Our dinner and movie were cozy and perfect. We didn’t miss anything not going with Feather and Steve. Everything we need and want is right here.

After the movie, Tyler lights a small fire in a pit in his backyard, and we roast marshmallows while sitting on a blanket, holding hands. His lips kiss my ear and linger there. “Stay,” he whispers. I turn to him, and his lips find mine. “Stay here tonight,” he says against my lips.

He watches me as I let his words sink in. His eyes darken and his breathing deepens, and it hits me that I’ve seen this excited, lusty look in him before.

I nod slowly, agreeing, but also accepting. Some truths sink in slower than others. My hesitations…my surprise…my panic…my fear…my needs…my happiness… it ignites him. He feeds on it, like an emotional sponge.

And I have to admit, I like seeing him hungry for me.

“Okay,” I reply softly. “I’ll stay with you.”

My head spins with the possibilities of what an entire night in bed with him could bring, but I count in my head and shut those worries down before they spiral out of control. I won’t let any more moments with him get destroyed. Instead, I revel in the way his smile reaches right into me and flips a switch of happiness.

“We can watch the sky together through the ceiling window,” he teases, poking at the fire. Then he throws in some sort of sand, which earlier he told me was fairy dust that makes the flames a rainbow of colors. The fire becomes pretty with its blue, green, and purple hues, and I wonder if the colors ease his memories.

“Does the fire bother you?” I ask with caution.

The flames reflect in his eyes as he ponders the question and his answer.

“Sometimes,” he replies. “I guess I learned to respect it. It’s like anything else. If you’re not careful around things that can hurt you…they probably will.”

I wonder if, someday, Tyler will hurt me. Maybe Zac is right and I might get my heart broken. I close my eyes, feel the heat of the flame against my cheeks, and try to picture life without Ty.

I can’t.

“I saw someone go into a fire once,” I say. “It was awful. It’s one of the few things from my childhood I can actually remember.” I tighten my fingers around his. “It hurts my heart to think of you being in that kind of pain.”

“The pain was horrific. It was everywhere—the searing pain. Even worse than going through the glass.”

My stomach roils just thinking about it. “I wish I could have been there…to help you somehow. Or just to love you.” The words slipped out so freely and naturally. I couldn’t have stopped them if I tried.

His breathing completely stills, and I wonder how he’ll react to my admission. The answer to that comes swiftly when his hand tilts my face to meet his. His thumb drags slowly across my bottom lip, and his eyes follow its trail then drift up to captivate mine.

His mouth opens, and the words get trapped in his throat. But I don’t need to hear him speak because I can see the depth of his feelings in his molten eyes. The space between us disappears, and he kisses me softer than he ever has, as if he’s afraid he’ll somehow break me or shatter our very existence.

I reach up and gently caress his scarred cheek as we kiss, and he leans into my hand.

“I love you.” The sweetest, ragged, whispered words drift from his lips to my ears, and I wish I could bottle them up and keep them forever.

Our lips part, but he keeps me in his embrace. We hold each other as we watch the colored flames lap the air, and I’m content and grateful in this special, private place with him, Poppy, and Boomer.

This truly has become my happy place, in every way.

His fingers slowly caress mine, and warmth floods me from my core to my thighs when I remember how they slid through my soft flesh, making me damp and quivering.

“Who was in the fire?” he suddenly asks, pulling me out of the delirium of my daydream.

“Huh?”

“You said you saw someone in a fire?”

I shake my head to clear it. “I don’t know who he was.” The day I was abducted is filled with horrible memories, but this one is the worst. “I just wanted someone to help me. Anyone. He may have died in that fire because of me. I have no idea.”

He kisses my temple. “You’re confusing me. How could it be because of you?”

“Because I was trying to get help.”

“When?”

“The day I was taken.”

“There were people around when he took you?”

“No…not at the park. But later that night, the man who took me was driving around with me in a car. He had me in the backseat with my hands tied behind my back. He pulled the car over and got out to talk to someone on a pay phone. I think they may have been arguing.” I close my eyes, trying to picture the scene in my mind. “Through the tinted windows of the car, not too far away, I could see trees and a bonfire with people around it. I could hear them laughing. The bad man was really involved in his conversation and wasn’t paying attention to me. I was able to get my hands free, and I bolted out of the car and ran for the fire.” My heart pounds in unison with the little girl in my memory, remembering how her little legs ran as fast they could.

“Holly…you got away from him?” Tyler asks incredulously. “I never knew that.”

“Almost,” I say sadly. “I was so close. I ran up to two teenagers standing by the fire, a boy and a girl, and I grabbed the girl’s hand and begged her to help me. But she laughed and pulled her hand away. I think she thought I was kidding.” Ty rubs my hand in slow circles as I talk, listening intently. “So…I grabbed onto the boy’s shirt, and when he turned and looked down at me, he was laughing too, but when he realized I was crying, he held my hand and asked me if I was lost.” I pause, remembering the glimmer of hope that flashed through me at the time. I thought I was safe. “But by then the bad man had caught up to me, and he grabbed my other arm, and he shoved the boy hard, and he fell into the fire. The man picked me up and ran with me back to the car, and he put me in the trunk and slammed the lid. Even from in there, I could hear the boy in the fire screaming. It was awful, and it was all my fault.”

Ty’s hand has stopped rubbing mine, and he’s staring off into the woods, his brow creasing.

“I just wanted someone to help me.” I wipe my eyes, not wanting to cry anymore. “I never meant to hurt anybody.”

“No, sugar.” His voice is strained. “You were just a little girl.”

“I never saw another person again after that. He was the last person I ever saw, until you found me.”

Letting go of my hand, Tyler stands abruptly. “I have to go,” he says, popping a cigarette into his mouth.

I stand, too, and watch him pace in a small circle like a trapped animal. “What’s wrong?”

“I just remembered I have to be somewhere.”

“Now?”

He nods and throws a pail of regular, non-fairy-dust sand over the fire to extinguish it. “Yeah.” He points to my car. “Go. I’ll call you.”

“Go?” I repeat. My voice shakes, but he refuses to look at me. “I-I thought you wanted me to stay?”

“Please,” he croaks. “Just leave. I’m begging you.” His eyes are manic, flitting back and forth, and he sucks on the cigarette like a vacuum.

Stunned silent, I walk away from him, toward my car. Poppy tries to follow, but when Ty whistles sharply, Poppy turns and follows him, and Ty locks both dogs in the house. I look back one more time before I get in my car, but now he’s starting up his motorcycle, obviously leaving right now to go wherever it is he suddenly remembered he has to be. His bike tears out of his driveway and down the dirt road and, for a moment, I consider following him.

No. I won’t do that. When girls do that on TV, they always see something they don’t want to see, and I don’t want to see Tyler doing anything that I’m going to wish I never saw. Not today, after our perfect day, which has suddenly become completely imperfect, without warning.

Maybe sitting by the fire brought on an episode, after all. Maybe he just needed to get away from it, and didn’t want me to see him scared. Maybe he doesn’t know how to count, like I do. Maybe he remembered a lost dog needing to be found.

Whatever the reason, I do as he asks, and I leave, my heart falling to pieces as I drive away. In my rearview mirror, I can still see tiny sparks of amber glowing where the fire was, and it fills me with sorrow.