The paper-thin walls of the apartment make it clear Nate is home. The door squeaks open and latches, the locks twisting, before I hear him shuffle down the hallway. He’s shushing what I guess is a sleeping Ryder before the door to the guest room down the hall pulls closed.

Releasing a breath, I try to close my eyes but they pop open again. Sleep isn’t my friend on a good night. I’ve battled with insomnia my entire life. I can remember lying in bed and listening to my parents fight it out upstairs above me. The walls would shake before a thud would hit the ceiling. I’d squeeze my eyes and hope my dad wasn’t hurting my mom.

Of course he was. Her eye would be black, sometimes her lip cut, in the morning. She’d make up some bullshit excuse and pour our cereal and laugh it off, a cigarette dangling from her cracked lips.

The older I got, the more often it happened. I’d wait up and listen, wondering if that would be the night hell would break loose and he’d end up killing her. I’d go to bed with a knot in my gut, and by the time the sun came up, I was just drifting off to sleep.

It’s a habit I can’t break. When the sun goes down, those demons wake up and begin their ritual of torturing me with all the bad that can happen … and all the bad I’ve done.

“Shh …” I whisper to Camilla as she stirs next to me.

The shower kicks on, the pipes squalling in the walls, and I squeeze her tighter. My palm sinks in her curves, her breath hitching as I run my hand down her side, over her hip, and onto her thigh. She squirms closer, her head resting on the spot where my arm meets my shoulder with a little contented sigh.

Watching her asleep next to me puts thoughts in my head—crazy, unwarranted ideas that I have zero business toying with. The longer this little charade goes on between us, the harder it is to separate fantasy from reality.

Fantasy is this. Reality is what tomorrow morning will bring. She’ll go home and take a bath or go shopping and I’ll put in my eight hours, see if I can get some overtime, before putting in a few more at the bar.

Lying here in the darkness makes me think about coming home to a wife, falling asleep with her every night. When Cam cuddles up with me like I could defend her from the world, it fills me with the best feeling I’ve ever had. Like I matter to her. Like I’m capable of one thing that counts. Sometimes I don’t even try to go to sleep. I just hold her and watch her and think … and pretend this could be, and should be, real.

If she’d just fucking get this out of her system and move along, I could move on. But God knows I won’t be able to walk away from her.

“Why do you do this, Cam?” I whisper.

“Do what?”

I flinch, startled that she answered. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was,” she whispers, but doesn’t open her eyes. “Why do I do what?”

For a split second, I consider telling her to go back to sleep. But something about the shroud of darkness gives me the courage to repeat my question. “Why do you do this?”

“Because you won’t stay at my house.”

I rest my lips on the top of her head. “Go back to sleep.”

“Why do you do this, Dom?”

Leaving my lips touching her hair, I don’t move. I don’t answer her either. Instead, I concentrate on the way the fan moves the air across my foot that sticks out the side of the blankets.

“The answer was yes,” she breathes. “When you asked me earlier tonight if it made me jealous to see you with Red—the answer is yes. I wanted to punch her in the face.”

The grin that tickles my lips can’t be stopped.

“Even now,” she continues, “thinking about her smug face sitting in that office so close to you, I get mad. Thinking about her getting time with you I don’t drives me bananas.”

“I like it.”

She pulls her head back and looks at me. In the dim glow of the streetlight streaming through the broken blinds, I can see her face. Her eyes are heavy, her face flushed from the heat of my body as a slow grin spreads across her cheeks. “You like that I’m mad?”

“Hell, yeah. There’s nothing sexier than a woman claiming her property.”

The insinuation dawns on me as the words leave my mouth. We pick up on it at the same time. She watches me, her breathing shallow, as she tries to decipher my reaction.

I just walked into a minefield and know I’m going to get my legs blown off.

I don’t react. Looking her in the eye, I wait for hers.

“Are you?” she asks.

“Am I what?”

“Mine.”

“You don’t want me,” I scoff with a burn in my chest. Tugging her down so she’s lying next to me again, I look at the ceiling.

The silence feels thick in the little room, the only noise that of Nate leaving the bathroom. My stomach knots, a familiar anxiety coiling up in my gut. It’s like being a kid again—my brother in the next room as I lie awake, waiting on the world to come caving in.

“Do you remember the first time you came to my house?” she asks.

“Of course.”

“You were late. I was told someone would be there between eight and noon and you got there around four.”

“It was hot as hell and everyone’s A/C units were messing up,” I recall. “My first job that day put me behind.” My hand runs up and down her arm, causing her to loosen up some against me.

“I opened the door,” she says, “ready to give someone a speech about time management and then I saw you.”

“You were so hot … literally and figuratively,” I chuckle. “You were every repairman’s dream in your little shorts and cutoff shirt.”

I feel her smile against my side. “I’ve never been as instantly attracted to someone before. I didn’t even know whether I should let you in or not,” she giggles.

“Oh, you let me in all right …”

Her hand hits my chest and I jolt, making her laugh. We settle back down, a little tension having drifted away.

“I think,” she says, forcing a swallow, “I think when I first started seeing you, it was just lust.”

“I hope it’s still lust,” I counter, reaching around and cupping her full tit in my hand. “God knows I still lust after you.”

“To ease your concerns, I plan on sitting on your cock in a few minutes and riding it until I come.”

“Can we skip to that part now?” I ask, twisting her nipple between two fingers.

“No,” she says, stifling a moan but not stopping me. “As I was saying, at first I think that was the extent of my reaction to you.”

“So you wanted my cock? That’s it.”

“At first,” she laughs. “Maybe. But then something happened. I got to know you.”

“It’s amazing you’re still here.”

“Dominic. Stop.” She struggles against me, fighting against my arm that’s holding her to me. Eventually, I let go and she sits up. She gives me a look that I’ve only seen a few times, but one I think she must’ve learned from her mother. “You know what’s amazing?”

Assuming that this is a rhetorical question, I don’t answer. Instead, I focus on not pulling her mouth to mine and kissing the hell out of her. This time, not even because of lust. This time, because of how she’s looking at me.

Moments like this scare the fuck out of me with Cam. I worry that maybe she’s getting in too deep with me, even though I do my best to keep her at semi-arm’s length. I try not to encourage her infatuation with me, to not let her entwine herself in my day-to-day as much as possible. When she looks at me like this, like I could be something to her, I falter.

There are things about me that she doesn’t know. I don’t want to tell her, afraid she’ll see me differently. Yet, it’s a burden I carry on my shoulders because sooner or later, if she doesn’t walk way for another reason, it’ll come up.

“The way you help your brother is amazing,” she says.

“Do you know how many times he’s helped me?” I lift a brow.

“You always say that, but I see you giving way more than him.”

I bite back my next words. My throat squeezes closed, my annoyance at her perceived understanding of my relationship with Nate making it hard to breathe. As I watch her face shadow with the realization that there might be more between my brother and I than she comprehends, I war with whether to bring up the past.

If I don’t, I’ll continue to have this worry in the pit of my stomach. If I do, it could be the end of all this like the flip of a switch. I don’t know what will happen when she sees all of me.

“I like your brother. I do. A lot, actually. But you shortchange yourself when it comes to him. If he asked you to give him this apartment, you would. And that’s awesome of you, Dom,” she says, placing a hand on my chest. “It’s one of the reasons I like you.”

Her palm flexes over my heart and she looks at me so earnestly, so tenderly, that I know I have to tell her. Now. Before I lose the courage. If she walks, at least she does it before she gets in any deeper.

Shifting under the blankets, I move so I’m sitting upright. “When I was sixteen,” I say, clearing my throat, “my father beat the shit out of my mother.”

She gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. “Why would he do that?”

“Because it was a Thursday,” I say, emotionless. “Because we had ham sandwiches for dinner. I don’t fucking know. But it happened a lot and this particular night in June, it was really bad.”

“Did he hurt her?”

“Most nights he did. Usually a few bruises, a few chunks of hair missing, things that became almost normal to us. Isn’t that sick?”

Her eyes fill with tears as she watches me recant my childhood.

“Then, one night, things were different.” Forcing a swallow, I take her wrist in my hand and hold it. She slips it down so our fingers interlock and lays them, together, on my stomach. “I was in bed, my room just below my parents and it began. It was almost predictable, which is crazy. It started with yelling, then crying, then he’d throw her around until he was done.”

“You had to hear that?”

Ignoring her question and the tears slipping down her cheeks, I stare at the glow of the television power switch across the room. “It got bad. And it didn’t end. And I heard her cries turn to screams …”

Camilla squeezes my hand so hard it almost hurts.

“I went up the stairs, seeing Nate behind me at the foot of the stairs when I got to the top. He came up as I opened the door to my parents’ room.”

“What happened?” she asks quietly.

“The sick fuck had her on her back, on the bed, a gun pressed against her temple,” I say as calmly as I can. “I, um, I was afraid to move. Afraid to speak. Afraid that something would cause him to pull the trigger and shoot her in the head. She looked at me, her hand sort of halfway reaching out in an attempt to keep me back.”

“Oh my God.”

“He had a hand around her neck, holding her there. He must’ve heard me because he turned and I remember his eyes were like he’d been possessed or something. They almost glowed,” I recount, shaking my head. “He was demonic.”

“He told me to stay back,” I continue, “rattling off how my mom was a whore, all this bullshit. It ended with the gun being pointed at me.”

“Dominic!” The panic in her voice only feeds the frenzy in my body as I recall the scariest few minutes I’ve ever experienced.

I don’t bother giving her the details about how he called Nate and I the biggest regrets of his life. That he blamed us for his bottle-a-day vodka habit or told us we’d grow up to be just like him. There’s no point in going through all the movements of the next few minutes that only seemed like seconds. None of that matters.

“The gun eventually went off,” I say, still looking at the television button. “It was supposed to fire at my mom, but the bullet hit the wall instead. I can still hear the wood splinter, the pictures that hung near the spot dropping to the floor and the glass shattering everywhere. Nate and I lunged towards him. Nate tried to hold him down and I worked on getting the gun away. His breath burned with cheap vodka …”

Tearing my gaze away from the television and to Camilla, I see the tears dotting her face. Reaching up, I brush them away. “The second bullet went through his neck. It was supposed to hit Nate, but I moved his arm just a micrometer to the left and it got him instead.”

Cam rests her forehead on mine, her body shaking as she cries. I hold her to me, reassuring her that it’s all okay. Maybe me too.

“My prints were on the gun,” I say, more clearly now. “We were afraid we’d go to jail for killing our father. Nate was going to take the rap for it. He was in my face, telling me what to do, what to say. We were so scared. We sat there, blood pooling around us, our mom sobbing, crying over this asshole until she was covered in his blood too. Then, you know,” I gulp, “we had this feeling of almost relief.”

“What happened?” she sniffles, pulling away.

“I wasn’t letting him take the fall. It was an accident. So when a neighbor called the police, I told them I did it. I wasn’t letting Nate take the fall.”

“Did they believe you?”

“Yeah, I mean it was investigated, but with mom’s injuries they ended up letting it go. It was self-defense.”

She stills, absorbing what I’ve just thrown on her. I hold her, finding some comfort in the feel of her body against mine as I wait for her reaction.

“Dom,” she chokes, pulling away. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Holding my breath, I try to steady my heart. “Why would I?”

She searches my face, but without the suspicion I expect. In its place is a look of resolution, of consideration, that steals my voice.

“Then why did you tell me now?”

I squeeze a swallow down my throat, wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. I guess it felt like the right time.” Looking at the floor, I feel a burst of panic. “It was an accident, Cam. I know it—”

She reaches out, her fingers cupping the sides of my face and halting my words. Her touch is so tender that I don’t really know how to react. I wait for some outburst or question or a shove to get more answers, but none of that comes. Instead, her eyes fill with tears as she strokes my cheeks.

“I can’t believe that happened to you,” she breathes. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. There’s nothing fine about this,” she fires back, getting situated beside me. “How dare you have had to go through that. How dare he do that to you!”

“He’s dead,” I point out.

“And you have to live with it.”

Her consideration for me, that her first thought is of me, sends a warmth shooting over my entire body. I don’t even feel the pain in my side, nor the headache I’ve battled all evening. It’s all numbed from this relief.

“Babe, Ryder’s asleep down the hall,” I say, a smile gracing my lips. “Keep your voice down.”

She blushes, taking my face in her hands. “This is why we should stay at my house. I need to talk to you and I need to be able to express myself.”

“It’s one in the morning. We can talk tomorrow,” I yawn, pulling her down beside me.

As she nuzzles under my chin, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

“Dom?”

“Yeah?”

“You were wrong when you said I don’t want you.”

We lie in the quiet, the fan swirling above us.

“Cam?”

“Yeah?”

“You were wrong when you said we’re free to do whatever we want.”

My cheeks break into a smile as I say the words because I’m mostly sure she’ll still be here in the morning. Maybe even next week. And when she curls her leg around mine and crushes her body against me, I close my eyes and fall into the best sleep of my life.