Why does it feel like I’ve been hit by a bus? My eyes feel leaden with sleep, as if I’ve got miles to climb before I reach complete awareness. I sort through my thoughts like junk mail, trying to find something useful. Something to bring me back to the now.

Paint. The canvas. The cave. As I retrace my last memories, more puzzle pieces begin to fall into place. I remember how alone I felt last night. How I would have done anything to get Jaxon to understand. But the truth is, I’m not sure if I could understand if all was reversed. I was in a vulnerable place for years, and Scott knew that. And while Scott would have never taken advantage of that fact, he definitely waited for his opportunity to make his move. I can’t fault him for trying. I can’t fault Jaxon for being upset. But I can fault myself for allowing my vulnerability to hinder my decisions.

There were so many things I should have done differently, but how can I live like that? Hating myself for decisions I didn’t understand the gravity of at eighteen years old feels a bit unfair. Living with a paranoid schizophrenic wasn’t easy, and while I hate putting a label on it, that was our reality. Those are the cards my family was dealt, and we handled them to the best of our ability.

But last night, I gave in to the past and let my mind take me to where I’d never allowed it to before. It felt natural to be in front of the canvas again and let my mind speak freely through my art. I let the middleman in me go. The worrier. The gatekeeper to my darkest thoughts, and it gave me a cave—one I don’t remember painting.

But I remember dreaming about it.

Fear clutches my chest. It felt so real.

Startled at the memory, I finally break through the fog of sleep and confusion. I sit up, suck in another deep breath, and open my eyes to find myself not where I expected to be at all. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the low light. Early morning warmth streams in from outside, but the window is different than the one I wake up to every morning.

Panic overtakes me. Where am I? I don’t remember leaving my home.

A groan sounds from my side. I jump. My eyes dart down to find a tossing Jaxon, cheek down on his pillow, his arm searching the space where I just lay.

As my pulse begins to slow to normal, I lie back down and look at the man I love.

How did I get here? I sort through the night again, remembering Scott and the silence from Jaxon that followed. The way my heart ripped open when he refused to come inside the cottage. He rode away into the night, and I felt him slip through my fingers like I never fully had him to begin with. So how did I end up here?

Not wanting to wake him, I tiptoe out the door. I shower, then slip on one of his oversized muscle shirts. I find a new toothbrush in his medicine cabinet and brush my teeth, and then I walk down the hall, my aim the canvas room that holds so much of my past, along with the good and bad memories that come with it.

I peek my head into the room, and my chest warms as I scan the art. Each piece is a memory of my progress from the summer I was fifteen, along with what Jaxon stored for me when I returned two summers later and my father had forbidden me from painting ever again. I pause in front of a painting of Hollow Falls, I trace the brush lines with my finger, trying to remember the euphoria I often felt when painting.

“I love you when you think no one is watching.”

I jump and turn at the sound of Jaxon’s gravelly morning voice.

“I always did,” he adds, his expression soft despite the odd circumstances.

“Do you know how I got here?”

Jaxon’s fingers wrap the upper part of the door frame. “You walked here last night during the storm, Aurora. You don’t remember anything?”

I shiver, hating the darkness that snakes through me at the thought of walking miles in a storm without any memory of it at all. Again. “No. Nothing.” I swallow before looking up to meet his eyes. “But I painted last night. Before bed.” My heart quickens when I catch sight of my painting sitting on an easel and canvas in the middle of the room. It’s now destroyed, probably from my mindless journey last night. The girl I’d painted into the scenery is smeared into the floor of the cave, like it was always meant to be dirt. I decide now isn’t the time to bring up the girl.

My eyes flicker to his in silent thanks for trying to save it, warmth spreading in my chest. But it’s not only that. Jaxon was furious at me yesterday, for good reason. And despite it all, he still cared enough to bring me inside and tuck me safely in bed.

Maybe we’re okay.

“You should have told me about Scott,” he says, his jaw firm, eyes hard on me.

“I know.” I say quietly, meeting his stare. “And you shouldn’t have left me last night.”

“I know.”

Letting out a relieved breath, I nod, letting the silence hang in the air between us. What now?

He takes a step from the entrance toward me. “Six—seven years is a long time, Aurora,” he says. “I had some time to think last night, and we both just need to face it. There are going to be things we learn about each other. Things maybe we don’t want to know.”

“That’s true. Which is why we should talk about those things. There’s something you need to understand about Scott and me.” Jaxon moves a hand to stop me, but I cut in before he can. “I love him, Jax.” I don’t care how the words sound coming out of my mouth. He needs to hear this in all of its truth. “He’s been a friend of mine for ages.”

I can just see the anger working through Jaxon. I rush to continue. “But I’m not in love with him. We were friends, he was there for me, and he wanted to give us a try. I felt like I owed him a shot after everything we’d been through. And it was the wrong reason to date him. I’ve made a mess of things, but you need to know how deep my connection to you remained after all those years. It never went away. Scott knows that now. I think he’s always known.”

Jaxon’s posture relaxes. “We were all just trying to move on.” He takes the final steps toward me, cupping my cheeks in his hands and gazing at me softly. I can feel the heat radiating off his body as he brings his lips to mine. “Aurora, I just need to know you’re here to stay. I can get over the rest. I just want time with you. I want forever. We’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?”

The tension I’ve been holding in my body dissolves in a flash. “Yes.” I close the distance, our lips locking firmly.

“Paint something for me,” he whispers against my mouth.

The way he demands it is so desperate, so sweet. I nod, and when my eyes bat up to meet his, I smile. “Okay. Will you help me?”

“Of course. What can I do?”

“Just…sit behind me.” I swallow, my heart already pounding inside my chest. “Like you used to.”

Jaxon nods, a curly lock of hair spilling over his eyes. “You always got so intense when you painted.”

“So did you. You still do.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, but with you it was like you couldn’t break out of it. Remember how I would loosen you up?”

Heat scales my neck and fills my cheeks. “Do it again.”

His eyes shine with amusement as he nods. “Okay.”

I take a seat at the easel in the center of the room and prepare my paint. When I start applying the first dash of green beyond the cave walls, Jaxon sits a safe distance from me in his stool. I fill in the ground with splotches of grass, then add bushes a bit further in the distance, followed by pine trees stacked along the edges. Ideally, I would be painting in front of my subject, catching each detail, each glint of light. But I don’t have that luxury now. I’m painting strictly from what my subconscious tells me it sees.

I’ve traded colors to shade the rock inside the cave when Jaxon takes my arm and guides me, his hand closing over mine. “I always loved watching you paint. You picked it up so fast.”

I smile. “From watching you so much.”

“You were a natural. Art the way you create it can’t be taught. It comes from here.” He brings his palm to my chest, and warmth begins to spread in my belly. He leans down, dropping a kiss on my neck.

The moment his breath hits my skin, it unleashes something in me. Who knew all I needed was Jaxon’s presence to remind me what it felt like to be free? And suddenly, the cave in the painting and my nightmare makes sense. It’s a prison.

I straighten, still holding the brush, but I stare at my work with new eyes. With new understanding. “Do you remember that story we talked about a long time ago? About the prisoner who lived in a cave? He was stripped of knowledge. All he knew came from what was set before him in an experiment to show the difference between knowledge and reality.”

Jaxon murmurs against my skin. “Oh, do I. You were obsessed with that story. You and your father went on about it for days. He loved that his daughter had his philosophical mind.”

“He did?” I turn to Jaxon over my shoulder. His nod is unwavering. Despite my father’s crimes, it still warms my heart to remember our connection before his mind began to deteriorate.

“The Allegory of the Cave,” Jaxon confirms.

“From Plato’s Republic.” I smile. My father’s old, leather-bound copy of the book is still on the bookshelf in the cottage. “I think that story influenced this painting somehow. I’m not sure how, but I dreamt about it last night. Before I came here, I guess.”

“You dreamt about the story?”

I shrug. “A version of it. I dreamt that I was the prisoner, and there was a man approaching me. I couldn’t see him, but he spoke to me. He said, ‘It’s time.’ I got the feeling he wanted to help me escape.”

Jaxon’s breath stills on my back. “Escape what, exactly?”

I shrug. “I’m not sure. I mean, it makes sense now. There’s a man in the story who helps the prisoner escape. He takes him into the light to fill him with knowledge and show him that his reality was false. Then the prisoner finally realized how much existed beyond the walls of the cave. Beyond the darkness. But in order for him to ever truly leave, he needed to be open to new knowledge. And once he was open to it, he was no longer a prisoner.”

“And how do you feel now?”

“Hungry.” I laugh. “But not for food. For knowledge. I want to experience everything. I want to paint. I want to travel the world.” I glance at him over my shoulder and smile. “With you.”

His lips brush mine. “You know how happy that makes me. Let’s do it.”

“We will.”

He scoots closer so our bodies are pressed together, his front to my back. Then he dips his head to kiss my shoulder. “We’ll do it all. Everything we ever wanted. We’ll see the world. We’ll paint. And we’ll do it together.”

I smile, feeling my chest balloon with excitement. Jaxon’s hand moves mine, lifting it and taking it to the canvas in a simple stroke. “Don’t stop painting.”

My hand gets to work. The wildlife surrounding the cave begins to blossom, the light and dark tones shading the trees and bringing them to life. Jaxon’s lips find my shoulder, his fingers peeling back the fabric at my collar to reach my skin.

“Remember this?” he asks, his words hot against my neck.

Shivers race down my spine as his fingers brush against me in perfect synchronicity with my movements. My mind swirls and my body warms.

“Yes.” I swallow, never letting my brush leave the painting.

One day at Hollow Falls while we were painting from the bridge, he commended my progress. We had been sneaking around together for over two months, but I panicked, thinking that our time painting together was coming to an end. If he no longer thought I needed a mentor, what would that mean for us? Maybe he could sense it too, because he sat behind me, guiding my brush for a few strokes. And then his hand fell to my lap.

“Touch me,” I whispered, sensing that he needed permission.

“Are you sure?” His knuckles turned white from gripping my skirt so hard.

“Yes, Jaxon. Please touch me.” I turned to look at him over my shoulder, our eyes locking, then he nodded.

His breath hit my neck in a whoosh. “Do me a favor. Don’t stop painting.”

And I didn’t. Not when he parted my knees. Not when his finger grazed against my center, soaked and still covered by my thin bikini bottoms. Not when he slipped the scrap of material to the side, exposing me. And not even when his finger stroked me, so soft, so careful.

But when that same finger pushed into me for the first time…I couldn’t breathe. It was the first time I had ever been vulnerable like that for anyone, and here I was in the middle of the woods, being touched for the very first time.

“Keep painting,” he reminded me as he pushed into me again.

Somehow I managed to obey. I was at the tip of my release, my heart beating fast at the feel of my muscles tightening and a fiery rush burning through me. He groaned into my back, bit into the skin at my neck—and at that moment, I happily lost the challenge.

The brush fell.

“Don’t stop painting,” he growls in my ear now, mimicking his command from years ago. But I don’t know how I held out so long that first time. My eyes squeeze closed as he curls his finger inside me. My brush falls again. My palm slams into the canvas, smearing the new paint and knocking the easel over. Jaxon holds me tighter. Pumps me faster. My insides squeeze, heat rising in my core, and I cry out as my muscles tense to their peak and then liquefy in a hot rush inside me.

Desire has taken over. I stand, letting his finger slip from my core, turn, and strip his shirt from my body. He’s already removed his briefs, and he’s quick to wrap his arms around my waist and pull me down as he sinks into me, filling me faster than I’m ready for. Jaxon isn’t about to be gentle, and I don’t want him to be. My toes grip the bottom bar of the stool, giving me leverage as I rip the knit cap from his head and weave my brown-and-black-painted fingers through his curls, holding on tight as I ride his length.

His mouth falls to my neck, hot and wet. He keeps me balanced with his hands on my waist, gritting his teeth as he pumps into me, quickly bringing me closer to another release.

This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is why it took seven years to feel comfortable with the idea of sex again. Because to act on these urges, to give myself to a man so vulnerably, I need to do it with a full heart. And there’s only been one man who has ever had mine.

My hips rock into him as he uses his grip to deepen each thrust. My skin is covered in a sheen of sweat. Sex fills the air with its sweet and tangy odor. I completely lose myself in this man, who I love more than anything.

“Wait for me, baby,” he rasps.

My lungs fight for air as everything clenches below my waist. “Jaxon, I need—”

His mouth moves over the swell of my breast, covering it with his sticky warmth and sucking. Meanwhile the build climbs closer and closer to the peak.

Jaxon lifts his mouth, bringing me down hard on his lap as everything in me unspools. Every thread rips apart and I’m flying into an abyss, somehow both so full and so weightless that I’m not sure which way is up.

Finally, I land, and I chase my breath as he catches his own, our bodies shaking together, coming down together, breathing together.

God. I love him. So much.