I took her to Brady’s with a few suitcases of clothes, some photos and a few childhood memories. That’s all she wanted from her father’s suite.

She said that as we left, called it her father’s place. Like she’d never belonged.

And in a way, Kitty never had. Not after her mother had been killed and her father had been twisted from the roots up into growing crooked and into the darkness, away from the sun.

Not after he’d turned his back on her.

I’d seen her shatter then, into a million pieces, but I did what I could to help keep her together.

At Brady’s I held her tight in the bed, let her cry it out and tell me everything she needed to get out of her before it poisoned her. When you have that much emotion and those many secrets, keeping them inside and away from the sun lets them grow until they thread themselves through your heart and rot until you crumble.

She paused finally, settled down and started to kiss me. I tasted her salty tears on her lips and my heart raged for her pain. If there was anything I could do to heal her then, I would have done it, but my years in prison had taught me that the human mind does things at its own pace. All I could do would be to provide safety and love until she mended her wounds on her own.

She stopped suddenly, broke away from my mouth and laughed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Charles,” she snickered. “Your name is Charles.”

“My full name is Charles Edward Malone, if you must know…Miss Kitty Donatello.”

“Okay, confession time but you can’t laugh.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“My full name is Christina Maria Seraphina Donatello.”

I felt a chuckle growing in my chest but suppressed it. She looked at me from where she was laying across me, my arms around her. A smile tugged on my lips but I did my best to fight it.

“What?”

Her gaze met mine and it nearly killed me to not laugh at her. I took a breath and said, “Nothing.”

“Come on, I can feel how much you tensed up. What do you have to say about it?”

“Were the Nina and the Pinta already taken?”

She narrowed her eyes and I honestly thought she was going to cry. But she surprised me, she didn’t. She playfully punched my shoulder and said, “Whatever…Chuck.”

And then she laughed. And I laughed.

And we laughed together, winding ourselves in each other’s arms, tickling and nibbling and kissing until we were both out of breath.

And her tears were gone.

“I needed that,” she smiled. “But why the name Hatch?”

“When I was young, I was a nervous kid. I was always looking for an escape. So, escape hatch.”

“Makes sense.”

“Why Kitty?”

“Because when I was really little, I couldn’t say Christina, so it sounded like Kitty.”

“That is freaking adorable,” I said and kissed the tip of her nose. “So freaking adorable.”

“So are you.”

“Not many people would think of adorable when they see me.”

“Most people don’t know you,” she replied and wiggled up to kiss me again.

The languid movement of her body on mine had me hard in seconds, and she noticed. God, did my kitten notice.

We were naked within no time and making sure both of us forgot about the wounds of the past and made each other feel good enough that we existed in the moment.

She was my everything, she became my past, my moment and my future, all rolled into one gorgeous, sexy package. We spent that night at Brady’s, and the next, until we figured out what we were going to do.

California it was, not on a Harley like I’d always imagine me riding off into the sunset with the woman I loved, but in a beat up old truck, her luggage in the back covered with a tarp and tied down tight.

I wasn’t sure where the road would take us, Kitty and Hatch, two people from different walks of life but carrying similar wounds. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t care.

As we headed south, the music blasting, the windows down and the hot air blowing through the truck, our hair whipping to and fro and our voices sore from singing so loud, I did care about one thing.

I cared that I had my kitten by my side, and I cared that we were going to be together until the end of our days.

I would have her with me, next to me, in my heart and in my soul, until I drew my last breath.

And that was pretty damned special.