“It was an accident.” I knew I was talking to a picture on my phone, I knew that wasn’t rational, but I had to tell her about what happened. Even if she couldn’t hear me, I had to confess.

Three in the morning. My private room. The dancer filled my head. I could still smell her on my hands, could still feel the brush of her body against mine. My stomach cramped from the jerk it made when those wide hips, those plump curves had me coming.

“I tried not to…”

She wouldn’t hear my excuses. I knew that. The face remained unchanged, sad. It wouldn’t change and I didn’t expect it to. My phone felt cold in my hands, the screen fuzzy as I pled with that face.

“It was an accident.” Because that’s what it had felt like. Thinking of the dancer, not Emily. Thinking of thick, blonde hair, not soft, fine ginger. I touched my chest, over my heart, precisely in the spot where I’d had Emily’s face tattooed. Still, that image hadn’t stopped me last night. I kept thinking of brown skin and wide hips, not faint freckles and long, pale legs. It had been wrong, touching myself back here in my room, thinking I’d never get hard. The lap dance had been a fluke. I couldn’t do it on my own, hadn’t been able to since…. But I tried, anyway. Stupid me. And now the guilt was overwhelming.

Three in the morning and had I touched myself without thinking about punishment. I had touched myself because I wanted to, because the dancer had made me feel something other than shame. And I wanted to feel that again and again. I wanted that perfect stranger to make me feel it.

“I didn’t mean it.”

Emily wouldn’t answer. Silence, no matter how long I stared at the phone, expecting a reply and then, the worry took over, settled into my chest until I thought I would break, until I needed a release from the tension.

“I didn’t mean it!” This time the shout came fast, desperate and leaned against the doorframe, giving up when she still wouldn’t answer. “I swear, I didn’t mean it,” I said, punching the beige walls, cracking the drywall and busting open my knuckles to free myself from the weight of my regret, my guilt, and now my shame.

Do you ever mean anything?

My parents’ house is on the lake, just forty-five minutes from New Orleans. Once, years ago, the lake house had been my mother’s prison. When I was a kid growing up, before my parents found each other again, when it was just me and my mom living in that tiny rental in Nashville, she’d have nightmares. They were usually loud, shook the walls of that two bedroom house. She’d scream and cry out as though she’d been through a war and not just endured the shitty childhood with an alcoholic mother who smacked her around when she didn’t do what she was told.

Once, I asked her about those nightmares. Told her she reminded me of the soldiers I’d seen with PTSD on the news.

“I didn’t return home a hero, Ransom. I barely survived my battle.”

I’d never understood her, not really, not until my own battle begun right out on this lake.

It was cooling, fall flirting on the breeze. The tall magnolia trees that lined the back side of the house swayed and twisted and from the crack in my window I could hear the slow rustle of the waves against the dock. I was procrastinating, biding my time as I always did when I came here. The longer I stayed away, the more patience, more nerve it took me just to leave my car. There were too many ghosts in that house. Too many memories that reminded me of who I’d been and what I’d done.

“Brah!” the little voice yelled at me from the front door. It was the same small voice that hadn’t shut up since he started speaking at nine months old. He was smart, too talkative for a baby, but Koa still couldn’t pronounce my name right and Dad’s attempts at teaching him kaikua’ana for “brother” hadn’t been successful. “Brah” came out of his mouth easier than my mom liked, but there is no correcting my little brother. Nearly two years old and a small gap between his tiny front teeth, Koa stared at me with his hands on hips trying to pretend that our father wasn’t just in the doorway. “Br-ah!”

He was bossier than my mom. Two and a half feet tall with a mop of curly black hair and that little shit ran the house like he owned it. Koa stomped his foot.

“Yeah, buddy, I’m coming inside,” I promised him before he could finish the wobbly step he made away from the door. Dad had him by the waist of his tiny red shorts and off the ground before I shut the car door. In a few steps I was close enough to take Koa from Dad and bounce him in my arms. But right away I knew something was off—the little body was warm, and his eyes were unusually bright. I frowned up at my father. Kona shrugged, rubbing his eyes. “Fifteen month molars. Your mom says he’s getting them way too soon. It’s this whole thing.”

“You got me.” The boy wiggled in my arms and I handed him back to my father. “This,” I said pointing to the tall curls looping down to nearly cover Koa’s eyes, “is getting ridiculous.”

“Tell me about it.” Dad swept Koa’s bangs off his forehead. “We’ve been busy.”

“I bet.” The little monster squirmed out of my father’s arms as we walked inside, skirting the litter of trucks and Legos that scattered here and there on the floor. “Real busy it looks like.”

The place looked nothing like the sterile, empty house we’d moved into almost three years ago when we’d come home to settle my grandmother’s estate. My mother’s mother had been very-old-money rich, very pretentious and concerned with appearances. There hadn’t been any pictures of my mom in this house, and certainly none of me, since I’d never met the woman and she likely had no idea of my existence.

Then mom and Kona reconnected, and soon after they got married, she was pregnant with the little monster currently digging through a plastic bin of Tonka trucks. I doubted my grandmother would have appreciated the comfortable clutter on her marble floors or how all of her wingbacks and ornate furniture had been strewn with SpongeBob plush toys and miniature footballs.

The floor was covered—trucks, stuffed monkeys (his current obsession)—miniature hockey sticks and pee-wee football pads and about a dozen wooden and plastic blocks. I took the truck Koa handed me, frowning when he pulled on his ear. “You sure this is just his molars coming in?” Koa let me move his hair back, but wouldn’t sit on the leather sofa next to me.

Dad slumped into the sofa cushions, looking tired, dusting flour from his wrinkled t-shirt. “Yeah. We took him in Friday. The doctor said it’s normal.”

“Something you would know if you answered your phone.” Shit. My mother’s tone came into the room before she did. I didn’t like the sharpness in her voice. It told me I’d pissed her off yet again.

“Brah! Brah.” Those demanding swipes against my leg caught me off guard and I skirted the Tonka truck Koa kept offering me.

“I got it. Here,” I said, handing Koa the dinosaur that was digging into my back between the cushions. Again he pulled on his ear and I felt useless watching him wobble out of the room and into the small play area that had taken over the dining room.

My mother finally appeared, looking miserable and swollen, and more tired than my father even though he was the one who he seemed ready to nod off next to me on the sofa.

Still, she was beautiful. There were shadows under her bright blue eyes and her chestnut hair was longer, fell past her waist in a thick braid and thin wisps of hair stood out around her face. But her cheekbones were still high and arched, her fine, thin bones giving her the look of a Lady and not the bad ass musician she’d become.

“Mom?” I met her in the middle of the room, attempted to grab the plates in her hands. “You actually cooked something for lunch?” The look she gave me was cool and annoyed, but I ignored it, fully aware that you should never, ever say anything stupid to pregnant women, like “hello” or “how are you?” Especially if it’s anything to do with their weight, their looks in general or them being incapable of doing anything at all. In fact, it’s a general rule of thumb, so I’d discovered, not to say anything but “you look so beautiful” or “you can’t even tell you’re pregnant” to them.

“I mean, should you be doing all that?”

But, I didn’t always follow my own advice.

“I’m not helpless, Ransom. I’m pregnant.” She refused to relinquish that tight hold on the plates and moved around me, using her protruding stomach to push me to the side.

“Very pregnant.” I mumbled, stepping out of her way.

“What does that mean?” My mother had the ears of a wolf and could level even the biggest bully with one glare. I was on the receiving end of that glare and despite how annoyed she was with me—I had no clue what sin I’d committed now—I gave her a big smile. It matched the one beaming on the sofa, the one attached to my smug, tired father as he watched Koa playing.

Mom looked between us, then gave us both that scary scowl. “I called three times this morning and you didn’t answer.” Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the plates. “And don’t you start fussing at me about cooking for my family. Even the ones who don’t answer the phone. I’m not going to sit around here waiting for this baby to pop out.”

The arched eyebrow, the narrowed left eye…damn. I hadn’t even heard my phone this morning. “Mom…”

“Wildcat, he’s just worried.” Kona said, coming from the sofa. He, at least managed to get the plates from her with an easy kiss on the top of her head.

“Your feet are still swollen. Shouldn’t you keep them up?”

Her glare, this time at least, didn’t send me running, but I did manage to avoid it as she went back into the kitchen. My father watched her walk away, then dusted the residual flour from the hem of his shirt as he set the plates on the table. He must have caught the look I gave him because he answered my unspoken accusation with a frown. “She kicked me out of the kitchen.”

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic how my father, big two hundred-forty-five pound former linebacker that he was, could be cowered by my mother’s grumpy attitude.

“And you went running?”

“You’re her kid. I know you’ve been on the receiving end of her fury once or twice.” Kona blinked and I didn’t particularly appreciate the way my father rolled his eyes at me. “Not lately, huh? She actually still likes you.”

He didn’t like my laugh, or the way I flopped on to the sofa, dismissing him. “Well, I’m not the one that keeps knocking her up.”

“I am right here, you know.” Mom looked a little funny standing near the kitchen entrance, hands on her slim hips and that huge belly giggling as she fussed.

“I know, baby.” Dad was shooting for smooth. “How could I miss you?” He failed completely and hurried to explain himself as that insulted gasp left my mom’s throat. Still, Kona and Keira—

Fairytale Love. That’s what the media said about them and I guess that was for a good reason. Those two were a little disgusting, the way they carried on, kissing, holding hands, whispering bullshit I didn’t want to know in each other’s ears.

Dad might be pushing forty, but he still had game. Mom’s insulted frown disappeared when he moved in front of her, holding her close to him with his big hand over her stomach. “I just mean…you’re so beautiful, ko`u aloha.”

Jesus. Here he goes. Hawaiian sweet talk. I would have said something, maybe ribbed my father and the whipped way he nuzzled and kissed Mom, but I didn’t have to. Koa watched them from the end of sofa, his small nose wrinkling as Dad moved his mouth to Mom’s neck.

I feel you, little man, I thought, watching my brother.

“Seriously? There’s a toddler watching you.” Koa came to me when I waved him over and settled him onto my lap. “Show me your truck.” A little less ridiculous, my parents went to the love seat, falling into the cushions as though they’d just finished a marathon. “You said you called me?” I let Koa off my lap as a small burst of energy had him disappearing back to his toys.

“Yeah,” Mom said, closing her eyes when Dad moved her bare feet onto his lap and started rubbing them. “I needed you to run to the store for me this morning before you came to lunch. Koa’s prescription is out, I was sick and your dad had a conference call.”

“I’m sorry. I was…” I sucked at spontaneous lies, but my mom had spent the better part of the last year and a half worried about me. I didn’t rest enough, I didn’t have enough friends, I wasn’t the same kid I’d been when we’d moved to New Orleans permanently. Still, that look on her face told me no matter what I said, she’d worry. That doesn’t ever stop, it seems, even after your kid is legally an adult and not living under your roof. “I didn’t sleep well.”

Where my mother worries and frets over everything, my father typically jumps to the simplest, usually wrong, conclusion. At least, that’s what I assumed with how big he smiled at me and the stupid way he waggled his eyebrows. Mom didn’t miss the hint of perversion in his dumb expression and elbowed him in the ribs.

“Why not?” she asked, tapping my father’s hand when he stopped rubbing her feet. “Are you sick? And what did you do to your hand?”

Figures she’d notice that. I looked down at my left hand, shrugging like the bandage knuckles were nothing when both my parents stared me. “I went too hard on the bag this morning at the gym and last night, just a little insomnia, Mom, I’m okay.” She always did that long stare thing when I said something she didn’t quite believe. “I can go for you now.”

“No, it’s okay.” She waved her hand, brushing off my offer and, when she smiled, I guessed her annoyance at me. “Leann’s picking it up. She was on her way out here anyway. In fact,” she said looking at the clock on the wall, “she should be here by now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.

“Help me up,” Mom said, letting Dad take her elbow as she wiggled off the loveseat. “I have to pee again.” She disappeared down the hallway with Koa trailing behind her.

There was more of a wobble in my mother’s walk with this baby than she had with Koa and my father still stared after her like she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He must have sensed me staring at him, catching that expression that transformed from worry to, God, was that lust? as he watched Mom leave the room. He glanced at me, grinned once and didn’t bother with excusing away his reaction to her before he fell back on the cushions at my side.

I thought my father might take a nap, maybe catch a few minute’s sleep before lunch. Instead, he rested his elbows on his knees and leaned closer to me, giving me that stupid loaded smile again.

“What?” I asked him when he didn’t say anything.

Then Dad leaned in, sniffed at my collar and frowned. “Did…did you have sex?”

“What? No.” The shirt was wrinkled, maybe a little dirty, and I had worn it under my button-up last night at Summerland’s but it wasn’t like I’d slept in it. It, at least, didn’t reek.

“I can tell. You look looser, more…. relaxed.” When I only stared at him, my father shrugged like his question hadn’t been senseless and meddling. “I’m just saying. What’s going on with you?”

“It’s nothing.” That frown deepened and he didn’t look away.

Since coming into our lives, Kona Hale had warmed up quick with his role as my father. He guided, suggested, maybe he teased a little too much, but he was a good friend as well as a father. Surprising considering he hadn’t ever known he had a kid until he and Mom ran into each other in the French Market just before I turned sixteen. We were tight and I respected the hell out of him. Funny thing was, he respected me. That’s something that isn’t easily won, especially not by a kid.

But I wasn’t all that comfortable talking about my shit with him. Even though I knew he’d probably understand. I knew, despite the goofy smiles, my father worried about me as much as Mom.

Slumping, I moved my head, checking to see if Mom was coming back into the room before I glanced at the smile on my dad’s face. “Don’t get excited.”

“Huh. No chance of that.” He sounded like a kid. A grumpy, disappointed, I-Got-Socks-For-Christmas kid. When I didn’t back down, Dad changed tactics, rubbing the back of his neck and exhaling like he wanted to release all that pent up tension stiffening his shoulders. “Keiki kane, your mother is still two months away from her due date and already miserable.”

“And?”

“And,” he said, looking down the hallway, “I haven’t had sex in forever.”

Man. No.

“I’m sorry I asked.”

“Not as sorry as I am.” But my father didn’t go into detail about how sexually frustrated he was, thank God. Instead, he leaned back, looked right at me as though he’d wait for me to talk. As though I had the ball and he wanted me to run with it. “Tell me. What’s going on with you?” He brushed my arm, pulling my attention back to his face. “Something happened?”

“It’s not that big of a deal. I was with this girl last night.”

“With?”

“No…” Kona Hale looking excited, a little eager, was a funny sight. His eyebrows went up and that cleft in his chin, one just like mine, dented in with his smile. I hated to disappoint him. “She…” A small sigh and I leaned back against the cushions. “It’s not like that. But I got…” I glanced down at my lap, then moved my chin at my father, hoping he got what I was saying. “Well. It’s the first time since, well, since I got…um…hard.”

“Oh.” Then that smile went megawatt. “Oh, well that’s good.” Dad slapped my back like I’d done sacked five quarterbacks. “That’s excellent.”

“It doesn’t feel excellent.”

“Why the hell not?”

When I didn’t answer, just sullenly studied the toy truck that Koa had given me, he said in a low voice, “Ransom, you can’t keep punishing yourself. You were a kid. It was an accident.”

“Please. Don’t start with me.” I didn’t want to hear it.

I was getting ready to tell him to forget everything, pretend that I had even mentioned a girl, but then the front door opened and Leann called a quick “I’m here,” and I jumped to greet her before my father could say anything else.

Leann gave me a distracted kiss on the cheek and I caught the small, white bags she shoved into my arms and followed the whirlwind of a woman as she marched into the living room.

She greeted Mom with kiss when she’d finally made it back from the bathroom and pulled Koa into her arms before Leann offered my father a nod. Then, she turned on me. “Too busy to answer your phone?”

God that woman was loud.

“Didn’t hear it.”

When mom shook her head and reached for the bag in my hand, Leann moved her toward the dining room table. “Sit down, Keira. I’ll fix you a plate. You can have your lunch then rest.”

“You’re not hungry?” Mom asked.

“Big breakfast. Besides,” she said moving her head toward the kitchen before she inhaled, “I’m not really in the mood for one of your classic southern Sunday lunches. No roast for me,” she said, waving my mother off as she handed the baby back to my father. Leann zipped around the room like a firecracker. Our cousin had more energy than even me most days. “Relax,” she said to my mother and nodded to me as Dad and settled Koa into his high chair.

Leann did this, always—bossing, supervising, until everyone around her was settled.

Today was no exception and we all watched her move around us, directing me to dole out plates, set up dishes on the table until lunch was underway. Until Leann’s incessant questions, “Keira, where’s the laundry detergent?” and “Kona, you didn’t fix that shelf?” had my father kicking Leann out of the laundry room and away from his To-Do list.

“Sit,” he told Leann, as he maneuvered her next to Mom at the table, then he helped Koa out of his high chair.

Leann seemed incapable of not fidgeting, keeping her foot in a constant bounce. But that was Leann. She had two sons and hundreds of dance students. Her days were hectic and she never seemed able to slow down.

When Leann’s phone rang and she pulled it from her pocket, my mom smiled at me, sending me a look that told me she was happy her cousin wasn’t bouncing around the room anymore.

Now that things had quieted down a bit, Mom tilted her head, her eyes sharp as she looked me over; I could feel the interrogation coming. “Everything okay?” She leaned forward, reaching for my hand across the table. “What’s going on with you?”

My mom was the strongest person I’d ever known, having raised me alone on nothing but determination and with the help of a couple of good friends. Then, against the odds, she went on to build a career with a kid in tow. Now she had to contend with being in the spotlight; not just her career as a Nashville songwriter, but Dad’s very public persona as a retired football superstar and new defensive coach at CPU, all while juggling a toddler and another on the way. She didn’t need the burden of my fucked up head or the stupid shit I couldn’t seem to let go of, too. So I said what came naturally—something slightly rude, and sure to make her laugh. “It’s all the girls, Mom. They all want me and it’s just so exhausting.”

“Ugh.” Mom’s dramatic disgust was almost as funny as how hard she slapped my hand away from hers. “You are so full of it.”

“That’s genetic,” Dad said in passing, as he moved from the kitchen to the playroom, where sounds of toddler-ish destruction had suddenly arisen.

Mom’s mock disgust had Leann’s attention on her and our cousin tilted her head, frowning when my mother leaned against the table. “You look so tired.” Leann swiped the bangs off my mother’s forehead. “I wish you’d consider hiring a babysitter.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mom said, brushing Leann’s hand away. “Like I told you last week when you first started nagging me,” Mom’s mock glare at her cousin had Leann snorting, “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of everything on my own.”

“You’re swollen again,” Leann said, drumming her fingers on the table. “Worse than you were with Koa or Ransom. I’m worried that it’s preeclampsia.”

“Remind me where you went to medical school.”

“I’m serious, Keira.” Leann ignored my mother’s eye roll, but still laughed at her attitude. Mom did look more exhausted than she had just the week before and all that lunch prep made her ankles look a little sausage-like. “Part of the time at least,” Leann suggested.

“It’s not a terrible idea, a babysitter.” I avoided my mother’s glare, knowing she probably wouldn’t appreciate feeling like we were ganging up on her.

“It is,” Mom said.

Leann shook her head at my mother’s complaint. “You know of anyone that can help her out, Ransom? There has to be some girl you know that needs a little extra cash. Maybe one of your classmates?”

“The girls I know aren’t the kind that are cool with watching kids.” Another crash sounded from the play room, louder than Dad’s cursing or the amused laughter Koa released. “Especially that kid.”

“What does that mean anyway?” Mom’s voice was higher than normal. “‘The girls you know?’” A small smirk and a lewd waggle of my eyebrows had my mother wincing. “You know what?” She paused dramatically. “I don’t wanna know.”

“Nope. You really don’t.” Mom’s laugh that time wasn’t as amused and just then I spotted the dark circles under her eyes. They made her look even more exhausted than I’d first noticed. Then, something occurred to me. “Hey, Leann? Doesn’t your sister-in-law own a daycare?”

“That’s not an option,” Mom instantly answered for her cousin.

“She’s being picky.” Leann sat back and took to moving her cell between her fingers. “Keira thinks someone from the daycare could be carrying Ebola or something.”

“Koa has been sick a lot,” Mom argued, shaking her head at Leann when she laughed. “I’m just being cautious.”

“You’re being anal.”

“Don’t you have a studio full of dancers to go check on?”

Leann looked at her cell, frowning before she left her chair. “I do, actually. I’ll ask around there. But seriously, keep your eyes open, okay Ransom?”

“Yeah, Leann. Sure.”

She called a goodbye to my dad, kissed Mom’s cheek and was nearly to the door before she turned back to me. “And speaking of the dance studio, don’t you even think about skipping that meeting at 2:00. You promised, Ransom.”

Shit. I had, but damn that had been a month ago when Tristian begged me to help him out with his mom’s recital. Then the little shit took off for a semester abroad in France leaving me high and dry with the volunteering bullshit. I frowned at my cousin, silently praying this volunteering gig wouldn’t have me pushed around a bunch of grinning, awkward dancers who needed a warm body to practice on. Leann had forced Tristian and me to learn technique and dances ages back. We were always guinea pigs for her and her students. It was rarely fun despite us both having a little dance skill. But Leann didn’t need me sitting around listening to a bunch of dancers yammering on about lighting and costumes for a recital that was still months away. “Leann, you don’t really need me, do you? Besides, I just got here.”

“It’s in an hour,” she said as though I hadn’t said a word.

God, the women in this family were stubborn. I was going to say something else, maybe put on some of that Hale charm I’d been born with, but then my mother kicked my leg under the table and I realized it was hopeless. They’d gang up on me, no doubt, and Dad wouldn’t be any help either. He was more scared of them than I was.

“Fine. I’ll be there,” I sighed. When the door closed behind Leann, I glared at my mom, annoyed that she’d pushed me into driving all the way back to town for no good damn reason. “Happy?” I asked her, grunting when she smiled.

“Yeah. Now I am.”