JUST FUCKING PERFECT. Really, great timing. I slapped the panel of the backup generator shut and exhaled.

“Something wrong?” Jackson asked from behind me, where I knelt beside the blasted old thing in the basement.

“Generator must be shot.” I got to my feet and kicked the side of it for good measure, but unlike in the movies where the machine would magically restart, it just groaned in response. “Hope you’re not still scared of the dark.”

Jackson rolled his eyes. “I was never scared of the dark.”

“Bullshit. You were.”

“Nope. Wrong guy.”

“You seem to suffer from some sort of amnesia. Or you blocked out a specific incident—”

“If you’re referring to the fact that I wasn’t the first to want to walk through the woods at night, then you got me. I know all about the alligators on this island.”

“They stick to a path, not the woods.”

“There’s a first time for everything, and between an alligator’s jaws is not the way I wanna go.”

“But you wouldn’t mind if it were between someone else’s jaws?” I cracked a smile at the sexual innuendo until I remembered just who it was I was smiling at.

Jesus, Lucas, shut the fuck up.

Snapping my mouth closed, I headed back up the stairs to the wooden hutch where I kept all the candles, and grabbed an armful of the scented jars and a lighter.

“Need some help?” Jackson asked as I set the candles around the living room.

“Nope.”

“I can light them for you.”

“So can I.”

He sighed, but didn’t say another word. Instead, he took a seat on one end of the couch and watched as I lit the wicks. The room had grown dark as the wind howled and the rain and hail pelted the roof and windows, but the candles gave off a comforting glow.

“This is cozy,” Jackson said when I sat down in the recliner, as far from him as I could get.

I wasn’t stupid; no way I was chancing anything by sitting close to him. I was still so damn angry. Even after all this time. I thought I’d gotten over it. Accepted it, moved past it. But seeing him again brought back every ounce of hurt and shame I’d felt back then, which pissed me off because it meant I was still broken. And it was all his fucking fault.

And then for him to tell me he just had to see me? That he didn’t even know why? How was I supposed to take that? He’d told me under no uncertain terms that he never wanted to see me again. But he’d shown up not just at Argos, but my own damn house as well. It was almost too perfect how it all worked out, him coming here, getting stuck in close quarters, but, of course, thinking Jackson had somehow masterminded it all to happen this way was ridiculous. It was a coincidence, though in the back of my mind I could hear Shaw telling me nothing was coincidence.

Fuck you, Shaw.

“So if we can’t talk, got any other ideas? Checkers…charades…care to lose at a game of cards?” Jackson smiled, attempting to tease me back into shallow conversation.

But I had a different idea, one that would require something to help me bear whatever knowledge came from it, so I went to the kitchen to grab a couple of beers and passed one his way before plopping back onto the recliner.

After taking a long pull of the cold brew, I stretched my legs out in front of me and crossed them at the ankles, getting as comfortable as I could for what was about to come. Casually bracing myself. “You want to talk? So talk.”

Jackson’s eyes widened, like that was the last thing he’d expected to come out of my mouth. But he must’ve known he only had a small window of time to say what he’d come to say, because he didn’t hesitate. “I’m sorry, Lucas. I was a coward, and I should’ve told you that night what was happening, but…” He searched for the words. “I didn’t want you to get involved.”

I peeled at the beer label. “You didn’t want me to get involved…”

“Any more than you already were.”

“Wasn’t really your choice to make, was it?”

Jackson frowned and rolled the bottle between his hands. “Guess not. I just knew what my father would be like, and it was easier to—”

“Leave in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. Right.”

“You have every right to be upset.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

Pursing my lips, I nodded and took a drink of my beer. He’d only barely scratched the tip of the iceberg, and I waited for him to continue with the apologies, but he only sat there expectantly. The candlelight flickered across his features, the shadows deepening his chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw. I wondered how many times in a day I could damn him for being so fucking beautiful.

“That all?” I asked.

“No.” Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he slowly rubbed his hands together and took a deep breath. “Lucas… It hurt me too. Leaving you.”

The thud I heard and felt was my heart dropping to my feet as I took in his revelation. It went against everything I knew, everything I’d been told. He’d left of his own free will, and his actions afterward…well, there was no excuse for what had happened then. And I still hadn’t heard an apology for that.

Jackson finished off his beer and then set the empty bottle on the coffee table in front of him. “Maybe you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t blame you a bit. And I know you’ve moved on from all this, but…being here, seeing you again. I had to at least tell you.”

Moved on from it… And here I thought I had too.

Jackson cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “There’s, uh, something I’m a little curious about, though.”

I raised an eyebrow, and his mismatched eyes lowered to my neck.

“How did you get my necklace?” he asked.

Lifting my fingers automatically to the pendant I always wore, I said, “Your necklace?”

“Well…unless you made a replica for yourself, which…yeah, I guess that’s entirely possible. Sorry. Forget I said anything.”

My jaw opened and shut as I tried to process what he was saying. He was trying to tell me he didn’t remember? The biggest slap in my face, and the source of my humiliation and hurt, and he didn’t remember?

“Fuck. You,” I said, bolting out of the recliner. The urge to hit him was strong, and I forced my legs to move in the opposite direction, which took me to the kitchen. Good. I needed another drink.

This has to be some kind of sick joke.

“Wait up. What just happened here?” Jackson said, coming up behind me as I took out another beer.

“Get away from me.”

“What did I say? Lucas, look at me.”

“If I look at you, I’ll be tempted to break that pretty face, and then what will you tell Daddy?”

“Lucas—”

“I mean it. Go the fuck away.”

“Please just tell me what’s wrong. Don’t make me beg.”

“Beg?” I whirled around and pinned him against the refrigerator door so fast that he didn’t have time to blink. “Beg? You should fucking beg. Beg for my forgiveness; beg me not to kick your ass all the way back to Connecticut right now. Come on, beg for me, Jackson. Goddamn beg.”

Jackson’s chest heaved beneath me, his breath coming out in shaky pants as I held him there with my forearm across his strong pecs. He didn’t try to get away or push me back, and as my thigh brushed between his to keep him in place, I figured out why.

He was hard. So very fucking hard.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said, trying for disgust, but my body betrayed me. My cock strained against the zipper of my jeans to the point of pain, and when I pushed my hips against his so that our erections rubbed against each other, he groaned.

“I’ll beg,” he whispered, his eyes on my lips. Then his hand came up between us to finger the pendant I wore around my neck. The steel triskele hung from a thin black cord long enough to be easily concealed under a shirt, and it was such a part of me now that I’d forgotten it was even there. “Tell me where you got this, and I’ll beg.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“What I want…” As I licked my lips, the urge to push him to his knees and make him do exactly that warred with my common sense. Lust made everything hazy, and being this close to Jackson again, pressed up against him so I could feel the rock-hard muscle… Fuck. I pushed my forearm harder against him. “What I want…is for you to wake the fuck up.”

That seemed to snap Jackson out of his own fog, because his eyes flicked up to mine. “What?”

Jerking away from him, I stepped back, enough that I was no longer touching him. “This playing stupid shit,” I said, and held up the triskele. “You mean to tell me you don’t remember how this got back to me? Seriously?”

“So it is mine.”

I dropped the necklace. “Unfuckingbelievable. Did you hit your head at some point in the last eight years? Bad car crash?”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“Have you suffered some sort of amnesia, Jackson?” That was the only explanation for his behavior.

Jackson speared a hand through his hair and pulled at the ends. “No, there’s been no fucking amnesia. I remember clearly when I lost it.”

“When you ‘lost’ it.” I scoffed. “You ‘lost’ it in the letter you sent. Or do you not remember that either?” And because I’d had it, I shoved my finger into his chest. “You said you were sorry for being a coward. You’re still a fucking coward.”

“Lucas, stop,” he said, his strong hand gripping my wrist. “What letter?”