I don’t know if anything good will come out of whatever is happening between Sawyer and me, but I don’t want to ask too many questions and break the beautiful relief we’re offering one another.

For the next few days, we do nothing but fuck and talk. We talk about everything: the trailer park where I grew up, the mansion in the Hollywood Hills where he spent his childhood. Our lives are polar opposites yet our bodies respond to one another like we’re meant to be.

“I only went into the business because my parents pushed me,” he admits in the very early morning hours after the bar is closed and the moon is swollen in the night sky. “It’s all they wanted for me...fame.”

“You never wanted it for yourself?”

“I wanted to make them proud.”

He makes me pancakes at three a.m. when I come in with sore feet and good tips. We eat the stacks, naked in bed, the truth of our stories heavy, the maple syrup on our lips lightening our hearts just enough to be honest.

“And were they proud?”

“They were obsessed. And yet it was never enough. They pushed me into contracts, into promotions, into deals until there was nothing left of me. And it still wasn’t enough.” His words are painful to admit, it’s clear in his glassy eyes and his broken heart. I don’t press him for any more because really, isn’t this enough? The space we share in this bed where we can reveal our deepest sorrows without judgment, without recourse?

I think it is.

He lifts a bite to my mouth. I eat it, the butter and the sugar helping the words we need to share surface. They have to if we want this thing between us to become more than a fling.

If there is any hope in a forever.

“And your parents?” he asks. “Did you make them proud?”

I shake my head. “Pride in me was never on the table. I was no one important. No one hung their laurels on me. I went to school. I helped with bills. I kept my head down low enough to avoid any sort of friction. I never knew my dad. My stepdad, though, he was the worst kind of man. The kind of man I never wanted attention from.”

Sawyer doesn’t look away. “What did he do to you?”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t me he hurt. It was my mom. He knew I’d bite if he tried to get close to me. But my mom,” I say softly, shaking my head. “She never hurt a fly in her life. She wouldn’t know how to bring out her claws if her life depended on it.”

“And did it?” Sawyer asks. “Did it depend on it?”

I blink back tears, and we forget our pancakes and get lost in one another. He knows without me saying it, that yes, my mom’s life did depend on it. He knows what kind of man my stepfather was without me having to say the words that hurt to remember.

Sawyer kisses the sharp memories away, and we continue tiptoeing around the darkest truths...what had me running and what forced him over the edge.

For him it’s something with his parents—but it’s the scandal at the club which his best friend Cal ran, that convinced him he was only going to cause his oldest friend more pain. I’ve scoured the magazine article for clues, but there are lots of missing pieces to the puzzle that is Sawyer.

We’re in a tangle of sheets late one afternoon, and we’ve just finished fucking, Sawyer’s cock is still buried in me, our limbs are still entwined when he asks the question I’ve been expecting.

“So, did you ask your boss what the deal is with his Small Town Fuck Club?”

I laugh, remembering Dusty’s words. I replay the conversation for Sawyer.

“What the fuck were you doing down there?” Dusty asked.

“You made me curious. I sent people your way all night. I had to know what was down the hall.”

“And you stayed?” Dusty asked. When I told him yes, he frowned. “I don’t want you to do anything you might regret.”

“Since when did you start caring about me? You’ve been giving me a hard time since you hired me.” I pushed back.

Dusty shrugged. “You are one of my own now, and I gotta look out for you. Hell, you live in the cottage twenty yards from my house. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

“You’re worried about me?” I was shocked. I can’t think of an older man who has ever looked out for me. One who ever asked if I was doing alright. A part of me wanted to wrap my arms around Dusty in a bear hug and thank him for caring.

Instead, I pushed my lips forward and gave him a hard time. “I should be worried about you. You’re the one running a sex club in the middle of nowhere.”

He laughed. “True enough, but hell, people go down there because they want to escape. It’s nothing but harmless fun. The way I see it, people spend way too much time worrying about bullshit that doesn’t mean anything. If you can let loose on a Friday night with someone who makes you feel good, why not? Not the worst business in the world.”

“I see your point, but stop avoiding the question, Dusty,” I pressed. “What is a sex club doing in your basement?”

“I have a habit I like to call Mexico all winter. How the fuck do you think I pay for that? With this dive bar? Hell, no. If you want something in life, you’ve gotta grab it. I wanted winter at the beach, and I knew sex would pay the bills.” Dusty told me it’d be best to keep the news of his twice-a-month-club to ourselves. He doesn’t want folks in Resting Hollow knowing about his underground enterprise.

Sawyer laughs when I tell him Dusty’s reasoning. “Sounds smart,” Sawyer admits.

“I expected something darker, shadier, didn’t you?” I snort. “What does that say about us?” I ask, standing up and pulling on clothes for my shift.

“It says we’re jaded as fuck,” he laughs. “But honestly, if that’s all the drama in Resting, I can see why Cal’s girl, Jules, loved her hometown so much. It’s refreshing, right?”

“It is.” I kiss Sawyer hard on the lips. “But you’re kind of a breath of fresh air too, you know,” I tell him. “I mean, when we aren’t wallowing in our pasts, we have a good time.”

“Would you go back to the fuck club?” Sawyer asks, watching me run eyeliner across my lids, then press nude lipstick on.

“With you?” I grin. “Sure. But it won’t be open for another week and a half. You gonna stick around that long?”

“You kicking me out?”

I shake my head. “No, but eventually we’re gonna need to figure out what happens next. You can’t live your life hiding out in Dusty’s apartment. Eventually, you’ll need to go outside or you’ll turn into a vampire.”

He smacks my ass, kissing me again as I grab my purse. “We can make a plan after I hear all your secrets, Sadie. I still don’t know why you’re running.”

I nod, kissing him back. “You’re right. Tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

I nod. “Unless there’s better story I have for you by then.” He wraps his arms around me tightly, and I sink into his hold, letting myself believe that he truly is someone I can trust with my deepest secret.

After all, he has trusted me with his.