yes or no and I finally gave up.

Now, as I surveyed the room, I realized her refusal to address my request had been a blessing.

The only light aside from the hanging bulb came from a small, grimy window from the front of the house, facing the street.

“Cozy,” Dex remarked, glancing around with a subtle frown. “Where is your mom’s stuff stored?”

I pointed to a trunk nearly buried beneath other junk. “Right here,” I said, shoving off the various items that’d fallen or been placed on the trunk.

It was an old-fashioned steamer trunk, like one you’d see in the movies. It was large and deep – I used to joke that it was big enough to fit a body — now I was a little afraid of the skeletons I might find in it.

The lock had long since been destroyed but the rust on the hinges made opening it a challenge.

It took both of us to muscle the lid open, a loud screech it’s only sign of defeat.

“Honestly, I have no idea what’s in here,” I admitted, pulling out the rolls of canvas that represented my mother’s work. There were gobs of the rolled pieces of art and I had no idea which was which, nor did I care.

My mother’s art had been something of a sore spot for me.

She’d made it quite obvious that her art had been more important to her than me and as a kid, that knowledge had hurt.

So, yeah, I wasn’t a huge fan of Lily Grace’s work.

A sheaf of loose papers littered the bottom with no rhyme or reason.

“What’s this?” Dex asked, rifling through the paperwork.

I shrugged. “No idea. I didn’t pack this stuff.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t remember. Someone from the company that administers my trust.”

“Name?”

I thought for a minute, snapping my fingers as the name came to me. “Jenkins and Masterson Attorney at Law.”

“You’ve never questioned the attorneys about your trust?”

I wanted to say that I had — that I’d been stonewalled for information, which was why I had precious little — but that would be a lie.

I never asked questions because I simply hadn’t cared.

And that made me feel stupid and shallow.

“I have their business card somewhere,” I said trying to be helpful. “I don’t know what I would ask, honestly. My mom died and left me this brownstone and its contents. Until you told me the house was filled with valuables...I thought the true value was in the real estate, which is probably why I hadn’t sold it yet.”

“The next logical step will be to talk to the attorneys in charge of your trust,” Dex said.

I nodded. I should’ve done that a long time ago. “I feel kinda dumb for not figuring this stuff out before now. I should’ve realized there was something weird about the way my mom handled her affairs.”

Dex surprised me by pulling me into his arms. I went willingly, burying my nose against his chest. “Look, we’re going to find out what the hell is going on, I promise,” he said, his voice rumbling against my cheek.

I smiled, my eyes closed, murmuring, “Thank you, Dex.”

I’m not sure when it happened or why but Dex was fast becoming the one person I knew I could count on.

Given the way I grew up...that was worth facing the confusion swirling around me like a dust storm.