Shane
I always knew Gavin was the smart one in the family. The only problem—I didn’t even know how to do what he was telling me to do. Where the fuck did I even start?
My life had ended the same day as Caleb’s. His death had defined me. Governed every single choice I’d made since the day he was buried. And now…I was just supposed to let that go? How?
I’d run away from home, become another person. Spent thirteen years convincing everyone I was Shane Hawthorne, Rock Star. Rich. Talented. Untouchable. Unknowable. But now I was unmasked. Everyone knew who I really was. What I’d done.
How could Delaney want me? Love me?
It was so much easier to pretend she was unlovable instead. Because she’d lied to me about who she really was. What she’d done.
I’d been pretending for the past forty-eight hours…when I hadn’t been drowning myself in whiskey.
But the truth was pressing against my sides, squeezing my chest, burning in my veins.
Delaney wasn’t unlovable. Because I loved her. Still.
And if I could forgive Delaney her sins, if I could love her—logic told me I could forgive myself.
Pain rippled through my veins, every cell in my body recoiling in disgust. I didn’t want to forgive myself.
That was it. The real reason I’d walked away from Delaney.
I didn’t want to forgive myself.
Drowning in guilt and regret and hatred was as easy as putting a bottle to my lips and drinking until I didn’t feel anything at all.
I’d been drowning for so long. Much easier to stay beneath the waves, shoved along by the tide, than swim to shore and get burned by the sun.
Delaney Fucking Fraser.
She’d ruined me all right. Ruined me for anyone else.
Damn that girl—my girl—for making me love her. Because I did.
Even more than I hated myself.
She’d been so brave, marching into the police station all by herself, taking ownership of her sins. So much braver than me, hiding behind the facade I’d built until it came crumbling down. Would have hidden behind Travis and my brother and the throng of lawyers and PR people they had amassed on my behalf, too. But Delaney had seen through them. She’d seen me. And without ever meeting Caleb’s parents, she’d known what they needed, too.
Delaney was younger than me, had been coddled by her parents for most of her life. She should have been as perceptive as a poodle. But those whirling dervish eyes of hers saw everything.
I was the one who had been blind.
Deaf and dumb, too.
Delaney had confided in me. Had asked me to see her. To believe in her. To stay.
And what had I done? I’d run. Because I was a coward. And a fool. I’d taken the easy way out, running away from Delaney because she wasn’t the girl I’d thought she was.
But the truth is, I know everything about Delaney Fraser I need to know. She likes cold white wine and salty ocean air. Malibu sunsets and Hello Kitty T-shirts. Shower sex and sleeping in.
I also know that she’s the kindest, sweetest, most selfless person I’ve ever met, and her smile lights up my world.
But the second I found out she’d been going through the same pain I had, possibly even worse, instead of being a comfort to her, like she’d been to me, I’d run.
With a jerk, I wrenched myself from the twisted sheets and headed for the shower. It was time for me to man up and get my girl back, convince her that we could overcome our pasts together.
Time for me to become the man she deserved.
Delaney
A blur of pink kissed the horizon, just the barest brush of it smeared across an endless lilac sky. If it were possible, the stunning sunrise made the hulking, gray prison look even drearier by comparison. Parked outside the electrified gates, I shivered in my rental car as I waited for my father to be escorted beyond the barbed-wire fence. It might be a while. I was early by nearly an hour.
It felt strange to me that I wasn’t taking my father’s place in prison, that my punishment was so minor. I should have owned up to the truth three years ago, but I was grateful that the police’s mishandling of the accident meant that my father and I would both be free. Free to move forward as a family, to mourn and heal from our loss together.
A lump had lodged itself in the base of my throat, a younger sibling to the one that sat in my stomach, lead leaching out and turning my blood toxic. I hadn’t told my father before I confessed. I couldn’t, because I knew he would talk me out of it.
No. Actually, that’s not true. There wouldn’t have been any talking. He would’ve demanded I keep my mouth shut and that would have been that. Why should he expect any different, after all? That’s the way I’d grown up. That’s what my mother had taught me.
Father knows best. Just like the fifties TV show Shane compared my home life to during our first dinner together.
Shane.
Damn him.
He’d only wanted the fake, innocent version of me. But I was done pretending. I had an opinion and a voice and I’d finally found the nerve to use them.
As I waited I glanced through the pages of a magazine, but I couldn’t even focus on the photos. Until I saw one of Shane. And me. It was from the last night we spent together, taken backstage. Our fingers were entwined, bodies leaning into each other as we looked off at something beyond camera range. I ran my finger across the paper, tracing his strong jaw, his broad smile. I was smiling, too. Both of us. Real smiles. Because, no matter what Shane thought, we’d been real. And in that captured moment, happy.
Shane.
My heart tripped, too wounded to keep a steady rhythm.
Missing him so damn much.
I drew in a shaky breath and pushed it out slowly.
I heard the car before I saw it, pulling up the winding drive to park behind me. I didn’t expect to recognize the face behind the wheel as I peeked through the crooked rearview mirror. But as our eyes locked, a blast of heat started at my toes and worked its way throughout my body. Beneath my lightweight coat, it could have been Texas in July.
Only one man had ever sent my body into overdrive with a simple, searing glance. Shane.
I opened the door and scrambled out of my car, desperate for the cool afternoon air. “What are you doing here?”
Thumbs tucked in his pockets, Shane ambled slowly toward me until he stood so close that the back of my jeans were pressed against the car door. Another step and the tips of his scuffed boots were toe-to-toe with my ballet flats.
“You’re still wearing it,” Shane said softly, reaching up to trace my collarbone, feverish skin and cool metal skimming his fingertip.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, nibbling on my lower lip as I stared into Shane’s fathomless amber eyes. My hands balled into fists at my sides, fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to tuck my head beneath his chin and breathe deep the scent that I’d missed so intensely. “I’m sorry. I meant to return it.” I swept my hair to the side, inclining my head toward his torso. The faintest whiff of the sea tickled my nose, almost as if he’d swum in the ocean just that morning. Shane was so close it hurt not to touch him. “You can take it off. It’s yours.”
Shane sighed, catching a handful of my wind-blown strands and wrapping them around his fingers. With his other hand he cupped my face, thumb sweeping against my jaw as his fingertips assessed the racing pulse at my neck. “Are you?”
I rocked back on my heels, feeling almost dizzy from his proximity. “Am I…yours?”
“Tell me you’re mine, Delaney.”
My breath caught as his voice raced across my skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “I—I don’t know,” I stuttered, completely torn. I wanted to stay. I wanted to run. What I’d been through the past two days…I couldn’t do that again. I wouldn’t.
Hurting so badly I couldn’t breathe. But the hurt was just plaster sand; add enough tears and it solidified. My body felt like a fragile sculpture. Empty in the middle, cracking and flaking all over the place.
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let Shane put me through that again.
I’d never survive it a second time.
“Please.” Shane’s anguished eyes burned with hunger. “The past few days without you have been hell. I’ve hated myself for what I’ve done for so long, it became the only thing I knew was true. Everything else was fake.”
Shane’s hand ran up my back, palms cupping my shoulders, squeezing. “And then I met you. And you saw me. Really saw me. We were real.”
His touch warmed me, healing what he’d destroyed. I couldn’t pull away. “After meeting with Caleb’s parents and the DA acknowledging that the accident wasn’t my fault, I thought all the guilt would slide off my shoulders like it had never been there at all. But I’m learning that it’s not that simple. I’m always going to feel responsible, to live with regrets.
“When you told me the truth about your accident, a part of me hated you for it. For lying to me. For knowing exactly how it felt to do what I’d done. For loving me anyway.” A laugh trembled from him. “I jumped on an excuse to run away, because that’s what I’m good at. But I know you, Delaney Fraser, and I’ve loved you since the moment you flew across the sand like an Olympic sprinter the very first night we spent together. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that sooner. I don’t need a contract or a wedding. I just need you.”
Incredulous, I stared at him. “Since then? You didn’t even spend the night with me, remember? You put me in my room and walked out the door.”
“Yeah. But I wanted to stay with you.” His amber eyes softened until I was caught inside the whorls of gold. “Tell me you’ll be mine. Tell me we’ll figure out how to heal together. How to get back to us again.”
Shane’s words washed over me like a rainbow, so beautiful and pure. For a moment I said nothing, merely closing my eyes as I leaned into him, luxuriating in every single point of contact between us. Could Shane really mean what he said? A shaky breath vibrated against my ribs as he wrapped his arms around my back, pulling me closer.
Tears overflowed my lashes, spilling heat and salt down my cheeks. A gust of cool wind dried the tracks before I could wipe them away.
It would be so easy to say yes.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
The three-letter word was doing cartwheels in my mind. I could hear it in the swoosh of the breeze, the squawk of the birds.
Yes. The answer Shane wanted was at the tip of my tongue, threatening to burst through lips desperate for his kiss. There was no denying that I loved this man with a fierceness that made me doubt my own sanity. Still, I hesitated. If I capitulated to my own impulses, what was I really agreeing to?
“Shane, I—” I struggled to put my feelings into words. They were so tenuous I didn’t know if I could. Sweeping my tongue over trembling lips, I reached for one last bit of strength. Prayed it would be enough. “I was wrong not to trust you. Wrong to keep the truth from you. And I am so sorry, Shane. I am. But if we have a chance of making it through this together, we have to learn to forgive. Each other and ourselves. And we have to trust each other, even when it’s easier to hide, to lie, to run.” My words scraped at my throat, burning me. But they had to be said, as much for me as for him.
Shane shifted, hands moving up my spine, fingers threading into my scalp as he leaned toward my lips. He stopped an inch away to whisper, “I know. You’re right.” Pain dented his forehead, etching itself into tiny lines at his temples, bleeding from his eyes. “I love you, Delaney. So fucking much. Too much to lose you.”
My soul was spinning, buoyant with hope as I curled my hands into fists on Shane’s chest, balling his shirt into my palms. Holding on.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out I was trapped in the past. To realize you’re my future. I’m sorry I hurt you, turned my back when you needed me. It’s something I’ll always regret. I didn’t deserve your heart, not then. And I don’t even know if I deserve it now. But, Delaney, I’m going to spend every day of the rest of my life becoming a man who deserves you. And one day, I swear to God, one day I’ll get there. I promise.”
Shane’s words hung in the air between us, as luminous and incandescent as Christmas lights. My body shook with want.
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to spend every day for the rest of my life in his arms.
Loving him.
Being loved by him.
“And I promise to always be honest with you. In your arms, you’ve taken me places I’ve never been, made me feel things I’ve never imagined.” I smiled up at him. “We’ll figure this out together, as equals. I can’t just be Shane Hawthorne’s girlfriend. I want to go back to school, get my degree.”
“Done.”
“It means I won’t be waiting for you at the end of every set.”
He pressed a kiss to my temple as the wind whipped up, blowing silken strands against my face. An exquisite caress. “How many years until you graduate?”
“One and a half. More if I decide to go to grad school.”
“I’ll manage.”
“I might not want to go to UCLA.”
He expelled a placating breath. “Delaney, I spend most nights in hotel rooms. The only home I know is wherever you are. New York, L.A.…Alaska. I don’t care.”
“Okay, then.”
Confusion creased his brow. “Okay?”
“I’m yours, Shane.” I put a finger against lips that had broken into a blinding grin. “But don’t ever throw me away again. I can’t take it.”
He drew my finger into his mouth, the heat from his tongue sending a surge of electricity crackling between my thighs. I trembled as he moved to my wrist, licking the tiny patchwork of veins pulsing beneath my skin before laying my palm flat against his cheek and staring down at me. Drinking me in. “I’m never going to let you go. I mean it. Never again, Delaney. I support all your dreams. I’m not a singing Ken doll, and I don’t need a Barbie by my side. I want real. I want you.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I love you, Shane. All of you. Even the little boy inside of you that will always be Sean Sutter.”
“And I love you, too, Delaney Fraser.” He cracked a teasing smile. “But if you want to come up with another identity, just so we’re even, I’d love her, too.”
I shook my head, returning his grin. “Nope. I think one of me is enough for you to handle.”
The wind picked up, rustling over the dry road. Shane let out a whoop of joy, and I shrieked as he picked me up and twirled me around before leaning me gently against the car door and burying his face in my hair, his breath hot on my ear. “My girl,” he whispered, the words filled with reverence. “And one day, when you’re ready, when you want it as much as I do, I’ll give you a proposal you can’t refuse.”
Loosening his grip just enough, I slid down against the length of Shane’s frame. The charge between us electrified the air. My palms cupped his strong jaw and I tilted my face upward, eyes fluttering closed as the fullness of Shane’s lips met my own. Our kiss was filled with love, with promise. Tender and needy. Sweetly sinful.
We broke apart like skittish teenagers as the gates to the prison creaked open, moving slowly outward. I laughed at Shane’s flustered expression. “You ready to meet my dad?”
“Yes.” His answer was firm, decisive.
Our hands intertwined as we faced the gate.
In that moment, a butterfly flew overhead, dipping low enough that I could see the vibrant colors of its wings. Amber edged with black. The gold even more vibrant for the darkness.