This lost girl with the stormy eyes has become my caffeine, my morphine, my new drug of choice. I can no longer get through a day without a shot of her, whether it be seeing her or just a simple text message. And like any addiction, as much as I enjoy it, I know it’s something that I can’t do forever, and I’ll eventually have to quit it and forget it.

For the past month we’ve texted and had random conversations in the garage while I work, and she’s become the closest thing to a real friend I’ve had in a long time. With each day that’s passed, I’ve noticed little changes in her. Her confidence has grown. She smiles and laughs more. She’s developed her own style. She reminds me of how Boomer was when I first found him, so scared and timid at first, afraid of me getting too close to him. Slowly, over time, he learned to trust me and grew attached to me. I realize that was a mistake on my part because it prevented him from going out and living a normal fox life.

I can almost feel the same thing happening with Holly, because as much as I want to see her go off on her own, move to New York, and do amazing things with her life, I’m going to miss the hell out of her.

I’m selfish as fuck. I want to keep her all to myself.

Finders, keepers…

Right now she’s burning the shit out of my clutch and giving me whiplash while I try to teach her how to drive my old pickup, and I can’t even be mad because she looks so cute and serious in the driver’s seat, barely able to reach the pedals or see over the steering wheel.

“Aren’t there easier cars?” she asks as she stalls it again on the dirt road and both our heads slam forward. My inner mechanic groans.

“Yeah, an automatic, but I don’t have one.”

“Maybe having other people drive me around wasn’t so bad after all,” she says, trying to start the truck again.

“You’re doing great.” I try to make my voice sound reassuring. “You’re going to pass that test.”

I hate this shit of her parents not letting her have a car or wanting her to have a cell phone. I can’t wrap my head around what they think they’re accomplishing. Making her walk or take a taxi everywhere is in no way safer than driving, and if they think it is, they’re out of their damn minds. The more she tells me about them, the more I don’t like or understand them. It’s almost like they want her to continue to be secluded.

She doesn’t know it, but I already have a car for her, waiting in the parking lot of my brother’s motorcycle shop. It’s just a little all-wheel-drive SUV with about ninety thousand miles on it, but it’s clean and dent-free, and it runs good. If she’s moving to New York, she won’t need a car anyway, from what I gather, but at least while she’s here, she’ll be able to get around like the adult that she actually is. In the meantime, I don’t want to think about her moving to New York because it makes me feel ragey.

“I think without this clutch thing I might be okay,” she says, almost sideswiping the corner of the garage with the side mirror as she parks. I nod and rub the back of my neck, which is starting to ache from the constant jerking of the truck. Seeing her smile and learn something new makes it worth it, though, and it reminds me of when my father taught me how to drive his old truck. This same truck, actually.

I jump out of the truck and walk around to the driver’s side door, open it, and help her out. She touches my shoulder lightly as she jumps down but quickly pulls it away as soon as she’s on her feet, and that old familiar burn of rejection manifests in my chest.

What I wouldn’t do to feel her hands on me. Just once, even for sixty seconds. Fuck, I’d settle for ten seconds.

A gust of wind blows, and she hugs herself against it as we walk around the garage to the side door and step inside, but I don’t go to my workbench like I normally do. Usually, she likes to sit on a mat on the floor, play with Poppy and Boomer, and watch me work, but today I don’t have much work to do, and I’d rather be inside with the fire going, just chilling. I’m getting sick of spending all my time with her in my workshop-slash-garage, surrounded by tools, weights, lawn equipment, and my collection of horror masks. The thing is, she’s never been inside my house because she’s afraid of small spaces after being kept in a room for ten years. My house is tiny, just three hundred square feet, with only one way in and one way out. A claustrophobic’s worst nightmare.

“You feelin’ good today?” I ask her casually, leaning against my workbench.

She smiles. “Yeah, I’m happy.”

“I want to go in the house.” I say.

She stares up at me and, as usual, my eyes take a sweep of her, wearing jeans with tattered holes in the knees, black boots, a soft sweater, and a leather jacket that’s more stylish than warm. I’m struck by how incredibly beautiful and normal she looks, like any other girl hanging out with her friends, and it makes me believe she’s going to be okay out in the world. Her damage is easier to hide than mine. It’s not until the long sleeves are gone, and the sun sets, that glimpses of her reality come to light.

“Oh,” she says. “I can go home then. I can call a taxi…”

“No… I want you to come with me.” Her eyes narrow on me as she absorbs the words she’s never heard from me before. I wonder if she’s been hoping for them or dreading them.

She looks out the window toward the house, worry creasing her brow.

“Holly…it’s okay if you don’t want to. I’ll take you home. But there’s a fireplace in my house, it’s warm, you can sit on the couch and be comfortable—instead of on the ground. I’m a little tired of you sitting in the dirt every time you’re here.”

Torment flashes all over her face, the fight-or-flight instinct kicking in. Her teeth clamp on her bottom lip, her pink lipstick smudging her perfect white teeth. It only makes me want to kiss her and smudge it even more. She has no idea she makes me feel this way, and it’s real innocence, not that fake clueless act some women put on in an effort to flirt.

“How about this,” I say as softly as I can force my voice to be without it fading to inaudible hisses. “You go inside first. I’ll wait here. Look around. Leave the front door open. You won’t feel trapped. See how you feel. If you don’t like, just come back out.”

“Really? I can do that?” she asks.

I nod.

She takes a few deep breaths, her chest going up and down.

“Okay. I’m going to try it,” she finally says. “You’ll stay right here? You won’t move? You promise?”

“Promise.”

She takes two steps and turns back to me. “Is anyone in there?”

“Nobody. I live alone.”

I watch from the garage window as she walks toward my house, with the dogs following her, opens my front door, stands on the threshold for a few minutes, looks back toward the garage, and disappears inside.

She’s braver than I am, confronting her fears. Unlike me, hiding from the world like a pussy.

My cell phone rings, and I pull it out of my pocket to see Holly’s number on the screen.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” she says. “Your house is so cute and cozy. But…where is the rest of it?”

I laugh into the phone. “What?”

“The other rooms? How do I get to them?”

“There aren’t any more rooms. Just the bedroom loft upstairs. Use the stairs to go up there and look around. It’s one room with a bed, some drawers under the bed, and a small window. Nothing else.”

“I don’t think I want to go up there.”

“Then you don’t have to.”

“Where is the basement?”

“Don’t have one.”

There’s a long silence as she contemplates whether this could be true.

“You’re sure?” she asks suspiciously. “There’s no rooms under the house?”

“No lie. Cross my heart.”

Another long silence, except for the sound of her breathing.

“I think I’m okay. You can come in now.”

“You sure? You can have more time.”

“No. I’m okay.”

I end the call with a grin on my face that comes partly from being proud of her and partly from finally having her in my house and being able to smell her perfume in my personal space.

When I go inside, I find her sitting in the small leather chair right by the door with Poppy on her lap.

“I’m sorry, Ty.” She says, looking down at the dog.

“For?”

Her shoulder lifts in a slight shrug. “Being difficult.”

I take off my leather jacket and hang it on a metal skull hook by the door. “You’re not. I’m trying to help you, that’s all,” I hold my hand out to her. “Take your jacket off, I’ll hang it up with mine.”

“Are you stray catting me?” she asks, pulling off her jacket. “Is that why you asked me to come inside?” She chooses to shove her jacket behind her on the chair rather than give it to me, and I know that’s because she feels safer having it with her, in case she has to run. I’d guess she probably lifted one of my kitchen knives, too, and has it hidden on her someplace.

Shaking my head, I go to the small kitchenette and put some water in a teapot to boil. About a week ago, she told me her stray cat obligation theory, worried I’m only hanging out with her because I feel sorry for her because no one else wants to. In true me fashion, I shot back that maybe she’s only hanging out with me because I saved her life and now she has the white-knight syndrome.

Insecurity eats at both of us.

“Don’t fish,” I say.

“Fish?” Her nose crinkles with confusion, something she does that pisses me off with its cuteness. There are so many little things about her that just get to me lately, that make me smile when I don’t want to, that make me fight to focus on what she’s talking about rather than getting lost in the shape of her lips. Even the way she talks nonstop sometimes, like a song in my head that, even though I’ve heard it a hundred times, still puts me in a good mood.

“Fishing for verification.” I pull two mugs from the cabinet and put tea bags in them. “Do you like milk and sugar in your tea?” I turn to face her, and she’s staring at me like she has no idea who I am.

“Holly?” Shit, I hope she’s not going to have a meltdown and pass out in the middle of my tiny living room. There’s really no way she can fall without banging her head on something on the way down.

“You’re making tea?” Her voice is laced with surprise.

“Is that okay?” Maybe tea is a trigger, something she was poisoned with in the past. One night, during our texts, she told me all about how that asshole who had her would put something in her water to make her fall asleep. It put me in such a rage I couldn’t sleep for two days. My inner demons were begging to get high or drunk, anything to numb the feelings battling inside me.

Instead, I drove to the city, to a dirty warehouse I’ve spent a lot of my time in since my second accident. Underground street fighting, my favorite stress and violence outlet. My brothers used to fight, too, to make extra money to help support Mom and the bike shop after Pop died. They quit fighting a few years back, but I’ve secretly kept going about once a month. I don’t do it for the money, though. I do it mostly for the self-punishment. I let my opponent beat the fuck out of me until the very end, and then I take him down. Ninety percent of the time, I win. Every opponent becomes the face of karma to me first, giving me what I deserve for destroying my family, and then my opponent morphs into the asshole that kidnapped and hurt Holly, and I get to beat the hell out of him all over again. This last time I didn’t have to worry about explaining cuts and bruises all over my face when I saw Holly the next day because I chose to not even let the guy get a punch in. I just pummeled him right from the start and walked out with two grand in dirty cash that reeked of weed.

I guess the thing about Holly that makes me the craziest is how being around her is like being on an emotional train, and every stop brings something new and unexpected. Happiness, fear, anger, care, desire. Unfortunately, the train doesn’t let me get off. I’ve got a one-way ticket to places I never wanted to visit again.

Or even thought I could visit.

“Tea is good. I like milk, sugar, and honey. And you should have honey, too,” she says. “I just didn’t know you made tea. It’s so…nice.” She says it with a hint of disbelief. “And verification of what?”

I’ve been so lost in my thoughts I have to back the conversation up in my mind to remember what we were talking about.

“Verification that I like being with you.”

“I wasn’t fishing,” she protests, a pout gracing her face like a child.

She was definitely fishing, but I don’t mind giving her some reassurance when she needs it. Grinning, I hand her the cup of tea and sit on the couch across the tiny room. Boomer is asleep in his favorite spot, crammed under the small stairway that leads to the loft, which is good because when he’s awake he likes to tear around the house and knock things over. He also likes to pull socks and shoes off people and run and hide with them.

Holly gazes around the inside of my small house with genuine interest, studying the nature photographs on my walls—which I took myself—the miniature inset lights in various places, the incense holders on the mantle, my bookshelf filled with my collection of books by Stephen King, Madeleine L’Engle, Anne Rice, and Marquis de Sade, and the statues of foxes, wolves, angels and grim reapers that Tor’s friend-turned-girlfriend leaves for me by the dog feeding stations and traps that they set up in the woods when we think there’s a lost dog in this area. I check the stations at night and early morning, and I’m hoping maybe someday Holly will go with me like Kenzi does with Tor.

Holly’s eyes rove over the full-size fireplace, which is the focal point of the house, with its gray stone chimney reaching all the way up to the second-floor loft, and thick stone mantle.

“You built all this?” she asks.

“Me and my brother Tanner. There was a house here before, but we knocked it down. The garage was here, but I just fixed that up.”

“It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Thanks. Tiny houses are kind of a fad, but that’s not why I live in one. I only wanted what I needed.” I take a sip of my tea. She’s the only woman who’s ever been in here, other than my mother and my sister, and that was a long time ago, before I told them I never wanted them to come back. I couldn’t stand seeing the sadness in their eyes or the way my mother constantly touched her wedding band, rubbing her finger over the white gold like it was a genie’s lamp, missing my father with every breath she took. I couldn’t take seeing the damage I’d caused the people I loved.

Holly’s sweet voice floats across the room, sucking me back from the edge. “It’s so cozy and warm. I thought I would be scared, or feel cramped, but I’m not. I feel like I’d never want to leave.”

Then don’t. “Isn’t that what a home should be? A place you’d never want to leave?”

“I hope so,” she agrees. “I don’t feel like that at my apartment, though. Or at my parents’.”

“Because home is more than a bunch of walls and floors.”

With a faraway look, she nods and wraps her hands around her mug. I wonder if anyone ever hugs her, or if she has to constantly comfort herself. I want to pull her into my arms, show her what it’s like to let someone else make her feel better and not hurt her. “That’s true, Tyler,” she says softly.

“Someday, you’ll have your home. A real home.”

She smiles weakly. “I’m hoping when I move to New York I’ll feel that way, with Zac and Anna.”

I clear my throat, not trusting my voice to reply to that. I’m going to need a better truck if I plan on road-tripping out to New York to visit her. My old rustbucket truck isn’t gonna make it there in one piece.

“My parents gave my old room to my little sister. She was born after I was taken.” She stares into her tea. She hasn’t talked about her family much, and I haven’t pried, so I’m surprised she’s bringing them up.

“How does that make you feel?”

“Replaced.” My heart wrenches for her. “And jealous.”

“Totally understandable feelings.” Sometimes I’m her friend. At other times I’m her therapist. She takes on those same roles with me.

I want more than that with her, though. I want to taste her lips, stare into her eyes, wrap my hands around her tiny waist…

“They told my little sister I was dead,” she continues. “And now that I’m not dead, they’re all awkward when I visit. It’s like they don’t want me there. I can feel it. I make them uncomfortable. I think they think I’m dirty. They barely even talk to me or look at me.”

“People can be assholes when they have no idea how to deal with their feelings. It’s not you. It’s them.” Yes, listen to the poster child of how not to deal with your fucked-up feelings.

She grips her mug tighter and gazes out the window. “You’re the only one that seems to understand. My doctor listens…but she’s paid to. And Feather—she understands, but her situation is different. Nobody really knows what happened to her. It wasn’t made public like what happened to me. Her outsides are normal. She’s beautiful. People only know what happened to her if she tells them.” She licks her lips nervously. “I kinda envy that about her.”

“You’re beautiful on the outside and the inside, Holly.” Honestly, she’s not just beautiful—she’s fucking breathtaking and sexy. If we weren’t two majorly fucked-up people, full of scars and rampant dysfunction, I’d be going out of my mind hitting on her.

Her cheeks flush at my compliment, and her eyes shift back down to her teacup. “I feel like I’m made out of glass and everyone can see…everything. Like I’m a big gaping window. They know…what that man did to me. I want to just forget it. But it’s hard when people look at me a certain way and then bring it all up, like they have the right to ask me questions.”

“Just remember you didn’t do those things. Those things were done to you.”

“I know, but…”

“I know it’s hard. People can fucking suck. They do it to me, too. They think my scars will jump onto their own skin and make them ugly. They cringe when they hear me talk. They call me a murderer, a monster, a freak.”

Her eyes squint closed as if each word I say hurts her. “Oh my God. You’re not any of those things! How do you deal with that?” Her voice is strained with compassion.

“I fuckin’ don’t anymore. Everything I need is right here. Everyone can fuck off.”

“But…what if you want to go out…like shopping, or to dinner?”

“I’m a vegetarian. I don’t go out to eat. I make my own food.”

“So you really don’t go out at all?” she asks, her mystical eyes widening.

“Nope.” I shrug. “Unless it’s dark out and I don’t have to interact with judgmental douchebags. I’m over it. Most things I need I can have delivered or one of my brothers will bring it to me. I ride my bike at night, that’s my escape outta here if I feel stir crazy. But I like it here in my little fucking bubble.”

She nods in slow agreement. “I’ve never told anyone this,” she whispers. “But sometimes…I feel like being locked away was easier. I didn’t have to make decisions or try to fit in. I knew what I was dealing with, if that makes sense?”

I nod and take another sip of my tea.

“Out here, I have no idea what people want, how they’re going to act, what they want from me. Being free is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

I clear my throat. “I get what you’re saying, sugar. You just have to find your groove.”

“What about you? Is this your groove, or are you still trying to find yours, too?”

I love how she’s not afraid to ask me questions. And I love how she listens to me so intently, like a sponge. That actually makes me want to open up to her more.

I let out a sigh, lean back in the couch, and put my foot up on my coffee table. “I think this is mostly my groove. Most days, I’m content. I can live with the choices I’ve made. That’s what I need the most—peace of mind.”

“But are you happy? Because you don’t seem very happy to me.”

Me? Happy? “I kinda forgot about being happy and just wanted to find peace. But I’m happy when you’re here with me. You wanted to make me smile, and you do. That’s not an easy feat.” I wink at her from behind my cup, because I like the way it makes her eyes twinkle. She’s a hard one to read—sometimes she trembles and her eyes go dark with terror if I stand too close or touch her in a casual way, and other times she looks at me like she’s totally ga-ga over me. Without knowing it, she twists me all up, oblivious to the way her fear knocks on the door of my hidden desires and her sweetness melts the ice around my heart and lulls the voices in my head.

Not for the first time, I wonder if I do the same for her.

“I like when you smile,” she says softly.

Today, she’s ga-ga.

“Where’s your television?” she suddenly asks, looking around the room.

“Don’t have one.”

This fascinates her; her eyes are big like an owl’s as she stares at me. “Really? You don’t?”

“I’d rather read or go for a walk.”

“I had a TV…” She shifts in the chair nervously. “Back then. I watched it almost nonstop. It got to the point where I almost thought those people in the TV were my family. I didn’t have a calendar, or a clock, or a window to see if it was day or night, so it was hard for me to figure out when my favorite shows were going to be on, so I would just sit and watch and wait.”

“That sucks.” I can’t even imagine living with time deprivation like that. What a severe mind fuck.

“Without the TV, though, I wouldn’t have had any company before Poppy was given to me. And it’s how I learned a lot of things. By watching TV.”

Warped is the only word that describes a child being raised by a television. How she isn’t completely fucked up is a miracle in itself. Yeah, she’s innocent and naïve in a lot of ways, but she’s got a good idea of what’s right and wrong, and she knows what she wants. The more I learn about her, the more I admire her.

And the more I want her.

“What is this?”

I rip my stare from the fireplace, which often mesmerizes me with unwanted memories of flames and burning flesh, to find her fingering a throw blanket draped over the chair she’s sitting in.

“It’s just a blanket.”

She lifts it and rubs it across her cheek, her eyes falling closed as she revels in the sensation, an act so intimate—almost sensual—that it makes my cock jump to a rock-hard state almost instantly.

What the fuck.

“It’s so soft!” She continues to torture me by rubbing it across the other side of her face, the fabric sliding across her lips. “It’s softer than anything I’ve ever felt in my life.”

“It’s plush or something,” I mumble, my brain short-circuiting as I watch her basically face-fuck a blanket my mother gave me.

“I love it.”

I stand uncomfortably and walk the few steps to the sink and put my mug in it, trying to distract myself from thoughts I shouldn’t be having about someone who is my only friend and I’d like to not lose or fuck up.

“I never had a blanket,” she says, her voice quavering with emotion. “I never had anything soft like this. I used my backpack as a pillow, and I had an old thin sheet. I didn’t know things like this…so incredibly soft and comforting existed…I don’t even have anything like this at my apartment, or at my parents’…”

I’m so glad I killed that douchebag.

And now I wish I was a blanket, my every fiber being slid over her body, taking in her warmth and curves, comforting her…

By the time I turn around, tears are falling down her cheeks and her hands are trembling, and it fucking guts me and fills me with guilt. I walk over and kneel in front of her and coax the dog out of her lap, and he immediately curls up at her feet. I grab the throw blanket, shake it open, and gently lay it over her.

“No crying here,” I say softly, reaching up to wipe her cheeks with the back of my tattooed hand. Not the badly scarred one. I won’t touch her beautiful face with my ugly flesh. I take her hand in mine and slide slowly it across the plush fabric of the blanket covering her leg. “Feel the fabric. They say texture helps ground you if you’re having an anxiety attack.”

Her eyes track our hands moving along the blanket, and she sniffs back her tears. “It does feel so good and soft.”

“This house…this is my only happy place,” I confess. “And it can be yours now, too.”

Nodding sleepily, she pulls the blanket up to her chin and leans her head back against the chair. “I need a happy place so bad, Ty. I love how soft and warm this is… it’s like magic,” she says as her eyes drift closed. “It makes me feel like you do… safe and weirdly good.”

She falls asleep snuggled up under the blanket, and I sit on the couch with her dog in my lap and try to pretend that having her in my house isn’t making me question my life of solitude.

I want her to be part of my groove.

* * *

She jolts awake when I open the door to let Boomer and Poppy outside and stares around in wide-eyed, open-mouthed confusion for a few seconds until she remembers where she is.

“Sorry,” I say when her eyes focus on me, still standing at the door waiting for the dogs to return. “Had to let them out.”

Sitting up straighter, she runs her hand through her hair. “I can’t believe I fell asleep. I’m so sorry. This blanket made me feel all woozy.” She rubs her eyes, looking so innocent and alluring that I just want to kiss her until our lips are numb. “I’m still trying to get used to only sleeping at night. Before…I slept whenever. My doctor says my inner clock might be confused for a while.”

My inner everything is confused. “You were comfy and sleepy. It’s okay to nap. Rest is good for mind and body, nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Isn’t it rude?” she asks. “To do it in someone else’s house?”

“Not at all. I want you to feel comfortable here.”

“I do. More than I do anywhere else. It really is my happy place.”

She may have been comfortable physically, but the way she twitched and whimpered during her nap made it clear she wasn’t comfortable mentally. Dreams were torturing her—maybe from her past, maybe from her present. I was equally tortured wondering how she would’ve reacted if I had carried her to the couch and let her nap in my arms, under the blanket together.

I’m afraid to find out. I’d rather stay in this comfortable limbo we’re in forever than risk losing her or seeing any sign of rejection in her eyes.

She folds the blanket, drapes it back over the chair, and then glances at her watch. “Can you take me home?”

I look at the wall clock. “Now? It’s only two.” Usually, I take her home around four or five.

“I’m going out to dinner with Zac and Anna tonight, and their friend John. Zac said he had something exciting to share with me.”

My jaw twitches. “Then I’ll drive you home.” I was hoping she’d stay longer today and have dinner with me for the first time. I have no right to be upset, though, since that wish only lived in my head and I never actually asked her to stay.

Maybe next time.

While we drive back to her apartment, she watches the trees go by for a few miles, before she turns to me. “I’m nervous about dinner,” she blurts out.

“Why?”

“Because of what I mentioned earlier…people recognize me sometimes. They stare at me, and ask questions.”

“I get the same. Ignore them.” Oh, like you do, Ty? Hypocrite.

“It’s hard to.”

“I know.”

“I wish you could come too,” she says wistfully. “I feel better when we’re together.”

My heart jumps in the air, grabs her words, and runs back to the darkness to savor them. “Trust me, they’ll stare more if I’m there.” The people of this small town would go nuts if they saw Holly and me together. The murderer and the Girl in the Hole to some, the hero and the victim to others. Both the scarred-up freaks in one place for them to stare at and spread rumors about.

No fucking thanks.

“Can I text you later? When I get home?” she asks when I pull over at the usual place in front of her apartment. I always stay parked there, watching her, until I see her go inside, safe and sound. And sometimes, I still watch her window, late at night, just so I know she’s still okay, and so I can be close to her. Is it stalking if you’re trying to take care of someone from afar? Does that, in fact, put me in that feeding-the-stray-cat category?

Fuck it if it does.

I’ll love someone however the fuck I want to.

Like them. I meant like them.

“Tyler?”

Shit. “Sure.” I clear my throat. “Text me. Take a picture of your dinner and text it.”

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “I can’t do that…it’s food.”

“Everyone does. It’s weird if you don’t.”

Throwing her backpack over her shoulder, she laughs. “Okay, then. I’ll try.”

After I watch her close her front door behind her, I continue to drive into town, turning down a side street to drive past the pet shelter my mom runs. I eye her car as I do a u-turn and head back to the main road. Then I drive past my family’s motorcycle shop, noting all my brothers’ cars out in the parking lot. Where mine should be, too. A new sign is hanging on the outside of the building, much larger, bolder, and brighter than the one that was there before. I hope that means business is doing good for them. Tor used to send me text updates about how the shop was doing. He’d text me pictures of bikes that were scheduled for custom work, trying to entice me to come back to work my magic. I ignored his messages for months until he gave up. Now he just deposits money from the business into my bank account every month. Money I get because my last name is on the sign, not because I deserve it.

I donate most of it anonymously to my mother’s pet shelter.

I miss my family, but they’re better off without me there reminding them of all the heartache I caused them and giving them more grief.