Everything happened in the blink of an eye.

Less than a week after LeVan and his mother walked into the boutique where I worked, he and I were together.

A couple.

In secret.

Although there were few secrets in this small town, we tried. And probably failed. It could’ve been that the rumor started right there in the boutique when I took his hand and held on for too long. It didn’t matter. For one week, I spent every spare moment with LeVan. I’d sneak out of the house every night Mother was on one of her continual drunken benders.

The cat was away, so this mouse got out, and boy did I ever play.

But it was more than that.

What LeVan and I discovered was that we weren’t just playthings to each other.

We were in love.

Love at first sight.

Love at first touch.

And our first kiss was nothing but magic. Then I gave myself to him completely. And he did not take the gift for granted. LeVan treated me like a princess.

Tonight, it was our one-week anniversary since the day in the boutique.

“Pretty lady.”

I loved it when his voice got all rough like that. LeVan Vanderbilt had a voice like sweet cocoa, thick and rich, almost excessively so. It only got rough like this because of one thing…me.

I absolutely loved what I did to him—and what he did to me.

I loved him, period.

The weight of his dreads fell toward me, rubbing against my bare chest as he kissed a path lower, lower, lower…

When he pressed a kiss to the short, neatly-trimmed hair at my mound, I closed my eyes with a moan and reached for him.

“Not yet, pretty lady,” he said, nuzzling me.

“You’re a tease.”

“And you love it.” He bit my clit. I shivered at the sensations, hot and cold chills licking their way up my spine as he licked his tongue straight into my core.

He growled against me and I knew—I knew—that if I could just touch him, he’d stop this and put his hands, his weight on me, thrust inside me and put an end to this never-ending ache.

But he’d pinned my wrists to the bed and now, as I arched my hips up to meet his mouth, I moaned again, need driving me to the edge.

“Come for me, baby doll. Come on, Thea…let me feel it.”

I came. It wasn’t like he gave me a lot of choices.

When it came to my body, he owned me completely and there wasn’t anything he couldn’t coax out of me.

* * *

“Are we still on for next weekend?”

I was dreading this weekend. Slowly, I turned onto my side and met his golden eyes. Tiger eyes, I always thought. He had darker flecks of brown splicing the gold and I couldn’t look at his eyes without thinking about a tiger. When I told him that, he got red in the face, his golden skin flushing ever so slightly. Naturally, I teased him about it a lot.

“Mother will be around. And Grace won’t be. I have to stay for Nicky.”

I was proud of what my brother could do on his own. Although he had special needs, he was capable of so much. But in spite of loving him dearly, most of my friends didn’t handle him well. They were freaked out by his need to constantly touch or hug—usually me, but sometimes them.

I couldn’t count how many times I’d heard—or been told flat out to my face—how can you be so normal and he’s so…not?

I’d always thought that if Mother had been more hands-on with him, he wouldn’t be so needy for affection, but ever since Dad had died in a car wreck when Nicky was five years old, Mother became cold and distant to both of us, but especially with Nicky.

“Bring him along,” LeVan said, rolling to one side and pinning me under him. He rubbed his stubbled cheek against my belly. “I like your brother. He’d probably enjoy himself, too. I mean…it’s a two-day magic festival.”

“She’d never let me take him overnight into New Orleans.”

“Then we come back Saturday night, leave early.” He shrugged, pushing up onto his elbows to smile down at me. “We’ve been planning this almost as long as we’ve been going on, pretty lady. So…if you’re going to ditch me, just tell me. Don’t use Nicky as an excuse.”

“I’m not…it’s just…” Babbling a bit, I tried to let my brain catch up as I studied his face. He was serious, wasn’t he? “Are you for real?” I finally asked. “For real for real? You don’t mind that Nicky comes along? Even if he ends up hugging you in the middle of a crowd of people or starts laughing at nothing in the middle of something where the rest of the room is quiet?”

LeVan’s lips curled in a faint smile. “You did hear me last night when I told you I loved you, right?”

My heart melted. “Yes. I heard you.”

It had been…everything. I’d secretly fantasized about this boy for years and years. And when he asked me out last week at the boutique, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. But now he was telling me that he loved me. He loved me.

“I know we’ve been moving at lightning speed. I didn’t plan for this, and I know you didn’t either. What’s gone down between us is…unique. I’m not about to question it…question this. I love you, and that means I want to be a part of your life, Thea. All of it. Not just the neat parts. Love isn’t like that.” He rolled his eyes and added, “Trust me, I know.”

“I love you too,” I whispered, meeting his eyes.

“I know, pretty girl.” He wrapped his arms around me and rolled until he had me on top of him. “I know.”

My phone rang minutes afterward.

Then LeVan’s phone rang.

We both ignored them, but they rang again. Then a third time.

The fourth time LeVan’s phone rang, he sheepishly answered.

It was his mother.

She told him we needed to get ourselves to the hospital immediately.

LeVan’s brother was in a car crash.

And so was Nicky.

It was my fault.

In Nicky’s mind, it was time for the two of us to leave. He was tired of waiting. I’d let him down, leaving him alone with her. God knew what she’d said to him. According to LeVan’s mother, Nicky took my mother’s car, intent on leaving for good, and the short drive less than two miles from home ended in the worst way.

He hit a parked vehicle with three teenagers sitting inside.

It was a head-on collision, and even with the car parked, he changed the very course of all the lives inside, and of their families.

One boy was dead.

Nicky and another teen were clinging to life.

By some stroke of horrific luck, LeVan’s younger brother was inside the parked car too. He was injured.

In all likelihood, our families were about to wage war on each other.

Because of me.

I chose LeVan, but in doing so, I created a ripple effect that would spread through our lives in ways I didn’t believe possible.

We had one very special week.

A week of perfection.

And I made the mistake of thinking it would last.

But people like us never got lifetimes of happiness.

We didn’t get happily-ever-after endings.

As we sped toward the hospital, all I could think about was that our fairy tale was cursed to be more like a tragedy. It started out sweet and ended with more pain than we started off with. It left us raw and ragged, and resentful that life could be so cruel to have given us a taste, only to take it all away again.

That was us.

And the tragedy was just beginning.