M y entire body felt like it had been turned into a pile of goo. I had no bones, no spine, no strength. The bones had been replaced by wax and Jake had sapped me of my strength .

My face was tucked up against his chest while I waited for my heart to calm .

I was also waiting for the storm to start .

Sometime over the past few minutes, reality had kicked in, and I realized just...what I'd told him .

That had been everything . All the dark, ugly pieces of me, he now knew. I didn't like me even knowing them, but now he knew them too .

I didn't even want to think about that, much less how I'd broken down and collapsed and cried .

Again.

The nightmare was far from the first and the spiral of tears and despair was nothing new, but it sure as hell hadn't ever happened around anybody before .

Why now? Why with Jake here ?

Nobody had ever witnessed one of my nightmares .

Why did the first person have to be him ?

But of course, it would be .

It wasn't like I'd spent the night with a guy before – or had one spend the night with me. The few pathetic attempts I'd had at normal relationships in college had always ended with the guy leaving my apartment, or feeling guilty or desperate to get away from the hysterical girl who'd started out just fine but ended up in tears .

"You're thinking too loud ."

Jake's hand smoothed through my tangled hair and rested on the back of my neck .

"I'm fine," I said, my voice husky and thick. At least it wasn't all because of tears. My body still ached from him, in the best possible way .

Why was he still here ?

I kept waiting for him to get up and tell me he needed to leave. It wasn't like he didn't have a reason .

"If you were any tenser, you'd snap," Jake said softly. He rolled, spilling me onto my back with him laying between my thighs. "You and that brain...it kicked on a few minutes ago and hasn't shut off since. What are you thinking about that has you so worked up ?"

As he spoke, he reached up to rub the line of tension that had formed between my eyebrows, and I unconsciously relaxed those muscles, a headache beginning to pound in reaction. "Nothing," I lied .

"I'll let you get away with that one." He sighed. "But don't lie. If you don't want to talk about it, just tell me ."

My face flamed even hotter. "Why do you have to keep pushing? What else do you want?" Hell, how much more could I possibly give him anyway ?

"I want to know what's wrong," he said again. "Why you're so tense, why it feels like you'll break." He pressed his thumb to the line between my brows and pushed gently, carefully. He did it again and again until it was an effort to keep my eyes open simply from the pleasure that light massage brought .

I barely even noticed when he stopped. I did notice when he kissed me, though, his lips rubbing against mine. "What am I going to do with you, Michelle?" he murmured .

Lashes fluttering up, I found him still watching me. "Do you know how hard it is to carry these things inside me and have them come spilling out the way they just did? It's...awful. It's humiliating ."

"The shame isn't yours," Jake said quietly. "It belongs to somebody else. To the bastard who hurt you, to the people who didn't stand by you. It's not yours ."

"It feels like mine," I whispered .

Jake was quiet for a long time, then in a low tense voice, he said, "I killed my mother, Michelle ."

I jolted in surprise .

His eyes caught and held mine as I lifted onto my elbows to stare at him .

"I got drunk. I...hell, I don't even know what happened." Now the lines of strain bracketing his face, the tension inside of him made him seem like the one who would break. "I was eighteen, at a party. We'd been drinking. I remember walking to the car with friends. It wasn't my car. I didn't have one. My parents did okay, but they weren't rich. I don't even know how my mother ended up there, unless somebody called her...maybe I did, I don't know. All I do know is that I woke up in the hospital handcuffed to a bed, and they told me she was dead and I was responsible ."

He eased me away from him and sat up, staring at the far wall. "I'm an ex-con. One of the reasons I got into this was because it was too damn hard to find any other work. This is something I just fell into ."

Out of all of the things I expected to hear him say, that was the last. Slowly, I sat up, curling my knees to my chest and hugging them. What I wanted to do was hug him, but he sat so...set apart, almost locked in on himself

As if sensing my gaze, he looked back at me, eyes shuttered .

"I'm still the same man I was when I walked in here," he said gruffly. "But now you know the weight I'm carrying. My shame is mine. I was the dumbass who went to a party and got drunk...everything that happened after ?"

With a shrug, he looked away. "We all have shit in our past. But you didn't do anything to ask for what happened to you, Michelle. It was done to you." He got up, twisting around to kneel in front of the bed, watching me with raw, naked emotion. "You know more about me now than almost anybody. Does it change anything between us? Should I leave ?"

The sheer challenge of his words was what inspired my answer and there was only one thing I could do or say. I sat the rest of the way up and threw one leg over his hips. Then, still not speaking, I cupped his face in his hands and bent low to press my mouth to his. "No," I said against his lips. "You're still the same person you were five minutes ago ."

His hands closed around my wrists, blue eyes burning into mine. Our faces were close, so close our breaths could have been one. "You're the same woman you were when I walked in the door, Michelle. Stubborn, strong, sweet..." He slid one hand through my hair, tangled it. "And beautiful. Whatever happened to you...it happened to you. You didn't cause it ."

His mouth spasmed, and he said gruffly, "Sometimes bad shit happens because of choices we made, but sometimes it happens to others. That's you, Michelle. Don't blame yourself or feel guilty, baby ."