Trent wouldn’t shut his damn mouth.

“Anyway, like I was saying, you need to come back with us. There was this one chick I ran into backstage. Fuck, was she hot. I was drunk though, but still. What happened to you again?” He lifted the dumbbell over his head, grunting, breathing through his nose. “You…” he released a long grunt, “disappeared on us last time you were there.”

It wasn’t a question, but the guy still stared at me, watching as I kept the bar even above my head. I knew he expected a response, but I still continued to ignore him as I finished my rep.

“Where’d you go?” Marshall stood next to the bench, wiping his red face with a towel. He stunk something fierce and I hurried through my rep just to get away from the downwind reek of him.

That prick followed.

“One minute I saw you there, the next you disappeared.”

Sweat and general funk isn’t pleasant. It’s especially not pleasant when you’re in a weight room with fifteen other linesmen trying to hurry through their workout before game day.

“I got caught up in something, man.” That wasn’t a lie. I had been caught up by the private dancer but Marshall’s nosy ass didn’t need to know that. He also didn’t know I ran out of there as fast I could afterwards because it looked like I’d pissed myself.

Heading to the showers I relaxed when the guy nodded and I lost him near the lockers. “Jackass,” I muttered under my breath, desperate for a little quiet and a lot of solitude while I washed away the sweat and tiredness of the week.

I had it in spades.

The water was hot, moved over my sore joints and muscles, massaging against my back as I dipped my head under the spray. I had fucked up, yet again and wasn’t sure there were enough showers in the world to take that fuck up away.

Scrubbing my face, I could only see surprise on Aly’s face as I took her mouth over and over. At first, I told myself it had been the Kizomba—the music moving into my body, working some kind of seduction, her fine, fit body brushing against mine—it had all added up to me losing my head, to me wanting to touch, to take and giving into the want without thinking. She had some kind of effect on me that I didn’t understand. When I was near her, close to her, I forgot that she wasn’t my type. I forgot that I didn’t want her. I forgot that I didn’t deserve her.

Never mind that I’d been thinking about her for weeks before that kiss. Never mind that if my dad’s loud orgasmic outburst hadn’t cocked blocked me, I would have definitely kissed her the night of the booster fundraiser at our house. Still, that night at the studio, none of my earlier attempts to convince myself I didn’t want her seemed right to me. Telling myself that she wasn’t my type had seemed like the biggest lie I’ve told myself—and I’ve told many. I’d wanted to take what wasn’t mine.

And I had. Just for a moment.

She’d felt so small under my big hands. She’d smelled too good, that exotic jasmine scent again and I could not help myself. I’d been around her, watched her, saw what had been invisible to me before in our infrequent run-ins at the studio. I’d always been so absorbed in my own head, in my own misery that not much penetrated my attention. But being around her these past few weeks, hearing her sing, being so close to her when we danced—Aly had become so clear and so visible to me.

But just kissing her—the first real kiss I’d had in such a long damn time—had awakened that voice, and it berated me, ripped me in two just for tasting something I had no business touching.

Disgusting, it called me. Pathetic. Weak.

I’d listened to it, agreed with it and pulled away from Aly like a man coming back from a fantasy he had no business enjoying. After that, I could not touch her. Oh, I still wasn’t immune to her body, to that soft, soft skin, but something was happening to me that I couldn’t explain, have never been able to explain. I’d spent years so tied up in guilt that my body had forgotten what it was to want. Now it had reacted to the dancer. It had reacted to Aly and behind all that need and lust and want, came the crushing weight of knowing that I had no right to feel that way around either of them.

I didn’t see a way clear of any of it.

The shower didn’t help. If anything, I felt worse, especially when I spotted Trent heading toward me as I dried off and got dressed. Luckily, Ronnie stopped him and I was able to make an escape before Trent could pester me anymore.

It was cold for October and there were orange and yellow leaves littering the sidewalk and along the entrance to the team parking lot. This time of year reminded me of chilly fall days in Nashville as a kid when Mom and I carved pumpkins that always ended up with haggard smiles and too large, jagged teeth.

It also reminded me of Emily’s red hair and that Halloween we snuck away from the tour group at the pumpkin patch maze and we kissed until the sky was dark and Tristian and Emily’s friend Becca were shouting that the patch was closing.

The memory of that maze and Emily’s flushed, pale skin kept my mind distracted so I didn’t notice Aly sitting on the hood of my Mustang until I was a good ten feet from her.

“Hey…hi…. Ransom…” Aly’s tone was light, but I could hear the tiny tremor in it. She wore a pair of dark, fitted jeans and a burgundy cardigan with a multi-colored scarf around her neck. She was bright and vivid, the colors so warm they reminded me of the leaves I’d just crunched under my foot. But what had me gawking at her like a jackass was all that long, wavy hair that fell way past her shoulders. Her hair was glorious and I damn near couldn’t control myself seeing it falling so freely like that. The effect of it not being tightly combed against her scalp was dramatic.

Once again that weird feeling came back to me that I had experienced this before; I just couldn’t shake the sense that the studio and Sunday lunches at my folk’s place weren’t the only places I’d spent time with her.

“Hey,” I said, starting toward her. I couldn’t keep the goofy grin off my face, and had to shove my hands in the pockets of my hoodie to keep from reaching out to touch her.

“I…um…modi.” She closed her eyes, muttering under her breath as though she needed a second to self-lecture, then she grinned at me. “I wanted to talk to you for a second.”

“Yeah, sure.” I looked toward the car and nodded. “Hop in. It’s getting chilly out here.”

She hesitated for just a moment, then stepped back when I opened the door for her. I could sense how wary she was, not nervous, exactly, but definitely a little put off. Maybe it was because we were seeing each other outside of the lake house or the studio. Maybe it was just that she didn’t know what to think since this was the first time we’d spoken since I’d kissed her. I thought about asking her why she hadn’t returned my brief, apologetic texts, but decided I didn’t want to make her even more skittish. She was already on guard, folding her fingers together with her thumbs tapping.

I got in the driver’s side, then turned to her. “Aly, listen, I’m sorry about the other night.” One hand stayed in my lap, the other on the door as I leaned against it. I shot for cool and relaxed, and Aly, it seemed, tried for distraction. Her thumbs kept tapping. We were like two fourteen-year-olds shoved in the closet for Seven Minutes In Heaven, completely clueless as to what to do. “I didn’t mean…”

“Me zanmi, Ransom, stop.” Aly kept her face forward, gaze staring out past the dashboard. “I didn’t come here to talk about you kissing me.”

Her face was impassive. Though her words came out clipped, I didn’t think she was angry. I had no idea why that bothered me. “Okay. So why did you come here?” Her hair was so long, one wave brushed past her elbow and fell against the empty seatbelt. It took effort not to touch it.

“I love your family.” My gaze slipped up to meet hers, but I didn’t speak, struck silent by her confession. “A month in and I’m completely stupid over your folks and Koa.”

That tightness pulling the muscles around my mouth lessened and I nodded, understanding what she meant. “They’re easy to love.”

She agreed, moving her head once. “And, well… I get that the dance, the music, um, sometimes all that sensation can be overwhelming.”

In the back of my mind, could hear the voice whispering awful things, terrible things, about Aly and her intentions. Things I knew were not true. She wasn’t scheming. She didn’t have agendas and wasn’t a gold-digger. When that voice grew louder, I blocked it out by staring at Aly’s mouth and tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

“I love reading to Koa because he’s so young he doesn’t know doing character voices isn’t cool.” She hadn’t stopped tapping her thumbs together and looked down at them like she needed something other than my stare to focus on. “I like listening to Kona talk about CPU when your parents were kids there and all the stupid shit he pulled his first season in the league.” A small smile then and I leaned back, not thinking about why my gaze wouldn’t move away from all those long waves. “I love hearing Keira play her guitar or talk about the places she’s seen, the people she’s met and how at the end of the day none of that is as fascinating to her as watching Koa sleep or hearing you laugh.”

Aly turned her head to look at me. She wore pale pink lipstick and that bottom lip gleamed against the console light.

“The thing is, I wouldn’t want anything to screw this up.”

“What would?”

She ignored me then, looking out of the window until I reached over with one hand and stopped her thumbs from tapping, forcing her to glance back at me. “I like you.” She moved closer and I didn’t take my hand from her thumbs. “I like that you’re so willing to help me out and how you see that the audition, the dance, are so important to me. But it’s not just me, I know. You help your parents, and Leann and Tristian–hell, I know you’d do anything for him. And I…”

I couldn’t resist any longer. I reached up and threaded a finger through one of the loose waves of her hair. Aly immediately stopped talking.

“And you don’t want anything to screw that up.” Her chin moved down and she settled back into the seat, eyes lowering again as I watched a few strands fall against my palm. “You think me kissing you would be what, exactly?”

“Um…a…a start to all the good getting screwed up.” I barely made out her words and wasn’t conscious of her hesitation. I only knew that those pink lips were wet, that the thick, soft hair between my fingers felt like silk and Aly smelled like something so delicious that my mouth watered.

We both unconsciously leaned in as though some invisible line pulled us closer and closer together. I was almost at her mouth, had my hand on her face, could feel the warmth of her small breaths that smelled like mint. I wanted to nibble on that bottom lip just to see if it tasted as good as it looked.

“We… me zanmi you smell good, but…we have to be friends.”

“Friends?” That yellow caution light went up and I didn’t even tap my breaks. Hell, I’ve always been a “yellow light, go faster” kind of driver. “You want to be my friend, Aly?” She made a noise that could’ve have been a no, probably was a yes. Then her breath got faster and I didn’t take my hand from her face. “Just my friend?”

“Yea…”

Then I kissed my friend Aly right on the mouth, not stopping to think about it, having no control over my body as my teeth smoothed across her bottom lip. And when that small, soft tongue slipped against my lips, I released a sigh, all desperate and hungry, that I hadn’t expected. Right then, I forgot about guilt and shame and the fact that Aly was supposed to be someone I knew, not someone I wanted. I guided her face up, loving how she tasted like peppermint and felt like cotton candy.

“Friends…Ransom,” and she kissed me back like she couldn’t control herself, like someone else was making her lips work against mine. And then, just like that, Aly stopped, pulling away from me, her scarf shaking with the effort of her breathing. “Ah…modi…poupou.”

“Aly…”

She shook her head like she wouldn’t listen, like something else needed to be said and she didn’t want me interrupting. “I’m going to tell you something and don’t you damn well laugh at me.” She moved her eyes, catching my nod of agreement. “This…this whatever it is, I chalk it up to being alone for…well, a while.”

“How long is a while?”

She sliced her gaze back to me and I didn’t press.

“You’ve been without…” she sat back, her breathing slowing. “We’ve both been alone. That’s what I’m saying.” Aly turned her body, taking my hand, though she hesitated, like she wasn’t sure she should touch me at all. “I want to be your friend. I won’t deny that I…well,” one shift of her gaze and she kept her chin down, but I still caught her grin. “Your mouth makes me think the worst…best…filthy things.”

Aly treated me to that elusive smile again when my laugh broke the tension in the car. “Right back at you.”

After a moment, Aly’s face returned to normal—mouth relaxed, but unsmiling. “When I’m around you, things can be…” she shook her head as though she hoped closing her eyes would somehow bring the right word forward.

“Overwhelming?” I asked, realizing I understood where she was coming from.

“Me zanmi, wi. Overwhelming. It’s…it has to be the dance, right? I mean, the Kizomba, the flirting and us being lonely and being around your family, hell, the sexual chemistry coming off your parents alone would make anyone…” She laughed when I wrinkled my nose. “Sorry,” she said, that laughter dimming. “I just mean that this isn’t anything something you or…I…I really want to explore. I know you’re busy and with happened to you before…”

I waited for her to mention Emily. I waited for her to somehow explain what she thought my problem was. Girls did that sometimes when I asked them not to touch me, when I touched them and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t want anything more from them. I waited to see what diagnosis Aly had for me, but she only inhaled, like she needed extra breath to organize her thoughts.

“It’s all chemical. Endorphins and serotonin that our brains produce when the right stimulus is introduced to our environment.” My eyebrows came up and I blinked, astounded by her theory. “What?” she said. “I watch ‘Forensic Files’ and ‘Bones’.”

This time when I laughed, Aly joined in immediately, a little sheepish, but that smile was wide, it was beautiful and my humor faded when that damn strange déjà-vu sensation hit me again. I knew I’d seen that smile before but damn if I could place it.

“Anyway, I just…”

“I get what you’re saying.”

“You do?”

She let me take her hand, didn’t raise that guard of hers. “No kissing?”

Aly hesitated, squeezing my fingers. There was something in her expression that I couldn’t place. It seemed like doubt, indecision and disappointment, but then what the hell did I know? “I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like it. But we can’t…”

“No, right… I get it,” I said, sighing, resigned, when I pulled my hand away. “We’ll just stick with being friends. That’s what you want. Right?”

There was something in her eyes then, a weird flick that told me she was keeping something from me and part of me wanted to know what that was. The more sensible part, though, won out for once and I let her keep her secrets.

“Exactly,” she said finally. Then the weirdest thing happened. When the noise of my teammates entering the parking lot sounded behind my car and Aly looked in the rear view mirror to watch them, that easy, relaxed expression on her face suddenly vanished. Someone had spooked her, had her turning from me, fumbling with the door latch and mumbling something about needing to catch the bus. She muttered “See you later” and fled before I even had the chance to offer her a ride.

“Ransom!” Trent shouted, banging once on the roof of my Mustang. “Was that the same hottie that was here with your kid brother?” he asked, edging his body to the side so he could watch Aly as she disappeared from the parking lot. “You hooking up?”

“No, man,” I said, pushing his arm off my door. “She’s just a…a friend.” As soon as I said the words, I could taste something rotten coiling up my throat.

I meant to go after her, to ask her what about my teammates had her running off like a scared rabbit, but then my cell chirped with a text and I picked it up, waving Trent off, nodding to several of the guys as they ambled to their cars. Timber had the news I’d been waiting to hear.

Saturday night, after the game, you’re getting your dance.

I’d waited weeks for that message, had amped myself up with visions of that masked dancer as she moved around me, like some pathetic kid casing Playboy to help him along the first time he jacked off. I should have been excited. I should have been stoked, but all I felt still was disappointment that Aly had stopped kissing me, and acute curiosity about why she’d taken off.

I remembered everything about being with her, in excruciating detail. She made sure of it.

No one had ever had a hold on me like Emily. I’d loved her something fierce, right at a time when my parents had married and began the job of extending our family, when I thought I’d never stop smiling, never stop feeling like the world was mine to take. Sixteen and I believed I knew everything there was to know. I believed my heart could not grow fuller. I’d fought for her and won her. Then I’d chased her, dared her to defy her father, promised I’d make myself worth the rebellion.

And though I had no idea why, she eagerly broke the rules that were set to protect her. I promised her everything my sixteen year old hands could deliver, and in return I got that smile, that beautiful, wild smile that always had me guessing what she’d been thinking. I never could guess, I never had a clue. Not once. That should have been a warning.

I remembered it all—the small scar in the center of her palm and the tiny freckle directly over her heart that was the darkest among the faint browns and beige spots that covered the rest of her body. The quick breath of air that would morph into the sweetest groan when I kissed her on the back of the neck. They were all still so real to me, sacred images that I would not let leave my mind.

Until now.

That wasn’t true. Not completely.

I wasn’t truly asleep, despite the late hour. That place that keeps you from honest sleep is where I’d stayed that night. I was still aware of what was going on around me. Tossing my blankets back, shuffling my pillow under my chin while beyond my door hearing the quiet laughter and clink of ice sliding around in glasses. Trent with three girls from Tri Sig, all seniors who didn’t care whose bed they ended up in or when they got there.

They were, at least, not loud. It wasn’t the faint, sultry laughter that kept me from my dreams.

Like always, it was the guilt and, of course, that voice.

You forgot me, it said, pushing past the recall of Emily’s hair tangled between my fingers. I huddled down deeper into my pillow, blindingly grabbing for another one to blot out her words.

You don’t love me.

“Not true. Not true,” I whispered and without really thinking about it, I rested my fingers over that tattoo.

How could I not? Every kiss was burned into my mind. Every touch left behind scars that could never be seen. Emily’s soft, small fingers gliding along my skin, her hands shaking as I stood in front of her for the first time wearing nothing but my boxers. Me taking those hands, holding them close to my chest to keep them still.

“Are you scared?” she’d asked and though I knew I’d have come off looking bolder, stronger if I’d lied, I couldn’t do it. I’d never lie to her.

“Hell yes.”

We’d escaped the city in the offseason, sneaking away to her family’s cabin on Cane River Lake away from my parents and Emily’s obligations at dating a boy she didn’t like. Eddie Parker didn’t have her, no matter how often her father had him over for dinner or told her his plans for their future.

She was mine, and that March night with the lake around us purring frigid winds over the cottage and the waters quieter than a library during mid-terms, I kissed Emily and knew she would not stop me from going as far as I had dreamed we would.

We’d managed to get undressed, awkwardly holding on to each other as we fumbled to the bed. And when I hovered above her and all that straight, red hair fanned out around her, I thought maybe, once in my life, I’d have a perfect moment. It was something that had never happened for me, something I’d prayed for. “Blessings delayed are not blessing denied,” Bobby would always say, but I didn’t think God cared for my prayers or that the raging hormones in my body edged me toward a sin I wouldn’t want to ever be forgiven for.

“Ransom?” she’d asked, stopping me with her hands on my shoulders and in my mind I worried that she’d changed her mind, or if, like so many times before, Emily had once again gotten scared of what we both professed to want.

Arms trembling as I paused over her, my hips on top of hers, my dick covered in a condom, ready to take what I believed was mine, I looked down at her, expecting that her fear had won out again.

It hadn’t.

Those small fingers moved from my shoulders, to my neck, then to back of my messed hair and Emily touched my face, fingertips on my mouth, the cleft in my chin as though she needed a moment to see me and think about nothing but the two of us right there in that moment. “You’re getting something no one else in the world will ever have. I’m giving that to you because I love you.”

“Em…God.”

My heart broke a little bit then, in the best possible way. I’d never quit loving her, wanting her. Not ever. From that night until the last time I touched her, I’d never stop. If she was with me, near me, I’d touch her, hold her, let the love that I had felt for her from the day I met her grow stronger, fiercer inside my chest. She held on tight as I drove inside her body, that safe, warm, wet part of her wrapping around me, clenching, holding me until I thought I couldn’t stand the grip, until I felt my heart swelling up.

At that moment, I could have pried open my chest, shown her what she’d given me, made her promise to never stop feeding it, begged her to make it stronger with just a flash of her smile, or the subtle, sweet look in her eyes that answered “yes” to a question I never had to ask.

I moved past her resistance, breaking the hymen until I was deep, so deep inside Emily that I could not have told you where our bodies met. And then, just there, with my beautiful girl wrapped so securely around me, with her clutching my arms, gasping against my chest I found my one, perfect moment.

“I love you, Em,” I’d told her and repeated it twice before we fell onto the mattress, still wrapped together in that thick quilt and each other.

No, I hadn’t forgotten a thing.

Liar.

That voice was vicious again, coming from the space that still held the husk of my heart. Now it was cold, cobwebbed by shame, by time, a chrysalis that would never be shed. There would be no wings, no stretch of rebirth or potential to grow stronger.

You have forgotten. You forgot today.

Maybe I had. Rolling to my back, I rested my wrist on my forehead and looked up at the ceiling. There was a thin layer of dust on my fan and in the corner near the window, an old watermark carried the shape of a lightning bolt. The laughter outside my room had gone quiet, replaced by the unmistakable slap of skin against skin and the creak of Trent’s bed.

They have what you can’t. Not ever.

She was right. I didn’t deserve what Emily had given me that night. I didn’t deserve to be the one who’d taken her innocence from her and never given anything back but heartache. I didn’t deserve for Aly, who never smiled at anyone, to smile only for me, to kiss me with everything she had.

She doesn’t know you. She never will.

She might. One day, if I ever stopped listening to that damn voice. I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to ignore the sound, that distant phantom voice that hated me, that wanted me to hate myself. It was the same one that cursed, raged when I thought about Aly’s skin and the texture of her hair on my fingers. One of her eyes was a fraction smaller than the other and her nose was almost too long. She was imperfect, flawed, and I’d been fascinated by the sight of her, all those sensations she worked inside me that day on the piano bench and nearly every day since.

I closed my eyes, numbing myself to the shrieks inside my head, feeling stupid and weak for the guilt, for the shame of my memories. For the first time, I felt bad recalling that night with Emily. Why? I had no idea. I felt worse for the dance I’d get. I felt all these things because I’d kissed Aly twice. And that, more than anything, had the voice growing, the words harsher, crueler, more punishing.

And then came the final memory, the images of that last day: Emily screaming at me as I laughed, her clutching that charm around her white fingers as I gunned the boat’s engine, pushing it faster and faster. Me being too caught up in her reaction, in the humor I found in her worry to realize she was truly terrified. Then, the water, the lake and the sobering fear of what I’d done. To her, to my girl, to my love. To Emily, who I promised I would never hurt.

LIAR!

I shot up in bed, slamming my feet to the floor when those images replayed in my shackled mind over and over, the screaming, the shouts and I closed my eyes, feeling weak, impotent, pathetic.

“Ransom?” I heard, looking between my fingers at Krystal Myers, one of Trent’s regulars, as she peeked in from the door.

Do it. It’s what you deserve. Do it!

I stood, let the sheet fall from my waist, naked except for my boxers, and didn’t care that Krystal’s eyes that had likely seen many stripped men, rushed over my skin like liquid. I didn’t care who she was or what was thinking.

I just didn’t care anymore.

She didn’t try to leave when I pulled her into my room. “We heard you, um, moaning. You okay, sugar?”

She didn’t get an answer, yet made no attempt to stop me or even talk to me again until I had her on my bed. “What are you doing?” she muttered, but it was all for show. She knew. That much was obvious from that poorly disguised grin and the dent of her bottom lip as she bit it.

“I…” Nausea came to me then, clotting my throat until I cleared it away. “I can make you feel good.”

Krystal wore a smile that was stupid and giddy, like a kid being told they could have another scoop of ice cream. She lay back, slipped her thong off, then lifted her arms above her head. I didn’t touch her, didn’t pay much attention to her at all.

My hands would not stop shaking and that voice, though lower, still came at me fierce and badgering, telling me to touch her, demanding that I service this girl.

“Touch me,” Krystal said and I got the feeling it was a line she used, something she said that some guys would find hot. She sounded too practiced, too used to getting the reaction she wanted.

She tilted her head when I got to my knees in front of her, but kept my hands at my side.

I like you, I heard.

That didn’t come from Krystal.

It didn’t come from the phantom voice, either, and as Krystal reached for my wrist, pulling me towards her, it wasn’t her that I imagined lay beneath me.

Krystal’s skin wasn’t warm and when she moved her hips off the bed, thrust herself at me, for the first time ever, I wasn’t remotely eager to service her or anyone.

I didn’t want to make her feel good, no matter how badly I needed to atone for my sins.

I love your family.

“Dammit.” My curse burned in the air.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Krystal tried to pull me back to her when I rose, her sharp, long fingernails scraping down my back, making me jerk at the sensation. But I broke away and stepped back, running my fingers through my hair. “You never let anyone make you feel good, Ransom.” She slid forward on her knees and tried slipping her hand down the front of my boxers, but I stopped her with my fingers on her wrist. She looked up at me with her best come-hither eyes. “I can do that for you.”

I like you and Do it battled in my brain. One voice was soft, sweet. The other grating and mean.

“No,” I told Krystal, turning around with my hand still on her. “I’m good.”

“But, baby, you’re so tense.”

“I’m sorry. You need to leave.” She stepped off the bed, but instead of gathering her clothes, she tried to sidle up to me. My temper surged and I pointed at the door, raising my voice with a boom I’d only heard my father manage. “Now. Get the fuck out of here.”

She walked backward, watching me like she thought I’d finally lost it completely and she didn’t want to be patient zero when my Hale temper exploded. When I fell to my bed, even though the voices were still ticking off conflicting memories, the mix of confusion gave way to relief, lulling me, finally, to sleep.