I run after Carter. “You promised!”

He pours himself a Scotch. “I know, sweetie, but I can’t. I have to get the redeye to New York. I have to go tonight.”

I don’t know what to say. He’s been spending so much time in New York, leaving me here with his kids more and more. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just a cheap housekeeper for him. His kids’ nanny.

“Carter, please. Tonight’s an important event for me. It’s such a big night at our center. Please don’t do this to me.”

He gives me a contrite look. “Sweetie, I know. But I can’t do anything about it. I really have to be at this meeting tomorrow. Otherwise the whole deal will fall through. I wish I could change things, but unfortunately, I can’t. I’m so sorry.” And like that’s all there is to it, he sits on the couch and starts reading the paper.

“Is it always going to be like this?” I ask.

He lets the paper fall. “Like what?”

“This. Everything else is more important to you than me.”

He rolls his eyes, clearly annoyed. “Mackenzie, sweetheart, nothing is more important to me than you and the boys. But I can’t do anything about being needed in New York for this deal. I have no idea how else to do this.”

“You’ve been in New York three of the last four weeks.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But at the moment, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You’ve been in New York four out of the past five months.”

“Sweetie, I know you’re angry, but this is my job.”

“Angry, Carter?” I look at him, trying to swallow my anger in order not to scream, trying to see just the facts. “This is starting to feel like a long-distance relationship.”

He gets up, comes toward me, and strokes my arms, up and down, and up and down. “I know, sweetie. And as soon as the deal’s signed, I promise we’ll see more of each other again. But I need you in my corner. I need you to have my back. I couldn’t do all this without you here with the boys. I promise there’ll be better times. As soon as work settles, I’ll be spending more time here in San Diego.” He holds my face, looks into my eyes, and gently kisses me on the lips.

I’m angry about the situation, but I can’t resist him. I kiss him back. Our kiss gets firmer, hotter, more passionate.

When we break apart, he mumbles, “Good girl,” and gives me another gentle peck.

Then he sits back down on the couch, leaving me standing there, thunder struck. “Good girl?” I ask in a pitch only dogs can hear.

“What?” he asks.

I cross my arms. “Did you just call me good girl?” My voice is now as quiet as it was loud just one second ago.

“It’s just an expression,” he says, sounding almost bored.

“Oh, no! It’s completely symptomatic of our relationship! You treat me like…like I’m your housekeeper. Your nanny. Your janitor. Or your cook. You don’t take me seriously. Not my ideas or my wishes—apparently not even me as a person.”

“Stop,” Carter moans. “Why are you blowing things out of proportion? I apologize for calling you a good girl.” He smiles at me, wheedling past my ire. I feel myself cooling down. “Honest,” he adds, “it was just my way of saying I’m satisfied.”

My rage boils up again. “Satisfied?” I spit out. “Oh, did I satisfy my master? What a good little dog I am.” I keep telling myself to stay calm, that freaking out and screaming at him won’t do any good. Screaming has never solved any problem, right?

But damn, does it feel good.

“Jesus, Mackenzie!” he groans. “Don’t twist my every fucking word! Stop taking my words the wrong way and getting mad!”

“Oh, now you’re trying to tell me how to feel?” That’s the thing with angry fighting: one thing leads to another until you’re yelling about something completely different and questioning the foundation of your entire relationship.

“I’m not telling you how to feel!” Carter snaps. “And I don’t want to argue! I have to be at the airport in less than an hour. I just want some peace and quiet. Is that asking too much?” His eyes gleam, but he somehow manages to stay calm.

Me? Not so much. “If you don’t want trouble, don’t talk down to me like that!”

“Mackenzie,” he says, and it sounds like a warning.

But I don’t stop. “You’re doing it again!”

He jumps up. “What is your fucking problem? You’re acting like a child! I always thought you were a mature adult, but I was obviously wrong.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Carey and Hunter standing in the entrance hall, watching us. I want to stop fighting—I don’t want to stress them out.

I raise my hands. “Carter…”

But now he’s mad. “I’m sick of it, do you hear me? I’m really sick of you making me feel guilty for doing my job all the time.” We both know he’s being unfair. I’ve never complained about this before. “I can’t help it if I can’t hold your hand every time you have to give a talk or a class or some other shit.”

“Shit? You’re calling my work shit?” I ask, shocked.

He runs a hand through his hair. “Everything can’t be about you! That’s something you learn when you grow up! You have to compromise and take a step back sometimes. My job’s demanding. But you knew that from the start, and not once have you ever complained about the goddamn money.”

His words hit me like a whip. “Excuse me? I have never asked you for a single penny!”

“Oh, really? And are you paying rent?”

I’ve obviously hit a nerve, triggered something he’s struggling with. Things from his marriage, maybe. Maybe he feels like Lauren used him. Maybe. And yet… My stomach turns. It’s a trigger for me, too.

It all comes flooding back to me. I feel worthless. Stuck. Are we just two hurt people who can’t get out of this?

“No, of course not!” Carter hasn’t noticed the feelings coursing through me. “Why should you?” he barrels on, his voice getting louder. “I have the money to make your life better. And I love doing it! But the very least I expect in return is for you to stop making me feel guilty for working!”

“This is not about money!” I shout. “It’s about you thinking that what I do has no value whatsoever.”

“Value?” He scoffs. “Your salary is laughable, Mackenzie! You can only afford doing what you do because I pay all your bills.”

“You can’t measure everything in financial terms!”

He laughs mockingly. “Oh, sweetie. Don’t be so naive! Money rules the world. I don’t have an issue with paying your bills, but stop lying to yourself. You’re living off of me. And I need to earn it, which is why I have to go to New York.”

I look at the floor and swallow. “So you think I’m with you for your money?”

“No,” he says, his voice quieter, but no less firm. “I know you love me. But that doesn’t change the facts. And the fact is, financially speaking, your job is pointless. Which means this whole discussion is pointless, because I can’t cancel my meeting tomorrow to go to your little event. Unlike you, I can’t afford the luxury of working for fun.”

This is only our second fight, but I never thought we were like this. Carter has always been the perfect gentleman, always considerate, always careful not to hurt me. Not because he knows what happened to me—I’ve never found the right moment to tell him—but because somehow, he’s always been able to sense when he needed to walk on eggshells around me. And now, he’s learned to wield that sense like a weapon, too. Maybe we’ll get better at disagreeing at some point, but maybe, just maybe, the essence of a fight is to try to hurt the other person. In which case Carter is good at this already.

“So you think it’s worthless, me helping women raped and abused by their husbands?” I ask, shaking my head. “There’s no value in it for you when I help kids abused by their parents? There’s no value in it for you when I help mothers terrorized—”

“I said there was no financial value in it,” he snaps. “Don’t twist my words again!”

I jab a finger at him. “That is the coldest and most cruel thing anyone has ever said to me. How dare you?”

“I’m sick of this shit!” Carter advances on me and grabs my upper arms. “This fight is absolutely pointless! Your naive attitude toward life only works for you because others are paying for your shit.” His grip is squeezing harder and harder. “I don’t have time for this childish crap. Grow up!”

“You’re hurting me,” I say quietly, evenly, fear a solid thing in my chest.

“Dad, let her go!” It’s Hunter. He’s beside us suddenly, about to interfere, when Carter releases me. The look on his face is suddenly embarrassed.

“I-I didn’t mean to do that.”

Nodding, I rub my arms.

“Sweetie…”

The phone rings, shattering this awkward tension, and he…answers it.

Shaking my head, unable to believe he just took that call, I turn around hurry upstairs. In our bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, letting myself slide onto the floor. I try to fight my tears, but they’re stronger than me. Hugging my legs, I rest my forehead on my knees and let my emotions flow freely.

* * *

There’s a knock on the door. “Mac?” Hunter says quietly.

I don’t answer, hoping he’ll think I’ve fallen asleep. The fight was bad, but the emotions and memories it brought up are worse.

Worthless. I feel worthless again.

It has taken me so long, too long, to understand my value as a person—that I don’t need to do anything, accomplish anything, to be worthy of other people’s respect. That it’s a basic right for every human being.

The door slowly opens.

“Go away,” I mumble.

He looks down in surprise, to where I’m still sitting on the floor. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. Yeah. I’m fine.”

He comes in and sits down next to me. “Are you lying?”

“No, why would I lie?” I say, wiping snot from my face with my sleeve.

“Mac—”

“It’s okay, Hunter.”

“No, nothing’s okay, doll.” For a moment, he’s quiet. “He said a lot of mean things.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“But it’s true.”

“Stay out of this. He’s your dad.” I look at the floor. “I have to fight my own battles.”

I can feel his fingertips on my chin, light as feathers. Gently, he turns my face toward him, looking me in the eye. “I would fight every battle for you till the end of time.”

“Hunter. Don’t.”

He swallows. “That’s just how it is.”

“You can’t say something like that to me. I’m your father’s girlfriend. Not yours.”

His hand moves from my chin to my cheek, and he stretches his palm along my jaw. It would be so easy to let myself fall into his warmth, but I can’t.

I pull away from his touch, putting disappointment in his eyes.

We sit there, silent, until, at some point, he asks, “What happened to you, Mac?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something really bad happened to you. Your tattoo…”

“They’re just flowers,” I say.

He shakes his head. “Not that one.” He raises my wrist, taps his finger on my watch. “I mean this one.”

I swallow. I never show that tattoo to anybody. I don’t know if Carter’s ever seen it. Maybe while I was swimming or showering, but he’s never asked about it.

Has he ever noticed it? I wonder.

Suddenly, it seems really important to know if he has. Why hasn’t Carter ever asked about it, yet Hunter is right here, asking all the right questions? Does Carter… Does he even care about me?

Almost immediately, I feel guilty for thinking the thought. Carter’s not usually like he was today. I’ve never seen him like that before.

I shrug. “Just some words.”

Hunter nods. “It says ‘free at last.’”

“Hunter…”

“That’s the name of the place you work. Coincidence?”

“I…”

“Something bad happened to you, Mac. I can’t forget about the things you said on the rage mountain.”

I close my eyes, and a tear rolls down my cheek.

“You work with abused women. You’re too young to have been married before. And you don’t have a child old enough to victimize you. The only thing left is that you were abused by your parents.”

Right. He’s right. Too right for my peace of mind. “I can’t tell you,” I whisper.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be fair to put that on you.”

“Recently I told Devon something that I’d been keeping locked up inside. It wasn’t easy, but God did I feel better afterward.”

I nod. “I know it helps to talk. I was in therapy. That’s how I found the center. But I can’t talk about this to you.”

“Why not?” he asks again.

I gently touch his cheek, and he leans into my hand. “Because you’re too young. You have your whole life ahead of you. I’m not going to throw some horrible truth at you that has nothing to do with you and you couldn’t change even if you wanted to.”

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he says, gulping audibly, “but I love you.”

My heart stops.

“I know you don’t feel the same way, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you. You’re under my skin. So everything about you has something to do with me.”

I look at him in awe. How could a seventeen-year-old be so brave? One of the hardest things in life is making yourself vulnerable and confessing your love to someone—especially when you know the other person doesn’t feel the same.

My heart breaks at the thought of breaking his. I will never feel that way about him. But I can give him a part of me that nobody outside my friends at the gym actually knows.

“When I was twelve, I went to the lake with my big sister,” I said, willing my voice not to shake. “It was hot, so we went to go for a swim. We ran around, playing pranks on each other, just the usual. Then I begged her to go up to the diving cliff with me. We used to do it all the time, jumping off together. But, one time, we dove in holding hands, but her hand slipped from mine in the water, and when I came up again, she was gone. She just didn’t come back up. I called her name, I looked everywhere, I dove again and again. The water was really muddy, so I couldn’t see anything, but I combed the area, stretching out my hands to feel for her. Again and again, I dove down to find her. But I couldn’t find her. I started panicking, screaming at her that it wasn’t funny anymore. I begged her to come up. But she didn’t. I couldn’t leave her—I probably dove down another thirty times, screaming, crying, trying to find her.

“At some point, I swam back to shore and ran home. I told my parents what happened, and they ran up to the lake. My dad swam out looking for her. The police and some fire trucks came. A search-and-rescue squad went looking for her—they looked all over the lake. When they…they finally pulled her out…she was all blue. She’d gotten tangled up in something on the bottom of the lake. I don’t know what it was. I couldn’t hear the diver. They wouldn’t let me go near her. They held me back, and I collapsed there on the shore, trying to get to her. My big sister. Helen.” Tears are running down my cheeks now, and I register that Hunter grabbed my hand at some point and hasn’t let go.

“Mom and Dad fell apart after that. Our family fell apart. A therapist came and talked to us, told me it wasn’t my fault. But I knew better. If I hadn’t suggested we go diving… If I had kept looking for her a little longer… If I’d been more careful… If I’d tried harder… It was my fault. I killed my sister. The therapist tried to help me, but I didn’t believe her.” I swallow and wipe away my tears, though there’s no point—they just keep coming.

“A few weeks later, I dropped a plate. My mom was fuming, came stomping into the kitchen, yelling about how I just had to break everything. She slapped me. Really hard. I was shocked, completely speechless. I couldn’t even react to it. Eventually, I cried, gathered up the broken pieces, and went to hide in my bed. When my dad got home, he could hear me crying and came to my room. He took me in his arms, stroked my back, calmed me down. I snuggled up to him, grateful for his comfort. And then, suddenly, I could feel his hand under my nightie. He…he reached for my breasts, which were just starting to grow.”

Hunter’s hand closes tighter around mine, and I look up to see him staring at me in shock. I squeeze his hand back, grateful for his support. I don’t know if I could keep talking if he wasn’t there giving me silent strength.

“I didn’t know what to do,” I whisper. “I said no, but he said it was okay, he’d been doing it to Helen, too, and she’d always liked it. His fingers moved down my panties, and that night he didn’t go any further, but soon enough, he…”

“Oh my God,” Hunter says quietly, pulling me toward him. “You don’t have to keep going.”

But the dam has been broken, and it’s hard to stop the flood. “He came into my room every night to touch me. When I was fourteen, he raped me for the first time. My mom knew about it, but instead of helping me, she kept hitting me…throwing abuse at me.”

“Did you try to stop him?” Hunter asks quietly.

I swallow and shake my head. “I believed it was my punishment for killing my sister.”

I can see in his eyes that my words are breaking his heart. “When did it stop?”

“I ran away one year later. The police caught me and thought all the injuries were suspicious. I was examined, and they found sperm. They did a DNA test. My father was arrested. Because I wasn’t sixteen yet, it was a Class-C crime, and he got ten years. I guess he’s probably done them by now. My mother was arrested, too, but only got two years on probation, since she never broke my bones or burned me or anything. Apparently bruising me with a frying pan didn’t count.”

After a while, Hunter asks, “What happened after that?”

“I was put in the system, lived with foster parents. I was in therapy, but it didn’t really help. I was so angry with the world. With my parents, society, myself. I kept flipping out, and my aggressive behavior made it hard to find friends. I was always lonely.”

I swallow. “But I was good in school, because I knew it was my only chance. I got a scholarship to go to college here. At first, I thought everything was going to be great once I went to college. But, actually, it just stayed the same. Until I found the center. Shane, my boss, opened the door for me, and the combination of exercise and therapy worked wonders. I found a way to let go of my aggression, and I had somebody to guide me through the process. I had no money, so I worked reception to pay for it. After just a few weeks, I was feeling so much better I was convinced their methods worked. I changed my major so I could help other women going through similar stuff.”

Hunter puts an arm around my shoulder and gives me a serious look. “Your job is important.”

“Thank you,” I say quietly. “Shane saved my ass. I don’t know where I’d be without him.”

“Your trust in me makes me happy,” he says. “Thank you for trusting me with your past. Did you ever get in touch with your parents again?”

I shake my head. “No, but I know my mom died.”

“Would you hate it if I killed your dad?”

I look up at him. His eyes are burning with rage. “Hunter, I didn’t tell you that story for you to avenge my pain.”

He strokes my cheek. “I know.”

“There’s no point living in the past.”

He smiles. “Don’t worry, doll. I won’t go looking for him.”

I start to nod just as I feel his lips on mine. Very gently. Soothingly.

In a fit of mental fog, I lean into the kiss. He takes it as a sign and pushes his mouth firmer onto mine. I open my lips and take in his tongue. His hands hold my head, and my hands claw at his shirt. He deepens the kiss, waking every cell in my skin. I’ve never been kissed like this before—so full of hunger, full of passion, full of life. Everything inside me tingles, my lips already swollen, but I can’t stop kissing him.

Oh my God, can seventeen-year-old boys kiss!

And that’s the thought that snaps me out of it. He’s seventeen. He is Carter’s son. I am cheating on my boyfriend with his own child.

I break away. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asks, a small smile on his lips.

“I can’t.”

The smile disappears. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“This can’t happen again. Please, Hunter. Promise.”

I can tell he doesn’t want to. He sighs softly. “I can’t promise that, but I can promise I won’t initiate it.”