Even as a child, I wasn’t the type to put off unpleasant things.

I did my homework right after school, and I ate my green beans before moving on to the pork loin our chef, Maggie, made just the way I liked it. When I was a freshman in college, I broke things off with my high school girlfriend before I accepted my French teacher’s offer to join her at a retreat she and her husband were hosting at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, where I was first introduced to the delights of power exchange in the bedroom.

But now, as I open my laptop and pull up the saved links, I wish Dakota’s nightmares had left her in peace tonight. I wish she was still asleep in my arms and things had stayed relatively simple for a little longer. I would rather be hate-fucked by this woman than know I’ll never have her in my bed again.

That’s how much I want her back in my life, how much is at stake as I move aside and motion for her to sit down at the desk that looks out over the darkened hills.

Outside, the snow is swirling madly, but so far, the power is still on. Heat still puffs quietly in through the vents, and the high-speed internet connects our isolated mountaintop to the rest of the world in an instant.

“Here,” I say, gesturing for Dakota to take the chair. “Everything’s there.”

Still watching me from the corner of her eye, Dakota sits, tucking my undershirt beneath her ass as she perches on the edge of the seat. Knowing she isn’t wearing panties beneath the tee would be enough to get me hard again if the situation were different, if she weren’t sitting down to view the evidence of how far into hell I had to descend before I learned my lesson.

“What’s this?” She nods toward the screen.

“Read, and then we’ll talk.” I turn to watch the chaos of white churning outside the windows, giving her privacy but staying close enough that she can ask questions if she needs to.

There’s a chance she won’t remember Alyssa. They never met, and I doubt I mentioned my sister more than once or twice. By the time Dakota and I were together, Alyssa and I had been estranged for years, my only sibling the first victim of my inability to see all the perfectly respectable shades of gray between black and white.

Dakota, of course, was the second.

“Oh, no, Garrett.” Dakota’s breath rushes out. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m surprised you remembered her name.” I keep my focus on the storm. “I didn’t talk about her much.”

“No, but I could tell she was important to you. I had no idea this had happened. Truly, I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too. Even though it’s as much my fault as her husband’s.”

Dakota makes an outraged sound. “No, it isn’t. Not even close.”

I lift a shoulder and let it fall.

“No,” she insists. “You can’t honestly believe that, Garrett. That man promised to love and honor her for the rest of her life and then he killed her. You’re nothing like that.”

“Maybe I am,” I confess, my throat tight. “If I hadn’t cut her out of my life, maybe she wouldn’t have gone back to him. Or maybe we would have stayed close enough for me to see things were getting worse and get her out before it was too late.”

A shushing sound—wheels on thick carpet—whispers behind me. A moment later, Dakota’s hands are on my shoulder and my hip, warm through the tee shirt and pajama pants I pulled on. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“Of course I can.” I glance down into her big blue eyes, eyes that are so much more guarded than the ones I used to know. “After Alyssa was murdered, all I wanted was revenge. I was so angry that Roger had shot himself, too. I wanted him alive so I could make him suffer, so I could terrorize him the way he terrorized her.”

Dakota’s forehead furrows. “That’s normal, Garrett. I know how scary it is to feel that way, but it is, I swear. After Bo died, I used to dream about finding the man who put that bomb on the side of the road, and all the things I would do to make him pay for taking my brother away from me.”

“But you didn’t actually go looking for him,” I say, wishing I could skip to the end of this, but knowing she needs—and deserves—the whole story. “You had the sense to keep your revenge fantasies in your head where they belong.”

“Oh, honey…” She rubs her hand back and forth between my shoulder blades, but her touch offers no comfort.

But that’s as it should be. After the things I’ve done, I don’t deserve comfort.

“I tracked down Roger’s brother, the one who bailed him out of jail the day before he killed Alyssa,” I confess, getting the words out as quickly as possible. “And I beat the shit out of him.”

Dakota makes a pained, sympathetic sound I also don’t deserve, so I hurry on. “Then I called in some favors at city hall to get the officer who told Alyssa a restraining order wouldn’t do her any good fired. After that, I went to visit Roger’s mother, the one Alyssa said used to whip him until he was bloody and bruised when he was a kid. I told her she was the reason her son became a jealous, wife-beating, murdering psychopath. I kept at her until she was sobbing, and then I sat there and I watched her fall apart, hoping maybe her tears would fill up the hole inside me.” I shake my head. “But they didn’t.”

“Of course they didn’t.” Dakota kisses my shoulder. “But you were in terrible pain. You’d lost someone you loved to senseless violence. What you did is understandable, Garrett. And it’s forgivable.”

I swallow hard. “You know I’m not great with forgiveness.”

“No, you’re not.” She kisses me again, this time closer to my heart, making my entire body ache with regret.

She is the same kind, generous person she’s always been, even now, with a man who showed her absolutely no mercy.

“Things got worse after that,” I say, the lump in my throat growing thicker. “When I ran out of people to punish, I started blaming myself. And drinking. A lot. I reconnected with some old college friends, who also enjoyed drinking a lot, and we spent the summer dividing our drinking between Manhattan and the Hamptons. Until one morning, I woke up with a raging headache, in bed with a woman I couldn’t remember fucking, and realized what a piece of shit I was.” I exhale sharply. “And at that moment, looking into the mirror at that stranger’s house, all I could think about was you.”

“Because I gave you raging headaches?” She’s obviously trying to lighten the mood, but it’s not time for that yet.

I turn to her, staring down into her still guarded eyes. “No. Because I’d hurt you the same way I hurt Alyssa. But you were alive. And I realized it wasn’t too late to do something more productive than taking my rage out on my liver. That I could give forgiveness a shot, instead.”

“So you forgive me?” Her brows lift skeptically.

“I’m the one who needs forgiving.” I take her hands in mine, a flicker of hope flaring in my chest when she allows me to hold them. “It took four years, losing my sister, and a trip to rock bottom to get my head on straight. But I finally get it. I finally understand that love is more important than my alleged values, or my pride, or the fact that it scared the shit out of me to realize I couldn’t tell when you were lying and when you were telling the truth.”

“I was always telling the truth, Garrett,” she says, her eyes shining. “I never set out to use you or deceive you, it just…happened.” She winces. “I know that’s the world’s weakest excuse, but it’s the truth. I was so young and so swept up in what was happening with us—with falling in love, and all the new things I was experiencing with you—that I wasn’t thinking clearly, not about anything. If I had been, I would have bowed out of writing the story a long time before I finally made that call to my editor. I promise you that. I swear it on Bo’s memory.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I run my hand gently over her head and down to thread through her sleep-tangled curls. Touching her again after so long feels like a miracle, one I’m hoping will stick around after I drop my last bombshell.

“It does,” she insists. “It matters to me.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think lately, Kitten. And I’ve come to realize what they say about forgiveness is true. It can’t change the past, but it can open up the future.” I tighten my grip in her hair. “That’s what I’m interested in. I want the future with you, not the past.”

Her eyes widen before closing tight, shutting me out again. “Jesus, Garrett. You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I do,” I insist. “And I know it’s a lot to ask after so many years apart. But being here with you tonight, it doesn’t feel like years. It feels like picking up where we left off, before all the mistakes.”

She shakes her head slightly, keeping her eyes closed. “But it’s not. I can’t forget, Garrett. I can forgive—I already have, I think—but I can’t forget. I just can’t, no matter how much I might want to.”

“I’m not asking you to forget.” I bend closer, bringing my face level with hers, willing her to look at me and see the things I see, all the reasons we owe it to ourselves to try again. “I’m just asking you to give me another chance. I’m not the man I was before. I know how to listen. And I know good rules can bend without breaking and the rest of the rules were shit rules to begin with.”

Her lips press together, forming a discouraging seam at the center of her pretty face, but I push on anyway.

“And I know that I am never going to love anyone the way I loved you. The way I still love you.”

She looks up at me, eyes wide. “You realize you’re scaring the shit out of me, don’t you? Do you know how hard it is to even think about letting you in again, after how much it—” She breaks off with a shake of her head. “It hurt so much, Garrett. So fucking much. Losing you felt like dying.”

“I’m so sorry.” I kiss her forehead and speak my next words against her skin. “I would do anything to go back and do things differently. But I can’t. But it’s not too late, baby. We can break through again, together. I know we can if you’ll just give me the chance.”