I hauled Rosie into my arms and carried her back to the cabin, rain pouring all around us. She was shivering, skin blue and hair plastered to her cheeks. I wrapped my arms tighter around her and made my way through the thick trees, my heart thumping hard with every step. I would carry her all the way to Canada if that’s what I had to do in order to keep her safe.

We didn’t have much time, but I couldn’t ask her to rush away from this place until she was warm and dry. Her knee didn’t look quite right either, twisted and swollen. And she still looked at me with fear.

Kicking open the door, I carried her straight to the master bathroom where I carefully lowered her to the floor. Her teeth chattered while I ran her a hot bath, bubbling the water with some soap I’d found in the closet.

Every move I made, she watched with wide eyes. I hated that she still feared me, but I didn’t blame her at all.

Once I’d run the bath, I moved to the door. “When you’ve warmed up, we can talk about who I am.”

We needed to get out of here as soon as we could, but I wouldn’t force her to leave until she was ready to trust me again.

“Wait.” Her voice cracked as I turned to go. “Can you help me, please?”

I sucked a rattling breath into my lungs. She wanted me to help her. She wanted me to touch, even after all of this. My eyes betrayed me, caught on the hard and swollen nipples under her wet shirt.

That’s all it took to get me back inside the door.

“You should probably get out of those wet clothes,” I said in a gruff voice. “You’ll get warm a lot faster that way.”

Rosie nodded and lifted her soaked shirt over her head, and my body stirred at the sight of her naked breasts. So gorgeous. So perfect. And yet, she wasn’t mine to have. When she reached out her arms, I gently lifted her from the floor and helped pull the drenched jeans off her shaking legs. My heart racing, I tried to keep my eyes away from her body, but her glistening skin was impossible to ignore.

Once I’d lowered her into the hot water, I sighed in relief. I needed to get out of this bathroom. I couldn’t be having these thoughts about her, not right now. Maybe not ever again. She was hurt. She was scared. And I’d been the one to cause both.

I couldn’t let my actions hurt her ever again.

“What’s your real name?” she asked me softly as I took several steps away from the sight of her curvy body in the bath.

The question caught me off guard. There were a lot of things I had assumed she’d want to know. Why I was on the run. What I’d done to get in trouble with the FBI. Who exactly had died that night when my whole life had gone to shit. But my name…it seemed so unimportant compared to everything else.

“Just call me Franklin,” I said in a soft voice. “That’s who I am right now.”

But not for long. I’d have to change my name again.

“That’s not fair,” she said, sinking further into the bubbles. “You promised to tell me everything.”

I met her gaze across the bathroom. She looked at me so starkly and openly that I couldn’t help but crumble underneath those eyes. She was right. I’d said I would explain it all, and that included starting back where it had all begun, back to who I’d been before the agency had ruined it all.

I took a deep breath and crossed the room, crouching down so that my eyes were level with hers. “Okay, Rosie Smith. You’re only the second person in the entire world who will know my story, so I hope you realize how big of a deal this is for me.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “I want to know it all.”

“Okay,” I said slowly before closing my eyes. “My name is Mason Matthews. I worked for the FBI, and I was undercover as Garrett Butler in Vegas, looking into the mafia running a couple of casinos there. I got in real deep. Too deep.” I sighed. I hated telling this fucking story, but Rosie deserved to know. “The Don there, his name was Bobby Maxwell, he’d found some kids. He was using them to shift drugs, that kind of thing. Instead of keeping my cool, I let my emotions get the better of me, and I tried to get them out of there. Tried to get the FBI to move them into protection where they could find safe homes away from drugs and violence. Away from Bobby Maxwell.”

I paused and took a deep breath, turning away from Rosie. My hands twisted into fists as the fury I’d felt that day came washing over me once again.

“Somehow, they got it in their heads that the rival mob was the one trying to take the kids.” My ears roared as I remembered what came next. “So, they ambushed the rivals one night. A half dozen were killed. On both sides, including Bobby. Somehow, my fingerprints ended up on the scene. So did my gun. The FBI even found blood in my apartment. And even though my evidence sent the rest straight to prison, the FBI decided I was a person of interest.”

“You got set up,” Rosie whispered.

I nodded. “Ever since then, I’ve been on the run.”

The sharp sound of helicopter blades cut through the room, loud and explosive in the silence. My entire body went hard and unease flittered through me. Shit. I cocked my head, listening to the whirring of the engine overhead. Multiple choppers spun somewhere in the sky, the whir of the blades mixed in with the sound of thunder and rain.

“What’s wrong?” Rosie whispered.

I pressed my finger to my lips, edging over to the tiny window to gaze up at the dark sky. A black helicopter swooped through the rain, high above the cabin but still far too close to be anything other than trouble.

They’d found me.