The years melted away and I was twelve again, desperate for Dane James and all that he represented. And just like that night three years ago, when I looked out and saw him below my window, blending into the dark, thrilling me with his mere presence, I was seeing him again. Only he wasn’t wearing a grin the first time. At least not like this one—a grin that said he was happy to be breaking the rules again. A grin that said for me to come and let him take me away for a while. A grin that could get a girl in trouble.

A grin that could get me in trouble.

Dane had changed clothes. He’d traded in his jeans and T-shirt for shorts and a tank top. He looked equally good in either, like the designer had his body in mind when the fabric was cut.

And he’d obviously walked over. I could see the piece of prairie grass sticking out from between lips, lips that I found myself thinking about way too much.

My heart tripped over itself as I unlocked my window and pushed it up. “Dane James.” My tone was much more teasing and light this time. I couldn’t hide my pleasure at seeing him. I didn’t think I even wanted to. “What are you doing out there in the middle of the night?”

His answer was a shrug.

I loved it when he did that. It said he didn’t care about rules or convention or propriety. It said he didn’t care what people thought or said or did. It said he just cared about coming to see me, no matter what the world might have to say about it.

God, I loved that shrug.

Aside from watching that stem of grass twirl between his lips, it was probably my favorite thing.

That and his eyes.

“Come down here, Brinkley Sommers.” He mimicked my use of his full name. I couldn’t help smiling. Everything inside me was smiling. My mouth had no choice but to follow suit.

“Why?”

“Because I asked you to.” I could hear his rich laugh all the way up at my window. It sent a fine spray of cold chills skittering over my skin, like mist from a bottle of perfume—sweet and sultry and intoxicating. It felt just as good and smelled twice as nice. Because my time with Dane James had a smell, a taste, and a texture. Like all my favorite things wrapped up into a package of sensation, delivered right to my nerves every time I saw him. Even in school. There was just never anything I could do about it.

Until tonight.

Because I asked you to, he’d said, an answer that was cocky and funny and self-assured, just like Dane himself. I’d have been willing to bet he didn’t get turned down very often when he asked a girl to do something. And I had no desire to be the first. He was here for me. For me. Not because I did or didn’t put out, not because of who my stepfather was or wasn’t, and not because society dictated that he should or shouldn’t be.

He was simply here for me, Brinkley Sommers.

And I wanted him to be.

Here.

With me.

For me.

I wanted to spend the dwindling night with Dane James. More than I’d ever wanted anything else, which made no sense, of course. It wasn’t like we’d been dating for years. Or that we’d even spent much time together. The thing was, there had hardly been a day since I was twelve years old that I hadn’t thought about him.

Maybe I had fallen a little bit in love with him that first day so long ago. And maybe I’d never outgrown it. Or maybe I was just crazy and desperate and unbalanced.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care why. I only cared about what was. I just felt. So when he asked, I didn’t even pause. I just made my way down the steps and out the kitchen door.

Once I was outside, the wind on my face and freedom in my hair, I had no regrets. The only things I wanted, needed, was Dane James. And the dark.

When I rounded the corner of the house, I saw that Dane had moved there to meet me. I stopped and looked up at him.

He’d already grown so much from that twelve-year-old boy. He was a good foot taller than me, and a good three or four inches taller than most of the guys in our class. He was already filling out, too, with muscles thickening his chest, shoulders, and arms. It made my insides feel warm and sticky just looking at him. That wasn’t good, I knew, but I liked the way it felt. At that moment, I didn’t care how “acceptable” it was to want Dane James. I just knew that I did.

Without a word, he reached down and laced his fingers with mine, tugging me forward to lead me across the driveway, through the field, and out to the rock.

The rock.

Our rock.

Wordlessly, I followed. I knew I probably always would.

When we arrived there, Dane hopped effortlessly up onto the boulder. I wished for a second that I had a rewind button so I could watch him do it all over again. It was fluid and masculine and every bit as sexy as summer in the South.

Just like Dane himself.

Bending slightly at his waist, he extended his hand toward me. I took it and he hoisted me up like I weighed a bucketful of nothing. But I was expecting his help, not to be pulled up so fast, so I squeaked in surprise.

“Wow, you’re strong!”

“I work for a living, remember?”

His lips quirked up into an easy grin. I couldn’t see much else since the moon was less than half full, but I could see Dane almost perfectly, like my brain had somehow memorized his features enough to put the pieces together even in dark. And it was doing exactly that. I thought I could nearly see that sweet maple gaze of his fixed on me. But more than that, I thought I could feel it.

We stood like that, on top of the rock, face-to-face, our mouths mere inches apart, until he took a step back and sat down. He patted the hard surface beside him, his palm making a slapping sound, and I obligingly sank to sit at his side.

He said nothing for a long time. Neither did I.

Finally, I had to ask, “Why did you come to my window tonight?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Just like all those years ago.

“Does your dad know you come out here like this, at all hours of the night?”

Again, Dane shrugged. “I don’t know. If he does, he’s never mentioned it and he doesn’t try to stop me. Probably doesn’t even care, so…”

“And if he did, it wouldn’t matter, would it? Not to you.”

He slid that sexy grin over to me and shrugged. God, I loved that shrug!

And that grin.

And those eyes.

A little shiver rippled through me. How could a boy, a boy who was all wrong for me in every possible way, have this sort of effect on me?

That answer seemed easy enough, even though it was no answer at all. Not really.

Because he was Dane James. That’s how.

He was my kryptonite and my wildest dream and my most forbidden fruit. He was everything I wanted, and all that I couldn’t have. And he had his hooks in.

Deep.

It was easy to see that he could be a problem for me. Would be a problem for me, like an unhealthy habit.

An inconvenient vice.

An unbreakable addiction.

That gesture was clearly all the answer I was going to get, so I asked another question.

“So what were you doing out tonight? Driving of all things.”

“Life’s too short not to break a few rules.”

“Rules and laws are two different things.”

“What? No!” His tone and his smirk were laced with sarcasm.

“You’re a smart ass.”

Again with the shrug, but before I could get irritated, he smiled my way and leaned into me, bumping my shoulder with his. When he pulled away, I had the overwhelming urge to climb into his arms and never look back.

“So?” I prompted him for a real answer, unwilling to give up until I got one. “What were you out doing?” Rather than satisfying my curiosity right away, Dane stretched out on his back, linking his hands behind his head and crossing his feet at the ankles, totally ignoring me. That’s when I realized he wasn’t just being difficult or cool; he was hiding something. I quickly put two and two together and got the answer he wasn’t very eager to give. I gasped. “You were with a girl, weren’t you?”

He frowned over at me. With his face toward the sky, I could see it fairly well in the low light. “What’s wrong with that? I’m a guy. It’s what guys do.”

While yes it was what guys did, it felt wrong for some reason. Just wrong. Dane wasn’t supposed to be sneaking around with other girls. But he wasn’t supposed to not be sneaking around with other girls either. I didn’t like to think of him doing anything with other girls, no matter how innocent. And I knew by his reaction that what he’d been doing earlier wasn’t innocent in any way, shape, or form. He didn’t have to tell me so for me to know. I could see it right there on his face.

And that made it so much worse.

The thought brought me an undue amount of distress, almost like I had a claim on him, which I didn’t, and he’d betrayed me, which he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want a claim on him, as irrational as that would be.

Although I rolled my eyes with as much nonchalance as I could muster, I couldn’t keep the defensive disappointment out of my voice. “Of course, it’s what guys do. I don’t know why I even asked. I should’ve known not to expect anything different. Not even from you.”

I hated that I sounded so bitter, but that was how I felt. Bitter about the situation, about the town, about life and fate and rules and society. Just…bitter.

Dane sat up. “Don’t do that,” he warned quietly.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t compare me to everybody else. Don’t lump me in with them. I’m different. You know that.”

And I did. Or at least I thought I did. “You used to be.”

“I still am.”

“So you were just taking her for ice cream, then? Is that it?” I genuinely hoped that’s exactly what he’d been doing with her. Imagining anything else was downright uncomfortable. Even though it shouldn’t have been.

Dane gave me a steady look. “Why does that matter? What difference does it make what we were doing?”

It shouldn’t make any difference. I shouldn’t have cared that he was with another girl at all, much less what they’d been doing.

I shouldn’t have.

But I did.

“It makes a difference,” was all I said.

“So it’s all right that I was with another girl, just as long as I wasn’t what? Kissing her?”

Something dropped into my stomach, something like a cold, leaden ball that caused my guts to twist up into a tight knot. “Is that what you were doing? Kissing her?”

Why was I close to tears? Why did I feel panicky? I had no right to feel anything other than mild curiosity.

But that wasn’t what this was.

Mild curiosity was what I felt when I asked Lauren where she got the cute shoes she wore to school the week before. Mild curiosity was what I felt when Alton said he had a present for me and it wasn’t even Christmas. Mild curiosity was what I felt when Momma told me four years prior that she was dating a new man who might be “the one.” Those were incidences of mild curiosity.

This was not.

When I didn’t answer, Dane asked another question, one that made me feel even worse about my jealous streak. “You were with someone else tonight. Did you kiss him?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, but I didn’t want to.”

“But you did. Kiss him, I mean.”

“That’s different.”

“The hell it is. Do you think I like picturing you with other guys?” His voice was harsh and a little breathless. I could tell he was getting worked up. Just like I was.

“Why do you picture me at all?”

The silence that followed my question was filled with Dane’s deep pants as he decided whether to let his temper rev up or forced it to throttle down.

He didn’t answer until he could do so calmly. He had more control than I did. “Maybe because I had a crush on you when I was a little boy and part of me wishes you were still that little girl.”

Dane James had a crush on me? And he still did? Is that what he was saying?

My heart stuttered along in my chest, every ounce of my being clinging to the happy hope that I was understanding him correctly.

“What makes you think I’m so different now?”

“You don’t even talk to me now, Brinkley. You haven’t in years.”

“You don’t talk to me either.”

He couldn’t deny that, so he just shrugged. The gesture that I normally loved, I suddenly didn’t love so much.

Dane wrapped his arms loosely around his bent legs and looked straight out into the dark field surrounding us. “You’ve been here long enough to know how it works. Hell, you already knew that day at the river. You’re an insider, the cream of the social crop. I’m an outsider, the son of a worker. Why would I waste my time trying to talk to you in public when I know what will happen?”

A stab of intense guilt and shame sliced through my heart. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true. But I couldn’t. As unfair and ridiculous and archaic as it was, that was the way of society in Shepherd’s Mill. To those who lived here, this was the whole world. And what Dane had described was the way the world worked. You either lived here and abided by the rules, spoken and unspoken, or you left and didn’t come back. There was no in-between.

And for the next three years, until we turned eighteen, we were trapped here. Prisoners to a caste system we had no say in and no way around. Not even a rebel like Dane James could buck the structure of it. He could fight it, but only so much. For the most part, he’d just be banging his head against an unforgiving brick wall.

The only escape for people like us, people who were reluctant hostages rather than willing participants, was the night. It hid a multitude of sins. And out here on our rock, in the middle of a field of wheat, we could be anyone. Or no one. We were the only people who existed.

At least until the sun came up.

I determined in that very minute that I would make the most of my time with Dane James. Whether a night or an hour or a stolen moment at a football game, I knew he was worth every second I could get with him.

“Do you ever think about kissing me, Dane James?”

I asked the question impulsively, and the instant the words were out, I could’ve just crawled into a hole to die. I was the stepdaughter of one of the wealthiest and most influential men in town, I was friend to all the most popular people in school, yet I felt as insecure as I’d ever been a day in my life. And all because I was asking a worker’s son if he ever thought about kissing me.

Maybe it was because I knew he was better than me.

He was better than all of us.

His answer was soft, but it hit me hard. “All the time.”

“Then where have you been these last three years?”

“Right here. Where I’ve always been. Where I always will be.”

“Always will be? I thought you had dreams bigger than this town.”

“They’re just dreams, Brinkley. Reality is a whole different story.”

“You could leave, you know. When you graduate high school.”

“I could,” he agreed noncommittally.

“But you won’t.”

He shrugged again. This time that shrug made me feel sad. “I can try.”

“Dane,” I said and then stopped.

I didn’t have anything to say. At least nothing that I was brave enough to say. I had no more questions that had pat answers, no more observations that I could make. I had nothing but the desire that danced through my veins.

I wanted him to look at me. And I wanted to look at him. Just for a little while.

When I didn’t continue, Dane James turned to face me, his autumn eyes flashing onyx in the dark. At night they were different. He was different. We were different. And so was the world.

“If we do this, it won’t change anything.” Rational, mature words from a rational, mature guy.

I knew it.

He knew it.

But it still made my chest ache to acknowledge it.

I nodded. “I know. So why did you come to my window?”

His chin rested on his deltoid, his eyes still glued to mine. “I couldn’t not come.”

“Why?”

He shrugged that one shoulder again. “I don’t really know. Why did you come with me?”

I mirrored his words and his action. “I don’t really know.”

But that was a lie. I did know. I came because I had to come. Because he saved me three years ago and he saved me again that night. And every second that I was with him, he saved another teeny tiny part of me from dying in that town. He saved me from being suffocated, converted, brainwashed. He saved me from Shepherd’s Mill. He saved me from my mother.

He saved me from myself.

“Brinkley?” He leaned back on his hand, stretching one leg out in front of him. His body, bigger than life in that moment, listed toward mine the slightest bit.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think about kissing me?”

I gulped. For a split second, I considered lying again, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not over this. “Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”

And it was.

I tried not to think about him, but I did anyway. I thought about him a lot. More than I would ever have admitted to myself until right then. I couldn’t seem to help myself.

I watched him at school when no one was looking. I watched him at the bus stop when he couldn’t see me. I looked for him in the fields when I went out into the front yard. And I dreamed of him.

More nights than I could count, I dreamed of him.

So yes, I thought about kissing Dane James. I thought about being with Dane James. For real. In public. But those were just dreams, too. Different than reality.

But this—tonight, right now—isn’t a dream.

I was there, alone in the night, with the object of my forbidden desires, and all I wanted was to feel his mouth against mine.

As if he knew the directions of my thoughts, Dane leaned toward me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he drew closer. Just before our noses touched, he turned his head enough that his lips brushed mine. Softly. Chastely. Almost like he was testing the waters.

The fit was perfect, like our mouths were made to be right there, just like that. Melded together. Giving and taking. Sharing.

We stayed that way for more heartbeats than I could count, and when he pulled away, I almost begged him not to. He only sat up to change the angle of his mouth, though, and when he returned to me, it was so that he could give me my first real kiss. The only real kiss that mattered.

Dane James’ beautiful lips were firm and warm and just the right amount of persuasive when he urged mine apart. I relaxed into his chest and opened for him, shivering at the feel of his silky tongue slipping in to explore mine.

I inhaled, breathing him in with the night air and the freedom I could only fantasize about, and I promised myself that I’d sneak out with this boy as many times as he came to my window. We didn’t have a future. We couldn’t possibly. We both knew it. But we had the now. The beautiful now. And that was better than nothing.