I want to spend my time prowling around, but I dutifully follow Corinna through the warm, eclectic space to a wall of windows and doors streaming the summer light into the far end of the room. Corinna throws one of the glass doors open with a flourish, gesturing me through without saying a word.

I step onto her patio and am immediately transported. Jesus. I never knew this was back here. And to think everyone thought Cassidy got the choice piece of property. There’s a riot of wildflowers that make up a secret haven masked by Ali’s tree line. It’s an artist’s dream come to life.

“How many times have you painted this view?” I murmur entranced.

“Is that why you invaded my solitude, Colby? To ask about my view?” Corinna’s voice is cool behind me. It seizes my heart knowing that if I look at her, I’ll see eyes the color of the earth versus the glory of the sun raining down on us. Her eyes deserve the sun streaming through them, with only the brilliance a star can display.

When I saw her laugh for the first time, I almost dropped to my knees. Her eyes were a pure golden color, framed by a fringe of thick lashes. Her smile caused my heart to clench. What I wouldn’t give for that smile right now. But the woman whose space I’ve invaded isn’t inclined to bestow one upon me.

“Why are you here, Colby?” Her frustration is palpable.

The morning light streams so brightly, it’s making Corinna’s old T-shirt appear transparent. It highlights the weight she’s dropped. Where there was once softness, I now see edges. And for some reason, they fire me up more than what I suspect are the secrets she’s been keeping. She turns her back, and through her T-shirt, I can see the faint gray color of her tattoo.

Never forget who you are.

I’ve never forgotten what Corinna meant to me, the feelings her voluptuous body invoked that I had to suppress. She was perfect before. Why is she doing this to herself?

Or is something else causing it?

“How much weight have you’ve dropped?” I ask abruptly. Corinna spins around. The way her cat eyes narrow, I can tell she’s getting ready to pounce.

Then her mask of indifference drops back over her face. Shrugging, she answers, “Does it matter? No one’s really mentioned it until we went to the concert. They attribute it to my working so hard.”

“It’s not though, is it?” Here’s my chance.

Smirking, she shakes her head. “I got tired of curves. Especially the kind life throws at me. I decided to try angles on for a while to see if they were a better fit.”

Frowning, I step forward. “They don’t look as good on you.”

“Says you.”

“That’s right. Says me. Says the man who worshipped every curve you had because it was real. Just like we were.”

Corinna’s stunned silent. One heartbeat. Then in the middle of the next, her glorious hair falls down her back from the knot it was in as she tosses her head back in a laugh so bitter, my heart blisters from it. When she finally gets control again, she reaches up to place a condescending pat on my cheek. “We weren’t real, Colby.” Her eyes are as dark as I’ve ever seen them.

I grip her wrist before she can pull away. “How can you say that?” I rasp. At that point in my life, when I’d finally woken up to the callousness of my family, I’d found Corinna. She was never mine, but she was mine.

Wrenching her wrist away from me, she hisses, “Because if we were real, you would have been there holding my hand when I found out about my brain tumor the next week, the next month, the next year. Instead I found out about it after I was subjected to listening to your sexual proclivities—by the way, next time I’d suggest you take your belt off,” she sneers. “Makes a hell of a lot of noise when you’re balls-deep in someone even over the noise of a house party.”

What did she say? I’m frozen by her words. Which is why her next words completely disarm me enough that Corinna’s able to use all of her strength to shove me in the chest. I stumble back at least a foot. “Maybe if I moo like a cow, that night will come back to you more clearly, friend. After all, I’m just good cook who’s had a rough life, right?”

“What did you say?” There’s no way I ever said anything like that about her to anyone.

No way.

Visibly seething, she continues. “You should reconsider giving a friend who’s afraid of the dark a key to your room for safety, Colby. Better yet, if you do, you should check to see if she’s in there before you bring someone in to screw them.” Pushing past me, she storms around the side of her house to the path between the trees I’ve didn’t notice.

I’ve never noticed a lot of things.

“Corinna.” I slowly follow her. “Are you trying to tell me…”

She cuts me off. “That I was in the room the night you screwed Addison Kaplan? Yes. That I found out exactly how you felt about me? Poor little Corinna.” Her voice drops as she tries to mimic my own. “I put up with her for her baked goods.” Switching back to her own voice, she yells, “I’m nobody’s poor little anything! You promised me you’d never bring the darkness down on me, Colby. You promised me I’d always be safe. And what did you do?” She’s visibly trembling. “You trapped me in a room with no way out in the dark. Then to hear everything you really thought about me? At least the bastards who kidnapped me wanted a onetime payment. Even if that payment was me. If I’d known friendship was so expensive, maybe I would have rethought the cost. ”

“Cori…” The shame that courses through my body is devastating. She heard what was never meant for her to hear. Something I said to appease a heartless bitch long enough to sink my cock in her. For me to forget the woman I wanted, but knew I couldn’t have.

“I told you never to call me that again. You want to know the truth? We’re nothing because you made us that way. There is nothing you could say to me to make me believe you right now.” Moving toward the gate concealed in ivy, she shoves it open. “Now, me and the ghosts of the bovine who used to inhabit this property would like your sanctimonious ass off our land.”

Her voice ricochets in my mind. All of this hurt and pain over the years is because of me. I’d have said or done anything so I didn’t cause pain to the one person I wanted to. Her.

I hurt her anyway. And by what I know about her lifestyle from Jack, it’s caused irreparable damage.

Unable to bear the look on her face, I edge toward the gate when what she said strikes me in the chest like a sledgehammer. I freeze in place, mere feet from her. “What brain tumor?”

She waves her hand in the air. “That’s none of your damn concern. Get gone.”

I move closer. “What do you mean you found out years ago, Corinna? How?”

“Why are you still on my property? Do I need to call someone to have you removed?” She’s shaking with fury.

“Tell me how you found out.”

“You don’t have the right to ask.”

I play my trump card. “Tell me, or I’ll go to your brothers-in-law and tell them I heard you screaming in an MRI machine at the hospital the other day.”

Her face turns chalk white. “If you screw me over like that, Colby, there’s no chance I’ll ever forgive you.”

“You were planning on forgiving me?” I’d held out a slim hope, but that hope is diminishing every second we speak.

“I forgave you for being an asshole a long time ago. I just decided to cut all assholes out of my life. I no longer have the time, nor the patience, for the people who aren’t worth it. It’s forgetting what happened when you’re constantly around the people I love that I have difficulty with.”

“Tell me, Corinna,” I demand, even as my heart bleeds at her words.

She slams the gate closed before leaning against it. “Let’s be clear on something. You’re just somebody I used to be acquainted with. Someone whose friendship I apparently bought and paid for.”

I wince.

“Right. With that understanding, I will say you upset me that night. Repeatedly. I ran into someone who made things worse. I tripped and fell in front of your entire house party, which was so much fun, let me assure you. Having people mock me when I was so upset…” Her voice trails off before she shores it back up. “Blood was still coming down my face the next day. I called the local ER, who suggested I come in. To rule out a concussion from my fall, there were tests. That’s how and when I found out I have a brain tumor.” She tells me this as if she’s reciting a recipe. Rote. Detached. Probably because she’s lived with it for years.

Flashes of that night come back to me. Stumbling in drunk. Flicking off the lights. Flinging Addison on the bed. Horror washes over me. Sweet Jesus, Corinna was in the room, and I personally plunged her into the darkness.

How many different ways did I betray her that night? Her mind? Maybe even her heart?

I broke every promise I’d ever made to the woman in front of me. No wonder she holds me with nothing but contempt.

I’ve held the keys to Corinna the whole time. Each tumbler of her secrets click into place, and the lock flies open. Instead of finding the way back to her heart, I see an impenetrable fortress. Instead of leaving herself vulnerable to another man, she’s susceptible to no one. Instead of showering the world with her natural warmth, she hides it, reserving it for the scant few she knows she can believe in. Instead of being the Corinna I expected to find, she’s both stronger and a shell of the woman I knew.

I have the answer I’ve been pushing for, and now I have no idea what to do with it.

Despondent, I move toward the gate. “I’ll leave you alone, Corinna, if that’s what you want.”

She lashes out in her fury. “Absolutely. When you want someone out of your life, just tell them the truth. It’s an effective way to kick them out. You taught me that.”

Direct hit.

I stop right next to where she’s standing. Her anger pulsates over me in waves. “I wish you would have told me.”

“Why? So you could have gotten your final friendship payment of a graduation cake out of me? Sorry, I think I’ll remain on the hook for that debt.”

“No, Corinna. So I could have apologized then for breaking us.”

“You didn’t break a single thing to do with me. If anything, you made me stronger.”

“By shutting down?” I ask angrily. “By letting no one in? That’s not you.”

“Since that’s what it took, yes. I’m not that girl anymore.”

“I’ll bet you still sleep with the lights on.” It’s a cheap shot, one that’s beneath everything we had shared. It’s more like something Jack would say than me. I don’t know where it came from other than the overwhelming bitterness I’m feeling.

With myself.

She stumbles backward in shock. “Get off my land before I find the right knife to make you.”

“That was crappy, and I admit it.” Where I’d normally expect to see lingering pain and fury on her gorgeous face, I see nothing. Which is worse. “I’ll leave.”

“Damn right you will.”

I open the gate. It squeaks as I pass through. “Corinna.” I pause, hoping she’ll look at me.

Of course, she doesn’t.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I finish softly.

She doesn’t acknowledge my apology. For her, the words mean literally nothing. “We’re done. Is there anything else?”

“I guess not.” I stare at the beautiful, creative, warm-hearted woman in front of me and feel so many emotions, with regret right at the forefront.

“Right. So glad we had this chat.” Turning on her heel, she stalks across her patio to her back door. She opens and slams it behind her.

Slowly making my way down the flagstone path, I find myself back in the driveway again. I climb into my Jeep and sit for a few minutes trying to get my bearings. Never did I expect for Corinna to say what she did.

After starting the ignition, I pull out of Corinna’s driveway and backtrack my way off the farm and through Collyer. I’m so disheartened and disoriented, I don’t even know where I’m going until I end up back at the Hudson offices. Somehow, I power through the rest of the day without any interaction with Caleb or Keene. I don’t know if I would have been able to keep any of what she said to myself.

I just know I have to.

I have to keep this promise because I broke all the others.

It isn’t until hours later when I’m back in my apartment with a glass of bourbon in my hand that it clicks. I’m replaying our conversation over and over.

Who else would have heard about Corinna falling at our party all those years ago? Not me, apparently, I think bitterly. I was too concerned about getting my dick wet to have heard anything beyond the moans generated in my room. Who else knew what Corinna meant to me and could have told me what happened?

Who could have helped me figure this out ten years ago before I lost her?

When I come to the realization, I stand up and hurl the glass against the wall. Not caring about the glass shards exploding everywhere, or the amber liquid leaving tracks against the wall, I realize how thoroughly I was betrayed.

Jack was my best friend from the day we joined the same fraternity together at UConn. He lived across the hall from me. He would have been the one most likely to have seen Corinna if she came out of my room.

Like my investigations, the pieces start sliding into place. Jack was my confidant. He knew how conflicted I was about Corinna. He’d seen me downstairs drinking, and he knew I had gone into that room with Addison because I passed him on my way up the stairs.

He’s known all along what happened that night. I could strangle that son of a bitch for not telling me years ago so I could have fixed this.

He knew. We talked about how much I agonized over Corinna’s cold shoulder so close to graduation. For fuck’s sake, it was Jack who suggested I try to contact her once I got settled on base. I sent him letters to give to her. Letters that I poured my heart into, assuming she would read them if delivered by a mediator instead of just tearing them up. I begged her to forgive me for whatever I had done. I begged her for a chance to be heard.

Now I wonder, did she ever get them?

Time to pay my soon-to-be-former friend a visit.