Present Day…

In the middle of the night, I awoke to a powerful thirst and sweat-soaked sheets. Grit burned beneath my heavy eyelids. Instantly, I remembered Owen in the next room and cursed. What kind of idiot invited her ex-boyfriend, a convicted murderer, to sleep in her house? Oh, yeah. That’s right. This girl. With a sigh, I threw back the top sheet and swung my bare feet onto the wood floor.

I padded down the hall to Owen’s room. The door and windows were open, but the moon had retreated, leaving the house in total darkness. I stared into the black hole of the doorway, waiting for my eyes to adjust, my heart thundering. After a few seconds, the clouds shifted again. The dim light revealed his long body on the mattress. One arm rested above his head, fingers curled loosely, thick hair in his armpit. Rippled abs rose and fell with his even breathing. A dark trail of hair trailed over his smooth, suntanned belly, leading from his navel into the waistband of his boxer briefs and to the bulge below. An impressive bulge. Jesus, if I didn’t back away, I was going to get pregnant from looking at him.

“Stella?” His deep, sleepy voice made me jump. “Is everything okay?”

A furious flush heated my face. “Yes. Um, yeah. I was—” What was I doing? The sight of his big body on the tiny twin bed had shorted out my wiring. “I’m going downstairs for a water. Do you want some?”

“Sounds good. It’s hot as fuck in here.” In a graceful motion, he rose to his feet. The silky sheen of sweet glistened on his chest. “I’ll go with you.”

With a throbbing ache between my thighs, I headed downstairs. He followed me. His nearness pebbled the skin on my arms into gooseflesh. In the bright light of the kitchen, I became acutely aware of the tiny shorts barely covering my ass and my braless breasts. After exploring third-world countries with a group of men, sometimes sharing sleeping quarters, I’d lost all semblance of modesty. Standing in front of Owen, however, was an entirely different thing. To hide my embarrassment, I dug in the cooler for a water and tossed the bottle to him. He caught it with one hand. I took one of the ice cubes and dragged it over my neck and collarbone. Sweet, fleeting relief followed. The chill from the ice tightened my nipples. The melted water evaporated immediately, leaving me hotter than before.

“I don’t remember Indiana being this sweltering,” I said to break the uncomfortable stillness.

“You’ve been away a long time.” In the quiet, his voice held a soft, intimate quality. “I’m sure you’ve forgotten a lot.”

“I have a memory like an elephant.” I lifted my chin and met his eyes. That goddamn penetrating gaze of his sliced through all my barriers and knocked on the door of my soul. “I remember everything.”

“Everything but the heat.” He rolled his lips together. His gaze flitted from my eyes to my mouth and back again.

“At the time, the heat wasn’t important.” But you were. You were everything to me, and you went and fucked it up. The words screamed inside my head. I bit my lower lip to hold them back.

“Come on.” Without explanation, he left, pushing through the back door and onto the porch. Against my better judgement, I followed him. On bare feet, he traversed the gravel driveway. I winced as the sharp stones cut into my tender flesh. He shook his head and came back to meet me in the middle. In an easy sweep, he lifted me into his arms and carried me to the grass on the far side, then set me down. It was something he’d done a dozen times when we were kids, always followed with a wisecrack about my tender soles. The bittersweet sting of nostalgia sliced through my chest. We’d been so happy back then—before the world had turned to shit.

“Where are we going?” I asked when I’d finally found my voice.

“You know.” He kept walking, and I followed him because I couldn’t help myself.

The dry grass tickled my ankles. The yard needed cut, but I hadn’t bought a mower yet. One more thing to add to the list of homeowner supplies. Overhead, the clouds had cleared, showing a bright moon and a velvet carpet of stars. Crickets and bullfrogs sang in voices loud enough to drown the banging of my heart against my ribs. A few yards beyond the garage, water trickled over stones, beckoning. The river had been our meeting place. I’d been avoiding it to evade the significance it held for me, but now, scanning the tumble of boulders along the bank and the covered bridge in the distance, my stomach did a nervous flip.

“No way. You’re not serious.” I halted. During my one summer here, we’d swam in the river nearly every day—me, Owen, and sometimes Lanie.

“Totally.” From the bank, he cast a taunting glance over his shoulder. “Last one in is a rotten egg.” Before I could draw my next breath, he’d stripped out of his underwear. The taut, white firmness of his buttocks gleamed in the moonlight. I stifled a groan at the sight of him, proud and wild, overlooking the river. He waded out a few feet, the water swirling around his strong thighs, before sinking up to his chin into a deeper pool. “Are you coming in, or are you going to stand there gawking?”

I swear the man had eyes in the back of his head. After shaking my head, shifting from one foot to the other, and ticking off a dozen reasons why this was a bad idea, I shimmied out of my shorts and tank top. The water was warm but still a few degrees cooler than the air. The mucky bottom squeezed through my toes. I picked my way around the protruding rocks until I was a few feet from Owen and sank into the pool. Immediate and satisfying relief washed over me. I closed my eyes and moaned, letting the coolness seep into my skin. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so delicious.”

“Really?” he asked, his tone dry. By now, I’d developed a fondness for the way he arched his left eyebrow, the one with the scar, whenever I said something provoking.

“Okay. That might be a slight exaggeration.” The mild current had pushed us together until we were less than a foot apart. I hovered in the water, weightless. Moonlight shimmered on the ripples created by our movements.

“I used to daydream about this. About us. Here.” He ran a hand up the length of my arm to the crest of my shoulder and back down. “Sometimes it was the only thing that got me through the endless days of waiting.” When his hand reached my wrist, he gripped it with his strong fingers and drew me through the water in a lazy circle around him. I let the momentum roll me onto my back, soothed by the sounds of the night. The stars rotated through the black sky above us, infinite and mysterious like the man at my side. “It kept me sane when everything else begged me to become a monster.”

I put my feet on the river bottom, his confessions overwhelming. He stared at me. Beads of water glistened on his chest. I took a step closer and placed my hand over his heart. It thudded strong and steady against my palm. Tears blurred my vision. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry.” The tone of his voice turned angry. “Fuck the apologies, Stella. It’s way too late for that.”

“Buy why? Why did you do it?” The tears streamed down my cheeks. I didn’t try to hold them back. I needed answers. “Make me understand.”

His nostrils flared with a deep, chest-swelling breath. He blinked, giving me that spellbinding, penetrating stare. “You know why. I did it to save you.”