Dusk hovered in the atmosphere, and the sky had dimmed from pink to gray. I sat on my front porch on the rocker watching this clusterfuck of a day slip away. Bugs droned from the stilled trees, the air calm while my heart still banged around, lashing with unstable beats.

I looked up when the front door slowly creaked open. Rynna’s footsteps were quiet as she stepped outside into the encroaching night. “I just checked in on Frankie. She’s asleep.”

I nodded at her, and she stepped all the way out, Milo trotting out beside her. She drew the door closed, all but an inch so we could hear if Frankie needed us.

She’d been fine. Of course, she was fine. My freak out uncalled for, which was something Kale had been all too eager to tease me about. I’d demanded he check her for any unseen injuries that we could have missed just by looking at her. He’d shot off some statistic on the average number of falls a kid Frankie’s age had a day, pointing out that it wasn’t like she’d taken a tumble over the cliff.

I didn’t care. When it came to Frankie, I didn’t take chances.

Rynna handed me a fresh beer. “Thought you could use this.”

My laughter was soft. Incredulous. Disbelief that this girl could come battering into my life and the only thing it took for her to knock down my walls was all that kindness and faith. “Thanks,” I muttered.

After twisting off the cap, I took a long pull.

Ice-cold amber glided down my throat.

Rynna eased out onto the porch and sat on the steps. Her back was to me, her arms wrapped around her knees as she stared out at the peace that hummed around us.

Lost in thought.

Contemplation.

The girl was so damned gorgeous I was having a hard time differentiating the emotions that thrummed and danced and glowed. It was a war against the ones that screamed and warned and howled. The chaos in my heart and mind made me want to rip the hair from my head.

Crazy how everything I’d lived my life on suddenly felt like a lie.

With Rynna, I knew it was all or nothing. I couldn’t keep shutting her down and shutting her out. Couldn’t keep giving her these warnings without giving her a reason.

It was time I gave her all of me.

I needed to fess up the bullshit that haunted my life. Tell her everything. I just didn’t fucking know how to drag it all out into the open. If she would run. Hate me like I deserved for her to.

Agony cinched down on my chest, and my mouth flopped open and closed. The words too thick on my tongue. Finally, I forced them out into the stilled, deepening night. “Warned you that you don’t want my mess.” It came out hoarse. Choked.

Rynna didn’t look back at me. She just sent all that belief floating out to the stars that were beginning to blink in the sky. “And I told you I wasn’t afraid.”

I sat forward on the rocker, elbows on my thighs as I rolled the beer bottle between my palms. “Lost the first girl I loved when I was seventeen.”

Fuck.

A lid had been ripped off, and all the torment that’d boiled inside, contained and hidden, escaped.

Bubbling out and spilling over the sides.

Overflowing.

Burning and singeing and scalding.

Pain shocked through me. As shocked as the breath that left Rynna on a gush of air.

Waiting patiently. So goddamned kind and understanding.

A soft puff of laughter rippled out. Dubious and low. “I loved her, Rynna. I fucking did. Can still feel exactly the way my stomach would feel any time I thought of her. The way I felt when I touched her.”

She glanced back at me. I worried I was giving her too much. Being too honest. Maybe I couldn’t burden her with everything. Not yet. But she needed to know this.

Of course, because it was Rynna, sympathy lined her striking features, her mouth and those eyes that always seemed to see so much deeper than I wanted them to.

My chin fucking trembled. “Ollie’s younger sister, Sydney.” It left me like the whisper of a confession. “She was a year younger than us.”

Surprise flashed before she tamped it down. She just sat there. Twisting her fingers. Listening.

“He would have killed me if he knew.” My voice drew tight. “That I’d been living in his little sister for the past six months. Sneaking off with her every chance I got. Two of us lying through our teeth about where we’d been when we’d been in each other.”

Pain slithered up and down my throat.

Constricting.

Suffocating.

Could almost feel the ghost of her. The faint brush of her hand. Couldn’t tell if I welcomed it or hated it.

“We were all out at the lake. We were drinking, sitting in the bed and on the tail of my truck. Kale was off doing God knows what with his girlfriend, and Ollie had invited a few other girls out. One of them was coming onto me. Sydney—”

Her name hitched on my tongue.

My stomach coiled in knots.

White-hot agony.

“Sydney was there. Watching. Hating it. Hating that I couldn’t say a damned thing and that girl was straddling my waist. I laughed it off like it wasn’t a big deal while Ollie goaded me. Telling me I was nothing but a pussy and it was about time I saw some action. About time that I got my dick wet.”

“Rex,” Rynna whispered. Pain radiating from her. Or maybe it was just mine echoing back.

I blinked against the memory.

“She jumped out of the bed and stood next to my truck, demanding I take her home. She was so mad, Rynna. So fucking hurt. And I laughed at her and kissed that girl because that was what I thought Ollie expected me to do.”

My eyes squeezed closed.

It didn’t matter.

That same fucking vision flashed.

The last time I saw her.

The words dripped. Soured. Old decayed wounds. “I won’t ever forget her face, Rynna. I’d broken her right there, and I didn’t even mean it. Ollie shouted at her to just go home, telling her she didn’t belong there, anyway. She looked at me one last time . . . torment in her eyes. Then she turned and started down the dirt road. And I let her go.”

I let her go.

Fuck.

I let her go.

“No one ever saw her again.” Guilt stampeded through me. Over me. Trampling me into the ground.

Rynna gasped. “Oh God, Rex,”

“I just watched her storm off into the night, Rynna. I fucking watched her go. I didn’t chase after her. Had no fucking clue she was even missing until the next day.”

She shifted onto her hands and knees and crawled the short distance across the boards of the porch until she was at my feet.

Tears shined in her eyes.

“What happened?”

A tremor rolled my throat. Horror. Hate. Fear. I’d carried it for twelve fucking years. That girl chasing me through the days and haunting me in the night.

“We searched. Searched and searched and searched for what felt like forever. I hunted through that forest every day. Months. A year. Maybe more. Screaming her name. Begging her to come back. She was gone, Rynna. Fucking gone. No trace. No suspects. No clues.”

In agony, I looked at her, fighting the moisture that had gathered in my eyes. “Now I do it in my dreams. I hunt for her. Scream her name. Desperate to find her when I know with every part of me she’s gone.” My teeth ground. “Buried in some shallow grave.”

Tears streaked her cheeks. “Oh God, Rex. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t . . .”

She gulped around the tragedy. Like maybe the magnitude of it was slowly sinking in. Her arms wound around her stomach like she might be sick. “Oh God. Oh My God . . . Ollie. Oh God,” she whimpered. Looking up at me, she set one of those tender hands on my jaw, her face pinched in anguish.

How was it even possible she was looking at me that way? Grief striking her cheeks and sympathy in the warmth of those eyes?

“Did you ever tell Ollie? Does he know you loved her?” she almost begged.

My head shook. “He’d kill me, Rynna. He’d fucking kill me. I just let her walk away. She’s gone because of me. I was responsible, Rynna.”

“No.”

“There’s no lie you could tell me, no lie I could tell myself, that would convince me otherwise. I know it, Rynna. I know if I hadn’t have done what I did, she would still be here.”

It sliced through us. A double-edged sword. Piercing through the atmosphere.

My gaze traveled out into the night, to the duskiness that held to the sky, trees gusting in the wind.

Swore I heard Sydney’s spirit howling back.

“You’d think what happened would have driven the three of us apart. But it tied us together some way. Ollie’s been . . .” I gulped around the barbs spiked in my throat. “He was a goddamned mess, Rynna. Blaming himself for that night when the blame has always been on me, and I’m the bastard who can’t bring myself to tell him. He tries to pretend he’s okay, but he’s not. None of us are.”

Tenderly, Rynna touched my chin. Her lips trembled and her tears wouldn’t stop falling.

I almost managed a grin. “Kale is like a rock. Think he’s the one who held Ollie and me together when we were falling apart.”

“Does he know?”

I gave a regretful nod. “Yeah. He called it the second things started up with Sydney and me. Think the asshole manages to see everything before it even goes down.”

Rynna gave me the softest smile before she laid her cheek on my knee, watching me, holding on to my leg like she could keep me from splitting apart. The girl my strength when that was all I’d ever wanted to be.

“Tell me how you met Frankie’s mom,” she whispered, encouraging me to go on.

“Was lost for a lot of years, Rynna. Fucking lost. But the wilderness gets lonely, you know? So, I fucked around. And that was messed up, too, because any time I touched another girl, when I closed my eyes, only thing I saw was Sydney’s face.”

Rynna flinched, but I continued, unable to stop the train wreck from tumbling from my mouth. “Then Frankie’s mom . . .”

Rynna’s spine went rigid.

“It was just the same as always. Met her at a bar on the other side of town. Went back to her place. Whole time, that same guilt ate me up because the only thing I could think was I wished she was Sydney. Then one day, she showed up at my house, telling me she was pregnant.”

My voice dropped low, and my mouth angled at Rynna like I were offering her a dirty secret. “I freaked out. Accused her of lying. Claimed it wasn’t mine . . . because fuck, I couldn’t have a kid. Not with her.”

Rynna tried to subdue a sob. But it tore free. A partner to the ripping wind. “She’d told me fine. She’d get rid of it. No problem. She took off down my driveway. Next thing I know, I was chasing her, pleading with her to come back, promising her we’d figure it out. She told me the only way she was going to keep it was if I married her.”

The words deepened like a plea. “My mom always taught me to do the right thing, Rynna. So, I did. I married her. I didn’t even know her, didn’t even like her, and I fucking married her.”

“Rex,” she whispered.

My gaze turned to where she was still on her knees, staring up at me. Emotion throbbed all around. Circling us. Drawing us in.

My body shook, every part of me overcome. Overwhelmed. “And then . . . I’m holding this baby girl in my arms . . .” I held out my hands, palms up, like somehow Rynna might get it. Like she could see me holding Frankie Leigh for the very first time. Like she could experience what that felt like. “And suddenly, it’s not just the right thing. It’s the very best thing.”

More tears streaked from the warm well of those shimmering eyes.

My voice was gravel. “Never thought I could love like that. Not after Sydney. And I thought I’d gotten lucky. That maybe I’d been given another chance. So, I let myself love them both. Let them become the center of my world, just like they should be. I had my dog, Missy, and my girls, and we got this house and everything was fucking perfect.”

I blinked around the confusion. Around my mistakes. “Don’t even know where I went wrong. Working too long. Too many hours. Thinking I was doing what was right for them. And Frankie’s mom . . . she was suffering, and I didn’t even know it. I came home just as the sun was going down one night—”

I was numb as I stood by the side of the road, staring blankly as the taillights disappeared in the distance. I tried to blink through the squiggle of red, neon lines that lit up against my bleary vision. It was like looking at the sun and then closing your eyes. Or maybe I just wished they were closed. But they were open wide, my gaze sucked down.

Down.

Down.

Missy dead at my feet.

The words wouldn’t even form on my tongue, wounds ripped open wide. Gaping and bleeding. Garbling the confession because I just didn’t know what the fuck I’d done wrong.

Just didn’t understand.

Still didn’t.

And her hands. Rynna’s hands were on my face, and she was leaning on both her knees, wedged between mine, forcing me to meet her eyes. “She abandoned you and Frankie. That’s not your fault.”

“It doesn’t matter, Rynna. I still lost her. Every girl I’ve ever loved has left me. After Sydney disappearing? Anytime something happens to Frankie . . .” I fisted my hand, pressed it against the raging of my heart. “I’m terrified, Rynna. Terrified of her slipping away, too. Terrified of something horrible happening to her. If I lost her . . . fuck . . . I can’t. I won’t. I’ll die first before I let something happen to her. Do you get it now? Why I’m terrified of you? Why I’m terrified of the way you make me feel? This afternoon, I—”

Her words were muted but desperate. “I need you to listen to me. What happened this afternoon with Frankie wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t neglect. She was playing, loving the amazing life you’ve given her. Experiencing it the way she should. Living it to its fullest because that’s what she is. She’s life. She’s joy. She’s rambunctious and curious and perfect, and the last thing you want to do is limit that. You can’t keep her from falling, Rex, but you can be there to pick her up when she does. That’s what matters the most.”

My forehead dropped against hers, and I whispered into the darkness. “After Frankie’s mom left, I waited for her, Rynna. Waited because I thought that was what I was supposed to do.”

Loyalty.

Distorted and confused.

It spun around me like a bad fucking dream.

“Truth is, I didn’t want anyone, anyway. Didn’t want to repeat it. Refused to ever fall into that trap again.”

I gathered that gorgeous face between my hands. “And then there was you. There was beautiful you standing across the street, and every promise I’d made myself suddenly felt like a lie. You make me feel again, Rynna. You make me feel like every chance is one worth taking. Like you’re leading me out of the darkness that’s ruled my life. When I close my eyes, who I see is you. Show me the way, Rynna. Show me the way out of it. Fuck. Please, show me the way.”

She pressed her mouth to mine.

Hard.

“Rynna,” I moaned.

Fucking Rynna.

Little Thief.