The next morning, Sadie woke in her cold apartment shocked that she’d slept all night. She hurriedly hopped into a hot shower under Lollipop’s watchful, worried eye. The dog couldn’t understand Sadie’s love of hot water. Or any water at all.

As she dried off, she glanced at herself in the mirror. The woman staring back at her straightened and returned the careful once-over. At some point over the years, she’d grown to accept and even love her curves, and maybe actually truly liked the way she looked in her clothes.

Quite the change from her early years.

She hadn’t told Caleb about those years, or even hinted at them. She didn’t know if she ever could. But there’d been a time when she couldn’t have looked at herself in the mirror at all because she hated what she’d seen as so different from the rest of her family. She’d carried around a lot of hurt about that for a long time.

Then she’d learned how to release that pain in a way that had most definitely been outside society’s idea of normal. Just the occasional small slices on her upper thigh where no one but her ever saw. Until she’d been caught of course, by her mom who’d never stopped snooping into Sadie’s life, needing to know all her secrets.

It’d been born out of fear for her daughter’s health and safety, Sadie got that now. She did. But back when she’d been a hurting, lonely, angry teenager, she hadn’t understood why her mom had freaked out and called in the cavalry to save Sadie, who hadn’t seen herself as needing saving.

That’s when she’d been forced into psychiatric care including the involuntary stay in a hospital, followed by counseling, a change of schools, and constant supervision. She’d tried to explain she wasn’t suicidal and never had been. She hadn’t ever felt the need to die, but no one believed her.

Eventually, she’d come to terms with herself and had let that inner anger and pain go. The need to cut had faded away, with the exception of a relapse a few years ago when she’d let a guy inside her head and mess her up.

Briefly.

She ran her fingers along her right upper thigh, where she had three scars, each two inches long. Two of them were old and healed, but also invisible thanks to the fact that she’d had them covered by tattoos that read like two equations:

And:

The last scar wasn’t as old as the others and hadn’t been covered. With the dubious honor of maturity and hitting the ripe old age of twenty-eight last year, she’d arrived at an appreciation and understanding of who she was. And also the new and improved version of herself included not giving a rat’s ass about what anyone thought of her.

Fact was, she just wasn’t that same person anymore. Her remaining scar was a reminder of that, like an ex-smoker who kept a pack of cigarettes somewhere as proof she was stronger than that. It was a badge of honor and a marker place for where she was in her life right now. And as it turned out, memories—the good, the bad, and the ugly—really were what made a person.

Thirty minutes later, she and Lollipop walked into the Pacific Pier Building. Caleb had texted her that he had an unexpected early meeting and wanted to know if she could hold Lollipop until later. Because she still hadn’t convinced her boss at the day spa that Lollipop would make a great emotional support dog, she took her to Willa’s shop and got to work.

Late afternoon, that shift ended and she picked up Lollipop and hit the Canvas Shop to find Rocco and his two other tattoo artists—Mini Moe, a Samoan guy who was possibly the biggest sweetheart Sadie had ever met, and Blue, Moe’s virtual opposite. He was as small and skinny as Moe was big and huge, and he was nowhere close to a sweetheart but perpetually scowling and ticked off at the world.

They were both in the back, hunched over a tray of tacos from Ivy’s truck. The scent of them had Sadie’s mouth watering.

“Saved you two,” Rocco said. “Better hurry before I change my mind and eat ’em all.”

Knowing that wasn’t an idle threat, Sadie grabbed a taco in each hand. “Thanks,” she said and took a huge bite, watching as Rocco dropped to his knees and tried to bribe Lollipop closer with a piece of chicken.

Lollipop’s first move was her usual I don’t trust you growl.

“No, pretty girl, you like me, remember?” Rocco held the meat out, patient in a way he never was with humans.

Lollipop took the chicken—she wasn’t stupid—and then allowed him to pet her.

Sadie looked around for dessert, hoping there was a badly needed sugar rush in her future.

“Used to be you tried to stay away from men and desserts. Now . . .” Rocco gave her a look. “You’ve fallen off the wagon, chica.”

“Thought you learned your lesson,” Blue said over his taco.

“Apparently not.” Mini Moe had opinions too. “Even though she’s on a self-imposed man embargo.”

Working in a shop with alpha men, she’d learned early to hold her own with them and stared them all down to let them know this wasn’t up for discussion. She might be the youngest, but she was for sure the mightiest. “Do not need the peanut gallery’s opinion on this.”

Mini Moe met her gaze, winced, and went back to his tacos. Blue was next and he rolled his eyes, grumbled something about stupid millennials, and went back to eating.

“If you think millennials are stupid,” she said, “then do not ever again ask me to fix the printer or laptop.”

Rocco just shook his head. “I have a point,” he said. “That is that Wes devastated you. I told you what we’d do to the next guy who hurt you. You should know, nothing’s changed there, no matter who he is, rich dude or not.”

Mini Moe nodded.

Blue nodded.

And Sadie blew out a sigh. “Wes didn’t devastate me, the situation did. And that was three years ago. I’m stronger now, and no longer that stupid. No one could get to me like that again.”

“He set you back,” Rocco said stubbornly. “He set you back in your recovery.”

“Momentarily,” she agreed. “But I got a handle on it, I’ve had a handle on it, and I’ve been fine for a long time.”

At his mouth quirk, she smiled. “Okay so ‘fine’ is relative. We all know I’ll never be the world’s definition of fine, but I’m something even better. I’m my version of fine.”

Rocco finally smiled. “Can’t argue with that.” Snagging her around the neck with a beefy arm, he pulled her in for a quick hug.

She hugged him back, knowing he was worried. But she knew she didn’t need his worry. She was fine. And luckily the discussion was now over because her first client of the day walked in.

Cal was a local PI and a repeat customer. He’d been her first client, one of Rocco’s early referrals, and though she worked with mostly women now, she had a fondness for Cal because he’d been her first. They’d become friends over the past few years as she’d worked on his sleeve. Today he was having her work on the American flag low on his hipbone, and as always, once she got started, he began to talk to distract himself from the pain.

Today the topic was his current girlfriend, who he thought might be cheating on him.

“If you think there’s something going on,” she said, “there’s something going on.”

“I don’t know for sure.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. “Come on. You know.”

He blew out a breath. “Yeah. Maybe. She said I could go through her phone and see for myself though.”

“If you do it, don’t bother looking for messages from guys,” she said. “Look for her and her bff’s text messages. The good shit’s in there, trust me.”

He sighed. “It’s hard to meet the good ones.”

“That’s because they don’t usually frequent the dives you frequent. Go to Target. The female to male ration is ten to one and they’re already looking for things they don’t need.”

He laughed and rubbed a hand over his eyes.

“You’re tired,” she said.

“I’m on a case I hate. It’s a divorced couple and they’re fighting over custody of their three kids. The husband wants physical proof she’s cheating.”

“Seems to be the theme of the day.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “I got the proof, unfortunately—a recording of her having sex with someone else.” He brought something up on his phone.

It was a recording. A woman was moaning softly.

“Maybe she’s just eating something good,” Sadie said. “Like cheesecake.”

He gave her a look of disbelief.

“Hey,” she said. “I moan like that when I’m eating cheesecake. The right cheesecake’s better than sex.”

“Baby doll, then you’re not having the right kind of sex.”

No kidding. She was having zero sex.

The moaning on the recording got a little louder and then there was a softly panted “oh yeah, right there . . . that’s it, don’t stop, please God, don’t stop!”

Sadie froze. She hated the word triggered , but that’s exactly what happened to her. She was thrown back to a time she didn’t want to revisit, but her mind didn’t care. “Turn it off,” she whispered. She pointed at his phone. “Stop it.” Her heart was pounding and she was having trouble drawing in enough air. She felt . . . icky. And ashamed. Not a good combination for her. Horrified, she pushed Cal. “Turn. It. Off,” she said again, or she thought she did, but she actually wasn’t sure the words came out. Her reaction was startling, even to herself, but that they were taking this woman’s life out of context, making it dirtier than it was, seemed incredibly wrong and unfair.

And Sadie knew all about things not being fair.

Very few people knew about her past. She knew if people did know, she’d be judged just as she’d judged the woman on the tape. And at the thought, a renewed rush of blood roared in her ears and her limbs went leaden, and she knew exactly what it was. The therapist she’d seen for five years had laid it out for her.

An impending anxiety attack.

And Cal still hadn’t turned off the tape. She snatched his phone, tapped the screen to cut it off and stared at him, breathing a little too hard. Shaking her head, she moved around the cot to walk away, needing a moment. She yanked the curtain aside and—

Came face-to-face with Caleb.

Lollipop was at his side, looking very happy. Not Caleb. His usual easygoing expression was nowhere in view. His eyes were tight, his mouth a little grim as he took in the sight of her. He looked beyond her to Cal still sprawled out in her chair, shirt off, pants unzipped and dangerously low on his hips, which had been the point since that’s what she’d been working on.

She turned back to Caleb, who’d turned away without a word and was heading to the door.

What the hell?

“Sadie,” Cal said behind her, sitting up. “I’m sorry. I clearly hit a nerve for you and I . . . I’m sorry. I was out of line.” He shoved his phone away. “You okay?”

She swiped a hand over her eyes and realized that her hand was shaking. “Yes.”

“Is that your boyfriend? I think he thought we were the ones having sex.”

She stared at him and then whipped out of the cubicle. “Hey,” she called to Caleb.

He had Lollipop on a leash and with one hand on the door, he craned his neck and met her gaze, eyes unreadable and cool, mouth grim and tight.

Yep. Cal was right. That was exactly what Caleb thought, that she’d been having sex. With a client. At work. With other people in the place.

Unbelievable.

There were so many, many things wrong with that, she saw red. Furious, she strode across the floor until she was right in his face. Which was far better than shaking like a coward who didn’t like to face her own dark, secret, twisty past.

But now that she was standing there right in front of him, so much bubbling inside her that she thought she might implode, she couldn’t find any words.

Caleb just looked at her, no smile, no soft “hey” like usual, nothing. With a single shake of her head, she whirled on her heel and strode through the shop. “Need a minute,” she said tightly to Rocco.

Rocco, fluent in the language of moodiness since he was the king of moodiness, gave her a single curt nod.

He’d hold down the fort.

She ran out the back door, around to the courtyard and straight for the stairs. She could’ve taken the elevator, but she had too much electric toxic energy flowing through her.

Five sets of stairs later, she exited onto the roof through a door only a select few in the building knew about, much less had access to, gasping for breath.

Up here, she was on top of the world.

She could see down to the marina and the glorious red of the Golden Gate Bridge against the azure blue of the bay. She could see the infamous Alcatraz, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Coit Tower on Nob Hill, and the new massive Salesforce tower. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the amazing three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view as she worked at slowing her breathing, trying to consciously control her wildly ricocheting thoughts.

Still feeling shaky, she moved to the small love seat in the far corner that that owner of the building, Spence Baldwin, had brought up here. He liked to stargaze.

Sadie liked to be alone.

She sank to the love seat and covered her eyes, knowing the truth. She’d lost her collective shit, and oh how she hated that. It signified a weakness, and more than anything, she hated to be weak.

And yet she was. Three years ago, she’d been so proud of herself, feeling like she’d conquered her past, come to terms with herself. She’d moved on with a clean slate.

But then she’d met Wes. And as ashamed as she was to admit this to herself, he’d set her back. Not at first. For the first four months, it’d been great. He’d had his life together and that had been attractive to her. But work had gotten rough for him and he’d gotten moody, taking it out on her one night as he’d stripped off the tie and suit jacket she thought she loved so much.

He’d said some cruel things that night, such as he couldn’t talk to her about what was important to him because she wasn’t like normal people, meaning she didn’t worry about job security or save for the future because the future didn’t seem to mean anything to her.

None of which was actually true. At least, not true anymore, because she’d been changing, growing up, maturing, and those things had become important to her. But hearing him throw her old faults in her face had been devastating. She’d escaped into her bathroom, stared at herself in the mirror, and hadn’t recognized the face staring back at her.

Her plain brown hair because Wes had thought the use of “not hair” colors such as streaks of purple meant mental instability.

No piercings except the two small hoops in her ears.

Spray tan because he thought her skin too pasty white.

Face just a little bit gaunt because he didn’t believe in desserts and felt they were too big of a weakness for her.

Ashamed at what she’d done next, of the memories assaulting her, Sadie leaned her head back against the love seat on the roof and closed her eyes.

But she couldn’t erase the movie playing in her head. She’d tugged her sundress up, exposing her upper thigh. She’d had her two scars tattooed over by then and she loved those tattoos. Not willing to ruin them, she’d pressed a razor blade to the skin just beneath the second tattoo.

She hadn’t cut herself since age seventeen and that she’d let herself be so affected truly humiliated and horrified her. But that wasn’t even the worst part of that night. Nope, it had been when she’d heard a husky male moan and looked up.

Wes standing in the bathroom doorway, videoing her on his phone, his eyes dark with excitement.

He’d fetishized her cutting.

She’d never felt so exposed in her life, and that was saying something given the time she’d spent locked away, the forced therapy, the poking and prodding of doctors to soothe her freaked-out mom.

Unable to sit still, Sadie rose to her feet and stared up at the sky. With about a half hour until dark, it was a kaleidoscope of colors. A few clouds, one of which looked like an elephant floating lazily across the sky. Another looked like a pepperoni pizza, which reminded her that she was hungry again.

And far too antsy to sit.

Rising, she took the few steps to the corner of the building, liking the wind on her face. Almost without thinking about it, she rubbed the phantom ache at the top of her thigh.

“Sadie.”

Startled, she simply reacted to the low voice that came from just behind her, twisting, her arms coming up into a defensive pose as she led with a roundhouse kick designed to land right at a man’s groin.

That man being the last man she wanted to see right then. Caleb.