“What?” My eyes go wide. The air in my lungs exits from the pure shock of Kase’s confession.

“But… Your mother. If she left—”

He lets go of my hand.

“Lily McCasker wasn’t some woman Edwin knocked up who took off after she gave birth to me. She was his sister, and he took her in.” He swallows and clasps his hands on the table, his focus fixed on the brilliant orange blossoms in front of us. “She was following a band around the country. Fell for the guitarist and ending up getting pregnant. She was hopelessly in love with the guy, but when she had the baby…me. Well, life on the road wasn’t a life for a newborn. So she came home.”

“But you said she left.”

“Edwin said he’d help support us until she could get on her feet. But she was barely here a week before her old life called her back.”

He exhales heavily. His eyes are calm, serious, as if maybe he’s found peace with the tragedy of his parentage.

“She left me with Edwin. Said she’d come back as soon as she convinced my father to settle down with her. Somehow, Edwin knew that wasn’t going to happen, so he decided right then to raise me as his own. In a small town, he figured it was the best thing. He was probably right, but I couldn’t accept any of that when he told me.”

“When did you find out?”

“Your father came to him with the offer when I had one foot out the door for college. He had your dad’s proposal in his hand when he told me. It wasn’t long after that night with you at the falls. He was worried about keeping things up after I left. Said he didn’t feel right selling it without my blessing, because the land could be mine one day. Whether or not I was his true son, I would inherit everything. But he fed me a lie for eighteen years.”

“Edwin cares for you. I know he does.”

His painful grimace breaks through the calm he’d shown before. I reach for his hand and hold it firmly.

“There probably never would have been a good time to tell me the truth. But I had my whole life ahead of me, June, and then it was like nothing made sense. How could any of it matter when both my fucking parents abandoned me? I mean, I’d grown up making up stories about my mom, trying to rationalize why she left. But both of them?”

The well of emotion within me inches to the surface again, and my heart breaks for the truth we both now know. “I’m sorry, Kase.”

He shakes his head, a faraway look in his eyes. “He made me believe I was someone I wasn’t. I was devastated. More lost than I’ve ever felt in my life. Half dead, half trying to live. I told him to sell it. Have a nice life.”

“But he didn’t sell,” I say.

“I left early for school. Found an apartment and a job to help me with expenses. I only came home when I had to. But we never talked about it again. I just figured the deal fell through somehow. I think he was waiting for me to change my mind all this time.”

Suddenly Kase’s absence makes perfect sense, and I feel worse for holding it against him when he had his own burden to bear.

“But you came back to stay,” I say softly.

He turns his blue-eyed gaze my way. “Because I’m done looking backward for answers. There’s nothing there, June. I spent four years trying to wrestle some kind of control over my past. Nothing changes the fact that the two people who put me here don’t give a damn. All I can do is look ahead and try to create something better. Something real that no one can tear away.”

“Here?”

He blinks and looks down at our joined hands. “That was the idea.”

Tears brim my eyes. I pull away to wipe at them. “Kase, why? Why did you agree to this with me?”

I push up from the table and walk through the house until fresh air hits me on the back porch. I want to keep walking. Through the field. Into the night and solitude of the mountains. I’d give anything to be at the falls right now, the steady rush of water drowning out my thoughts and dulling the pain.

But an invisible force pins me to the porch when I hear Kase’s footsteps behind me.

Suddenly I remembered Edwin’s words the day I came here. I just hope you’re doing this for the right reasons, June. I’m not entirely sure Kase is.

He’s spun this web and trapped me here with this twisted deal. I should be running from him, but I ache to be in his arms. To hold him through his pain and let him chase away mine. Tears stream down my cheeks as I search for answers that seem impossible and so far out of reach.

I can feel his heat as he comes near, his presence like the pulse of my own heart. I grip my hands around my arms to keep from collapsing into the comfort of his.

“June, don’t be angry with me,” he says. “Look at me. Talk to me.”

I suck in a shaky breath and turn to face him. For all the dominance he’s shown me since coming back into my life, he’s showing me something different now. There’s something raw and vulnerable about the way he looks at me, like somehow I hold power over him now.

I brush at my tears, but they just keep coming. And I thought I’d cried all I could today. “Kase… Why did you do this? You brought me here and made me feel things for you. You promised me a dream at the expense of your own. Why?”

He cradles my cheeks in his hands. “Because I saw you again, and for a split second I remembered the person I was before my life went to hell. I remembered how that night felt between us. I remembered a hundred little moments when I’d wanted to talk to you and know you but held back. The past four years faded away, like some kind of terrible penance that I’d paid and could finally let go of. God help me, I saw you and everything made sense.”

I close my eyes, pushing more tears down my cheeks. “But the house…the land.”

“June,” he whispers.

I sigh into the barest brush of his lips over mine and blink my eyes open. I yearn to be consumed. Taken under, swept so far away from the truth and the reality I now have to face. But he draws back, gazing deeply into my eyes.

“When I came home, I promised to give myself time to figure out whether to stay or leave for good. I could go make a life somewhere else far away from Falls Edge, or I could stay and try to turn the farm into something more than it has been. I could start over, or I could put down roots and make something real, something stronger than the lie I grew up on.” He hesitates, his lips parted gently. “I had to give us a chance, June.”

A chance…

So simple. Such a pure possibility, full of hope and the kinds of moments we’ve shared these past couple days. But nothing is simple now. How could it ever be?

“At the risk of your family’s future? Did you once think about what it meant to put that on me? I’m caught in the middle of this.”

I pull back, fresh anger mingling with my confusion and hurt. I glance out at the moon, a gauzy white against the violet sky.

“Maybe I should just go,” I say softly. “Being here with you is killing my father. And, honestly, I don’t know what’s going to be left of me if I stay.”

“That’s not the answer.”

His tone is clipped. If I could see his face, I’m certain I’d see his determination to make me stay. I’m certain I’d be powerless to deny him.

I close my eyes a moment. “We can’t keep doing this, Kase. Everything has changed.”

“What’s changed?”

His tone is so measured I can sense immediately that he’s preparing to change my mind.

“You love this house, and this is your life now,” I say. “I won’t be the one to take it from you. If you and Edwin decide to sell, it’s between you and my father. I won’t be caught in the middle of it. It’s not fair.”

He’s quiet a moment. “It may not be fair, but it’s what we all agreed to.”

I look away, my hopelessness intensifying at the prospect of leaving the farm to save Kase’s dream. What would I do then? Try to soften the blow of disappointment when my father realizes the deal is off? Figure out how to keep building on the relationship that’s formed between Kase and me? Best case, my father accepts both in time. Worst case, his grudge against the McCaskers deepens and he makes a future with Kase unbearable.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper, trying like hell to keep my emotions in check.

“Stay.” Kase takes my hand in his. “I’ll admit that I manipulated the situation to get closer to you, but I also wanted you to get to know the property better. Your father’s not the only one who wants the expansion to happen. You believe in it too, right?”

I sigh. “Well…I mean, yes. But I was believing in it before I realized what this meant to you. This is your life.”

“If losing it all brings me you, I think I could live with it.”

I frown. “You can’t mean that.”

“Believe it. Why the hell do you think I put it all on the line?”

“But you don’t have to. I can go home—”

“Hell no.” He pulls me against his hard body in one swift move.

The low, growly demand makes my insides quiver.

“You’re staying, June. Right here, in my bed, in this home, for the time we agreed to. And if handing it all over to your father at the end of it is what I have to do to be with you, then that’s what I’ll do. Because if you go back to the hotel right now, it’s over. He’ll make seeing each other impossible. We’ll have to sneak around to be together, because you love him and you’ll want to protect him. He’ll hate me until his dying breath, and you know it.”

Everything he’s saying makes sense, but none of it can convince me that tearing away his home and his dreams will ever be worth it. “Kase, I can’t let you do this deal.”

“I don’t fucking care about the deal. Right now, all I care about is you.”

He’s as beautiful as ever, even more so wearing the look of possession that’s tightened his features.

I open my mouth to argue, but his lips are on me before I can speak. He’s warm and soft, but his kiss is fierce, almost bruising in its intensity. Every sweep of his tongue against mine steals away my reason. He moves his hands over me, every firm grasp like an echo of his early insistence that I stay.

And, damn it, no part of me wants to leave. I worry that’ll never change…

I meet his fervor, regretting the clothes that keep our skin from touching everywhere. He nips at my lips, tiny pinpricks of pain that match his passion. I slide my fingers through his hair, tugging at the roots, and count the steps between the place where we stand and the bedroom.

Need him. Need him now…

As if he hears my silent begging, we stumble into the house. We never stop touching, kissing, reaching for more. I claw at his shirt, desperate to get it off him. He manages to yank it off, tripping us as we reach the bottom step of the stairs. When I fall backward, he follows me down.

He pushes my dress up to my waist and grinds his hips against my center. The sound that carries past my lips can’t be me. It’s feral and desperate before disappearing into another fierce kiss. My skin prickles everywhere we touch, everywhere I badly need his hands on me.

Nothing about our position is especially comfortable, but I’m frantic to have him inside me. I’ve never been this turned on in my life. Last night was a craving made up of years of fantasies. This is different. This is desperate, because now I know the heaven of our bodies joined.

Unwilling to prolong the torture, I reach for the button on his jeans and unzip him free. He’s hard and hot to the touch, velvet over steel as I stroke him to the tip. I look into his eyes, which have gone molten.

With both hands, he grips the narrow strip of panties along my hip.

“Last warning about these,” he mutters, baring a hint of teeth as the fabric rips. He repeats the motion on the other side before tossing the ruined garment away.

Fisting his cock, he guides it up and down my slit. His blatant appraisal of me sends a rush of heat to my cheeks. But I can’t feel shy when he’s staring at me like this, like I’m all he’s ever needed. He tantalizes my clit with short, teasing strokes from the plush head and solid length of his cock.

“Kase…”

I curl my fingers around the baluster and spread my legs wider, begging with my body for what we both so badly need. He drifts lower, pressing into flesh still tender from the night before. He’s barely penetrating me, but the hint of connection has me dizzy.

I try to hook my heels behind his thighs, but he catches my knees and presses me wide. Another desperate moan threatens to break free. His sudden restraint is unfathomable to me.

“Don’t move,” he says, his eyelids heavy with lust. “Let me appreciate you this way.”

I still, eager but equally willing to savor the new sensation of being with him bare.

He traps his bottom lip between his teeth, hissing softly as he pushes a centimeter farther. “Are you sure? Because I’m not sure I can stop now. Feels too damn good already.”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything, Kase. Please…”