Her body tenses and I know I just fucked up. “Shit,” I mutter.

She quickly stands, water cascading down her stunning form as she holds her head high, the mask back.

“Hey, you don’t have to leave. Get back in the water.”

“I’m rinsed off, thanks,” she coldly says as she steps out and yanks a fresh towel from a pile the maids left.

I stand up with the water rushing off me. She tosses a towel to me on her way out of the bathroom, surprising me. “Thanks.”

“No problem. See? I’ve got manners.”

Chuckling under my breath, I mutter, “Oh, I get it.”

She appears in the doorframe. “What?”

“You’re going to push me away now because you’re pissed. And you’re going to act like a spoiled brat, too.” Those ice-green eyes of hers steel and narrow. Drying off my package I gruffly say, “Look, we live in a world where everything is on the Internet. You can find out a lot about a person so it’s not that strange that I checked you out. Can’t you just take it as a compliment?”

Her mouth drops open, and fury shoots out of her eyes. “Oh, sure! Thank you. You could have just asked me! Hey, Hannah, tell me about yourself!” She storms out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped tightly around her body, wet hair sticking to her soft shoulders.

Locking my towel around my waist I stride out to the balcony. She’s gripping the railing, staring at that water below. “You gonna jump?”

She rolls her eyes. “Ha ha.”

“I’m just trying to make light of this so we can get past it.”

Leaning her back against the bars she crosses her arms. “Did you just…”

I cut her off. “Fuck you because you’re semi famous? No!”

She glares at me. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Yeah I fuckin’ do actually. A girl was hiding in my locker room just tonight! You think I’m a nobody? Because I ain’t. In my world people know who I am, too, so what the fuck do I gain by…I can’t even say it so stop thinking it.”

Blinking a couple times she lowers her angry stare to the ground. “Well, I didn’t look you up.”

“I’m insulted. What, I’m not interesting? You just wanted my body and didn’t care about who I am or where I’ve been?”

A small smile twitches her lips but she shakes her head like she won’t let me in without a fight. “I was planning on asking you in person.”

“Look at me, Hannah.” She shakes her head. I cup her chin and wait until she allows me in, eyelashes floating up as her head rises. That fucking sadness is back. I hate it. “This guy mentioned something and I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I’m only human. I was curious, and frankly I didn’t like that he knew something I didn’t. So I checked it out. And I’m sorry. I’m really fuckin’ sorry that happened to you.”

Her eyes flicker. I think she expected my apology to be for Googling her. When I meant it for her pain, that cut her pretty deep.

Biting her lip she tries to flutter away from my steady gaze, but I’m not having it.

“You wanna talk about it? Because I’m all ears. I can tell you don’t trust people, but you can trust me.”

She swallows, searching my eyes to see if I’m serious. “No, I can’t.”

“Because I won’t ever betray you.”

Like someone stabbed her, her eyes widen. “Tobias,” she moans, trying to cover her face. Looks like I hit a sore spot.

So I cradle her head to my chest, my other arm firmly holding her. The sadness called to me from the photograph because I feel it in my bones, too. I recognized her troubled soul because mine is just as haunted.

“Someone betray you?”

She whispers, tucked into me, “It’s just hard to accept good things without thinking they’re going to end.”

“I know that feeling. It’s my ground zero.”

She looks at me. “Why?”

Oh hell, I didn’t want to drudge up bad memories, but I know this is the way she’ll let me in again. I deserve that trust because I meant what I said, I wouldn’t betray her. I don’t betray anyone.

She’s gazing at me, waiting.

“I don’t know who my dad is, gorgeous. Never had one. Just a string of Mom’s boyfriends. Whenever I started becoming friends with one, Mom would do something to fuck it up. She was really hard on her men. Never let ‘em make a mistake. They’d leave. I stopped trying. I had to learn how to be a man on my own. Never knew what having a dad felt like.”

Hannah’s soft fingers slide up my neck and around my skull, her touch soft and comforting. I close my eyes and lean into the stroke. “She didn’t tell you who he was? Your father?”

The truth is too raw to expose without old pain rising, so I blink away from her, exhaling from my soul. “Could have been one of three. When she told me that, I didn’t want the shame of making them take tests. Didn’t want them not wanting me. It was downright embarrassing. Never even looked ‘em up.” Rubbing my eyes I admit, “Fuck, it’s been so long since I thought about this. No, I looked ‘em up, but I didn’t tell ‘em. And one guy’s dead now. Motorcycle accident. I guess I thought if he turned out to be my dad I wouldn’t want to know it. What if he would have been a good father? I couldn’t take it. Better to imagine he’s walking around still alive, you know? Even if it’s just a fantasy.”

I meet Hannah’s beautiful eyes and see tears hovering in them. “I know that feeling, wanting to imagine they’re still out there somewhere. A car struck my mom. I never got to say goodbye. I didn’t know I’d never see her again when she left for work that night. But you already know that.” She shrugs, frowning and pulling away from me.

“No, tell me. I don’t want to hear it from the press. Fuck those guys. I want to know what happened, babe.” Bringing her back to me, I hold her sadness. She burrows into my chest and wipes her eyes, both of us facing the shimmering water now, her head to the side.

“Um…I haven’t talked about this in a long time. My mom was so beautiful. Dark blonde hair and pretty blue eyes that were always smiling. She had this big laugh, the kind where people turned and wondered what was so funny. It was just us, she was a single mother, and so we lived very bare bones. But I didn’t care. I didn’t know we were poor.”

“Yeah, we didn’t have money, and I didn’t know it until I was like ten or something when someone made fun of my clothes. One of my mom’s boyfriends had an older son and they were his.”

“Too big then?”

“Yep. I started working out so I could make them fit.”

Hannah presses closer into me, her fingertips tracing my skin. “My mom read to me every night, and taught me how before Kindergarten. She was really patient, you know? I don’t remember her ever losing her temper, at least not with me.”

“You see her lose it with someone else?”

“She got mad at a plumber once, called him a robber. And when he left she kneeled in front of me and said, ‘Don’t ever let them take advantage of you because you’re a girl, Hannah.’ I think it’s my strongest memory of her. But I have photos, and my grandma recorded stories with my dad before she died.”

I whisper, “How many?”

“Tons.” Hannah’s chest caves in as she rubs her nose then wraps her arms around me again. She feels so good. “I haven’t listened to them in years. They’d make me miss her too much, and I miss her so badly already. I want my mom. I need her! Why’d that have to happen to her?” Her shoulders start shaking while I rock her.

“I know, gorgeous, it sucks.”

“So bad! It sucks so bad,” she whispers. “I hate it. I have a stepmother, and I love her. She’s great, and I know I’m lucky. I shouldn’t feel this badly, but Tobias, I want my real mom to meet my children. I want her to see who I marry. I want her to be able to slap my dad, like really hard! Maybe two times.”

Quietly laughing at that last one, I ask, “You can’t do it?”

“No,” she sighs, chuckling through the tears. “He’s too good a guy. But I kind of want to.” My chest rumbles with hers and then we go quiet together. “Thank you, Tobias.”

“For?”

“I think I needed to talk about her. I never do. All my cousins have both their parents. It’s only me who doesn’t, so they can’t ever understand. But then it’s like she was never here, and that’s not good.” Hannah meets my eyes. “And I’m sorry about what happened to you. I know they’re not the same stories…”

“…but they’re the same feelings.”

“Same loss.” Her stomach growls and she glances to it, making a face at the timing.

I laugh and trace her cheek. “You hungry, babe?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Let’s get room service.”

Her hand slides down my stomach and under my towel, which unlatches the haphazard knot. The damp cotton drifts to the ground. She takes hold of my sleeping length and smiles up at me, looking so beautiful my heart shudders. “I know what we can do while we wait for food to get here.”

One of my eyebrows cocks up and I murmur against her waiting lips, “Let’s make the pain go away.”