“My mom died when I was about ten,” he began. “Cancer. It was just…yeah, she was gone, but the funny thing was when she died, I was relieved for her.”

My eyes widened.

“My dad used to beat her up all the time and she was always black and blue. The neighbors knew, everyone knew, but no one could do anything.”

“I’m so sorry, Jesse.”

“Yeah, it causes me to react badly whenever men are rough with women. I can’t bear it. It makes me remember how helpless I was as a child.”

Suddenly, his fury at the two times when men had tried to manhandle me made sense.

He fell silent again for a long moment, and I was about to open my mouth to prompt more out of him, but then he began speaking again, this time faster, like the words were cascading out from some place he’d worked so hard to keep them all locked up in all these years. “Anyway,” he went on, “Me and my brother, Wayne, did our best after mom died. There’d never been a lot of money in the family since Dad spent it all on booze and drugs. The two of us went out to work, and did all the jobs we could to keep the house together as we got older. But Dad was becoming worse. He was a mean drunk and made us give him money. We could barely get by. We got bullied in school because we never had nice clothes or the right books, so it became, like me and Wayne against the world. And especially against Dad. And then he started getting more and more violent. It was okay for a while, because we both knew his hot buttons and we stayed clear until he was so plastered he passed out on the couch, but then he started going after Wayne. Once he even pulled a knife on him. I think he was a little scared of Wayne and wanted him to remember his place, you know? So they started fighting all the time and I just tried to keep out of their way, stay at school, or at work as long as I could.”

I took a deep breath and squeezed his hand while shaking inside as Jesse paused.

“But then, one night, when Wayne was at work, Dad came after me. I had just turned sixteen and I guess he thought I was a fair target now that I was big enough to fight back. He really went for me. Came from the back and whacked me hard around the head. Out of nowhere like that, he just completely caught me off-guard. He pulled out his gun and aimed it at me. He was cursing, swearing and mouthing off about how useless I was, and I thought he was going to kill me, I really did.” Jesse stopped speaking and gulped air.

I realized that my heart was pounding in my chest as I listened to him speak. I was trembling too, mostly with anger, at the thought of what that asshole of a father had done to those two boys when they had needed him the most. If I ever got anywhere near him, there was going to be trouble.

“He even put his finger on the trigger. That was when Wayne walked in on us, and he…fuck—he went hog-wild. I’d never seen him like that. He was like a mad man. His eyes went black. He knocked the gun out of my father’s hand and the two of them started fighting. My dad was swinging blows and Wayne was mostly trying to evade him, but once Wayne pushed him against the mantle over the fire. Dad hit his head and—”

Silence.

My skin seemed to tense and tighten as he spoke, the horror sinking in. I knew at once, what he was trying to tell me.

“We didn’t know what to do with the body. We panicked.” He shook his head. “We were stupid. We waited till it was the middle of the night and then we took him out, tied him to the wheel of his car, and drove the car into a lake outside of town. And that was that. We told everyone Dad had just upped and left one night. He was horrible to everybody so nobody cared, anyway.”

“And that’s when you moved to Cold Creek?” I breathed the words out.

He nodded. “Wayne thought it was best for me to get out of town. And he was right. Wayne was caught up in all sorts of shit himself with a local biker gang, and he didn’t want me anywhere near it. So he just told social services that Dad had abandoned us and that I needed somewhere new to live.”

So that was how they ended up in Cold Creek. And to think, back then, I had been so damn sure that this man was the epitome of swagger, confidence, and cool. When all he was doing was just crushing down a mess of emotions within him every single day just to survive.

“Now you know why I never let anyone get too close,” he admitted. “I was worried. Fuck Mia, what if I have a wife and kids and then they drained that lake, found him, and put the pieces together? What if Wayne was to turn up again, and tell me that we needed to go on the run? And what if I have kids, and they find out? How will they live knowing they’ve got a murderer as a father? I couldn’t do that to anyone I loved, so I never let myself get close to any woman. That’s why I have the garage too. It’s honest, it’s quiet, and nobody bothers me all the way out there.”

“Have you heard from Wayne recently?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not for nearly a year now. He went and got involved with some heavy shit and he stays away from me to keep it away from me.”

I fell silent again, my mind racing. All of this was so much to take in. His father died in a horrible accident, and he and his brother had hidden the body in a lake, and came to my small town looking for a safe haven. Where he had found it for nearly ten years. It looked as if he hadn’t told a single soul about this until now. As he’d been speaking, it seemed as though the words coming out of his mouth were unfamiliar to him, fresh and new, like he’d never imagined he would actually have to come out and speak them.

“No one in their right mind would have blamed either of you,” I spoke slowly, almost reverently.

He shook his head. “You’re wrong. Everyone would have blamed my brother. He was a known troublemaker. Anyway, isn’t that the cardinal sin; you’re not allowed to take down your own blood?”

“But that goes for your father as well,” I pointed out fiercely, suddenly feeling a deep urge to protect that teenage version of Jesse who’d grown up beneath the thumb of such a monstrous man. “He was the one who hurt his wife and sons. He was the one who came after you.”

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Nothing anyone says or does can change the past.”

“Listen to me, Jesse. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I argued fiercely. “You didn’t know what you were doing, neither of you did. You were kids. When I think back how I was when I was fifteen, I was just a child who had every privilege handed to her on a plate. You needed support after your mother died, and instead you got…” I trailed off. There weren’t words for how awful their father had been to them, not in my whole vocabulary. I squeezed his hand again, conveying my anger on his behalf as best I could. “You shouldn’t have to live with the fear of this anymore,” I murmured. “We need to do something to fix it.”

He said nothing so I touched his face and tilted it around until he was looking at me. It felt like I was seeing him for the first time. “Hey, we’re going to find a way to fix things, okay? We’re going to find a way to make this better.”

“I don’t see how,” he muttered, his jaw clenched. “I can’t take the risk of Wayne being hurt by anything I do. It will just have to be a secret that will die with me.”

“No, it has to come out. Otherwise, you will never be free. You will always be living with the fear of a knock on your door.” I closed my eyes and felt that familiar feeling swell up inside me, even though I knew I should have ignored it—that now wasn’t the time. “I love you,” I blurted out. Then for a long, quiet moment, I was sure I’d just said the damn stupidest thing I could’ve ever said.

To my surprise, once the shock had faded from his face, Jesse’s eyes softened as he brought his fingers to my face and stroked my cheek gently. “Oh, Mia, Mia…I love you too,” he murmured.

I smiled. “Really?”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

“When did you know?”

“I always knew you were special and I used to masturbate to the picture of you in our yearbook.”

“Ugh, you pervert,” I teased.

“I know. I was so in lust, but then you turned me down and I convinced myself you were just a spoiled rich girl.”

I frowned. “I turned you down because I thought you just wanted to add me to your list of conquests.”

He rubbed his jaw. “Wow! What a missed opportunity that was?”

I grinned. “Yeah, but then I came back to your garage.”

“And how you came back. Hell, I couldn’t even think straight when I saw that bead of sweat that ran down your neck and into the valley between your breasts.”

I laughed. “Are you serious? You were getting turned on by me sweating?”

“You think I’m joking. You were the girl I had jacked off to, all through high school and you were standing in front of me in a tight white tank top and all I could think of was you on top of me without the tank top, sweating.”

“Yeah, but when did you know you loved me?” I asked eagerly.

“I think I knew I was falling for you when we were in the shower. When I kissed you and it felt like you had reached into my stomach and squeezed it. All I could do after that was tell myself I couldn’t let you get close or I would hurt you with my past. But it killed me when I woke up and found you gone. I realized that what I’d said and not said the night before had been what made you leave.”

“So why did it take you so long to come find me then?”

“Because I didn’t want you to be with a mechanic. I wanted to give you all the things you had grown up with, taken for granted.”

I put my fingers against his lips to stop him from carrying on, but he caught my hand and moved it away. “This needs to be said, Mia.”

“Okay, but you’re wrong. I don’t need any of that stuff. Look around you. I could have been living in the biggest apartment in the best part of town, but I wanted to make it on my own steam. I don’t care about money. I would be happy with you anywhere. Even back in Cold Creek.”

“Would you be happy in Silicon Valley?”

I jerked my head back. “Silicon Valley? What do you mean?”

“Well, after you left, I realized I wanted you to be proud of me and more than anything, I wanted to give you everything I could. I wanted to take care of you and I definitely didn’t want you to try to live off the meager money I made from running the garage. It was okay for me, but it wouldn’t have been okay for you, so I followed my dream.”

I stared at him. “What dream?”

“You know how I’ve always loved cars and motorbikes. Well, some years ago I started designing an electric motorbike. Not a functional one, but something the world has never seen before. It’s a work of art. So I sent a DM on Twitter to Elon Musk and attached a part of my design. I said I had a very interesting proposal for him and would he be interested. He got back to me within twenty-four hours. I was on a plane to meet him in three hours and he hired me on the spot.”

I threw my arms around his neck. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it. That is so amazing.” Yes, this was a mess, a bigger mess than I had ever anticipated finding him in, but now we had the foundations to build a life upon. And my mind was already racing with what exactly we could do to make the past right after all this time. I was determined that we were going to be happy together. We’re going to watch our kids grow big and tall and when we were done with that, we were going to watch our grandkids grow.