I lay on Jack’s couch for the rest of the day because he wasn’t around and I didn’t feel like talking to anyone else. I shut off my phone and just lay there, telling myself I wasn’t making some sort of mistake, that I hadn’t just blown up my entire career. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get the same sort of job I’d just walked away from, knew I would never be on the fast track for junior partner again—if I ever was—but I couldn’t convince myself that I hadn’t done the right thing.

There had to be a way to save Violet from Vincent West.

I ran it over in my head for hours, hitting walls with every idea that came up. It didn’t help that I was distracted by Bo. I half hoped he would come running after me when I finished that speech, but he didn’t. And he clearly wasn’t looking for me because it was no secret that I was hiding out in here.

Maybe he didn’t want what I had to offer. Maybe he simply wasn’t interested in a life with me. And that just made me want to fall into a funk and never get up again.

Maybe this telling the truth bullshit wasn’t all it was made out to be.

“I think I’ll join a convent and take my vows of celibacy,” I said when Jack walked into the office.

He laughed. “I don’t think it works that way, kid. You can’t just turn to the church when it’s convenient for you.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yeah, until Bo comes around. Then you’ll want to turn your back on the church.”

“He’s never going to come around.”

“If what I saw this morning means anything, I think he already has.”

“And what did you see?”

“You in distress and him running to your aid. He wanted to go out and kill that cop. And he fired Kyle.”

“He fired him? Why?”

“Because he wasn’t following you closely enough to intervene with that cop. You could have been killed in the time it took them to get there.”

“It’s not his fault! We snuck out of the guesthouse. We were lucky they were following us at all.”

“Yes, well, he’s better trained than that. He should have been there.”

There was anger in Jack’s voice when he said it. I tilted my head slightly, watching him.

“You’re upset about what happened to me this morning.”

“Of course, I am. You’re my sister.”

I studied his face for a long moment. “No, it’s more than that.”

He shot me a dirty look before moving around his desk to put down the laptop he’d been carrying. He sank down into his chair and sighed, running his fingers through his hair.

“This whole thing with the motorcycle clubs…and we’re trying to get approval to build on our own fucking land! How many hoops does the city want us to jump through?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That permit you’re working on isn’t the only thing we’re trying to get done. And Leonard is in over his head. He’s a fucking tax attorney! He doesn’t know anything about this stuff.”

“Why would you hire a tax attorney to run the legal department of a private security firm anyway?”

“Because he’s a friend and I trust him. And his expertise came in handy when we were first starting.”

“Because you were setting up a business. You’re set up now, brother.”

“I won’t argue this with you again, Remy,” he said, sitting up as he began organizing his desk. “But I will ask if you think you could help with some of this paperwork. We need to have this all done in the next few weeks so that we can break ground the first of July.”

“Why the rush?”

“Because Gentry’s coming home and he wants to supervise the project for us. There’ll be nothing for him to supervise if we haven’t even broken ground when he gets home.”

“Gentry’s coming home?” I jumped up off the couch and crossed the room. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Because you’re so pissed at him, I didn’t think you’d care.”

“Why wouldn’t I care? He’s my brother.”

“You’re pretty pissed at him for not telling you about re-enlisting.”

“I can be mad and still care about him.”

Jack shrugged, dusting his hands as he stood, snatching up his keys before heading toward the door. “I’m out of here. Let me drive you to the guesthouse.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

“You shouldn’t be driving around on your own right now, Rems. And I want you to stay at the guesthouse.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

He shook his head, laughter dancing in his eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you. I hope Bo hurries up and takes you off my hands.”

I laughed because I liked seeing my brother so frustrated by me. And I liked the reassurance of his arm draped over my shoulders. Most of all, I liked that both Brent and Jack were so clearly aware of my feelings for Bo and his for me and that they seemed to be behind the idea of us being together.

If only Bo would just get in line.

*

I cook when I’m upset. I raided the kitchen in the main house before heading down to the guesthouse, stealing steaks and raw garlic and French bread, already thinking of the delicious dishes that would put an extra five pounds around my waist by the end of the night. If I had free time and a few cookbooks, I could be the next Julia Child, complete with the extra fifty pounds. And I’d be happy as a clam, too.

I turned on Spotify and danced to a few choice tunes as I cooked, pressing the garlic to the beat of 18 Wheeler and tenderizing the steaks to Missundaztood. I was doing a particularly creative spin with a bowl of potatoes in my hands when I realized I was no longer alone.

“How long have you been there?” I demanded, slamming the potatoes down harder than I’d intended, burning the back of my hand when some of them splashed onto it.

“You looked so perfect, I couldn’t interrupt.”

Bo took the bowl out of my hand and presented me with a cool towel to soothe my burn.

I glared at him. “You can’t just sneak up on someone trying to cook.”

“Sorry.”

But he didn’t look terribly sorry. He looked downright amused.

“I’m glad my pain makes you so happy.”

That wiped the laughter from his eyes. “I think we need to talk.”

I shook my head. “We already talked. Now we’re just waiting on you to get over yourself.”

He snorted. “You always think that your word it the last word. But it’s not.”

“I think I said everything that needed to be said.”

“No. You said what you needed to say. You don’t necessarily speak for me.”

I regarded him for a long moment, wanting to scream and laugh all at the same time. Was he saying he agreed with me, he just wanted to put in his two cents? Or was he saying that I was completely wrong and he was here to set me straight?

Why would he bother?

But the fear still trickled down my spine, setting up painfully in the center of my chest. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Do we have to do this now? I was about to put a couple of steaks on the grill.”

“I think it would be best if we did.”

“Okay.”

I leaned back against the counter and put on my poker face, the one they teach you to use when you’re in court, trying to pretend that I wasn’t completely sure the next words out of his mouth would break my heart in a million different ways. I’d taken a chance and this was where it’d led me. To heartache, to profound sadness. To the end of my whole world.

I couldn’t even look at him.

“I heard what you said, Remy. You’ve been saying it for the last year, ever since you came back to Memphis and I’ve been trying not to hear it. But I did today.” He stepped toward me. “And you’re right about my childhood. It messed with my head, made me believe things that I know aren’t true. But you don’t just overcome shit like that. The negative is always so much louder than the positive.”

I nodded because this was exactly what I’d expected to hear. But then he took my hands.

“I love you, Remy.”

His voice was low, so low that I almost had to ask him to repeat himself. But it was there, written all over his face.

“You are exactly what I need. I’ve always known that. I just…I love you so much that I want you to have the best of everything and I wasn’t sure that that could be me.”

“Bo—”

“Let me finish,” he said, touching a finger to my lips that hesitated on my lower lip. “I let you talk without interruption.”

I nodded, a tear spilling over the edge of my bottom eyelid.

“I went to the military, joined your brothers at Stone, because I thought it would make me a good man, make me the kind of man who would be worthy of your love. I had all these goals in mind, these things I needed to achieve before I could ask you to take a chance on me. Today...today you made me see that what I was doing was just putting off and potentially risking our happiness.” He brushed a finger over my cheek, wiping away the tears that had come to join the first. “I kept telling myself that you deserved someone better and that it would serve me right if you went and married some lawyer or doctor or whatever. But I never really believed that was a possibility until the other night, until you mentioned that Chris guy. And then today, when you said what you did…it kills me to think of you with someone else.”

“I don’t want anyone else.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then what are we going to do about this?”

“Your mom told me once that sometimes you just have to shut your eyes and take a leap. She said you had to have faith that the fall won’t be nearly as bad as you assumed it would be. So…” He cupped my jaw in the curve of his hand, lifting my chin so that our eyes were looking deeply into one another, so that our lips were a breath from each other. “I think it’s time we take a leap and see where this fall takes us.”

“We’re not going to fall. We’re going to soar.”

He groaned. “I love your optimism.”

Our lips brushed, one of those kisses that was more breathing against each other than kissing. But then he came back for a genuine touch, a welcome invasion, and my heart quivered in my chest, once again whole and so full of him that it could hardly function. I slipped my arms around his neck and ran a hand over the back of his skull, memorizing the shape and size of it, getting to know every bump, every irregularity. I wanted to memorize everything about him, wanted to know him in the dark, wanted to know every secret he’d kept from me.

“Will they keep?”

I looked at him, completely confused by the question.

“The steaks,” he added, laughter again dancing in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

That was all the answer he needed. He swept me up in his arms and walked out of the kitchen, carrying me up the stairs like I weighed absolutely nothing. I knew where he was taking me the moment we rounded the top—knew it like I knew my own name.

When we were kids, the six of us used this house like it was our private clubhouse—which annoyed the crap out of our dad who had the house built as an escape for him and Mom—playing in its intimate rooms with more abandon than was allowed in the main house. We each had a favorite spot where we spent the majority of our time. Jack and Brent preferred the master bedroom, Aiden the dark seclusion of the basement. Gentry was a fan of the back garden until he hit adolescence; then he preferred the bedroom on the south side with the big windows and the even bigger bed. I had a special affinity for the bedroom in the back, a little room that was almost like an afterthought—kind of like me, the kid born five years after the last—tucked into a space away from all the other upstairs rooms.

It was just a box of a room, probably the kind of room where they stashed the maid in years long past. Just big enough for a queen-sized bed and a dresser. The window was pitiful compared to the great, expansive windows in all the other rooms. It was dark so much of the time, making it almost impossible to read or draw, two of my favorite pastimes as a child. But it was quiet, away from the activity that always seemed to be buzzing in a family with five children. And it was where I’d found Bo once on a rainy afternoon years and years ago, angry and hurt and wet, curled up on the bed, shivering. Even at ten, I knew something bad had happened. That was all I understood. I never asked him what had happened, never asked if he needed help, if he wanted to talk about it. Instinctively, I knew he’d come there because he didn’t want those things. It seemed enough for him that I was there, kneeling on the floor, holding his hand.

This was the room where a bond formed between the two of us. It was the room where our relationship changed, where it slowly began to evolve. It was in this room where what was blooming today first began. It was only right that he brought me here now.

He pushed the door open with the toe of his shoe, turning me slightly so that we could both fit through the narrow threshold at the same time. He paused, taking in the small room with the eyes of a grown man who hadn’t been here in a long time. When his eyes fell to my face, I could see the same memories that were playing in my head were dancing in his. He kissed the center of my forehead before setting me back on my feet. We stood together just inside that room for a long moment, drinking each other in.

We moved together as if on some unspoken cue, his hands slipping over my face as they moved slowly down to my waist, tugging at the blouse tucked quickly into my skirt this morning. I pushed at his suit coat, wanting it off of him, wanting to see those powerful arms stretching the material of his perfectly pressed dress shirt. He reluctantly let go of me to allow the jacket to fall from his arms, his hands back on my blouse in an instant, stubbornly tugging it upward until I, too, was forced to give up what I wanted for a moment to allow him to strip the material from my arms. I could see the spark of appreciation, of desire, ignite in his eyes as he exposed my breasts in nothing but the thin cups of my bra. But I was more interested in getting that damn noose of a tie off his neck so I could loosen the buttons that kept his flesh from my view.

He rested his hands on my hips as I worked at his shirt, his thumbs caressing the bare skin just above my waist as he waited with a patience that must have cost him. My fingers were shaking, refusing to work properly, making the simple task a difficult one. But it was eventually finished, the shirt falling open just to reveal another underneath. I groaned and he smiled, amusement dancing in his eyes.

“Take it off,” I said, not trusting myself enough to believe I could do it without some insane obstacle getting in the way.

He stepped back and dropped the dress shirt to the floor, lifting the undershirt quickly and smoothly over his head, revealing a chest that was both familiar and new, masculine flesh that was the same I’d seen during Thanksgiving Day family football games and hanging around the pool on hot summer afternoons. But it was different, more mature, built up from his days in the service and his workouts for work. And there was a mark just over his heart that made my heart stutter and tears fill my eyes.

I stepped forward, my fingers shaking even more now as I held them out, wanting to touch it but afraid when I did it would disappear. He took my hand and pressed my fingertips to it, allowing me to trace the Gothic print that was permanently written on his skin.

“When did you do this?”

He slid his hand down the length of my arm, his touch so gentle that it was barely there.

“After boot camp.”

A tear spilled from my eye. “I was leaving for college…”

“…and you told me you hated me for joining the military. Said I had a death wish.”

I chuckled, a sound that was almost a sob. “I thought that was the end of it all. I’d had such high hopes for that summer because I was finally eighteen and there was no longer a reason why we couldn’t be together. But then you and Gentry went and signed up for the Air Force.”

“And you chose Stanford, the one university that was as far from me as you could get.”

My eyes must have widened comically because he laughed, his hand coming to catch the tears falling from my eyes. He leaned in to kiss the tip of my nose.

“Don’t you know I’ve always loved you, Remy? We just…we were at cross purposes for so long that it just became a habit. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t missing you or that I didn’t want to be with you.”

I understood that now. I just wished I’d known it on all those long nights I lay awake, crying for what I wanted and thought I couldn’t have. But the proof was here, written above his heart. The initial of my first name inside a heart created with the digits of our birthdates jumbled together like the code used on the door to the safe room. The code that was his idea.

I pressed my palms against his chest, almost ashamed to look up at him. He wasn’t about to let me get away with that, though. He lifted my chin and kissed me, every unspoken word, every missed opportunity, washing away in the things his soul was saying to mine with that one, simple kiss. And then it became something more, heat burning between us as he drew me closer, his fingers first working the back of my bra and then the back of my skirt, stripping me of the last of the real world that stood between us in this bubble of love he was creating around us.

I don’t know how long we stood there, how long I was lost in his kisses, naked in his arms. I don’t know how long my chest pressed against his, our breaths coming and going in rhythm with one another, our heartbeats synchronized like a well-tuned, hard-practiced symphony playing our unique melody. I don’t even know when he lifted me again, carrying me to the bed tucked in one corner of this tiny room. But I know when he broke that perfect kiss, felt the pain of separation even as he bathed me in all the love and affection that spilled from his eyes like a rainbow pouring from a cartoon character’s intoxicated mouth.

He buried his mouth against my throat, sending shivers of pleasure down my spine. His breath was hot, his skin warm, his touch gentle. He moved downward, exploring my body like it was a work of tactile art, his fingers exploring ahead of his mouth. He lingered at my nipples, rolling them around in his mouth, teasing them with the tip of his tongue until they were painfully erect. My ribs seemed to fascinate him, his lips, his fingers, dancing over them with slow, torturous attention.

I ached in places I’d never ached before, moving my body in ways that were meant to beg for more. To beg for his attention in those obvious places I knew he wanted to touch, to explore. But he was careful to keep his attention elsewhere, lingering over the places where my hip bones protruded against my skin, to the turn of an ankle or the hollow behind a knee. He moved slowly, staring into my eyes each time I moaned in protest or moved in such a way that revealed my desperation. I sat up once to encourage him to come back to me, to stop playing his game and lay with me properly, but he pushed me away, laughing deep in his throat when I cried out in despair.

He wasn’t even naked now, his slacks still in place. I wanted those gone, wanted to be the one to removed them, to touch what they hid from me. When I reached for him, he trapped my wrists against the mattress, held them still as his tongue did lovely, horrible things to my navel. Even touching the top of his head, running my fingers through his blond hair, was off limits. He didn’t want my touch at all, didn’t want me stealing any control. He was driving me out of my mind, pushing me over a cliff I wasn’t sure I would survive when I fell.

And when his mouth touched me there, in the core of my body, darkness bloomed in my head as everything disappeared except for the pleasure that took my breath away. I’d never felt the things he made me feel, never knew the pleasure that he caused to rip through my body. He knew just where to touch me, knew just how to touch me. Sounds like I’d never heard, let alone knew my throat capable of, came slipping from between my lips, filling our room with intensity. I was riding a wave and it was never going to end, just rise and rise and rise until I was broken against its power. He pushed me right to that threshold, pushed me until the crash was inevitable. And then he stopped.

“So cruel,” I whispered as he moved up the length of my body, stealing my lips with the taste of my need on the tip of his tongue. I felt his hands between our bodies, felt the rush with which he freed himself from the last of his clothing. Finally, my chance was there, but I was still riding that wave, lost in the need that his kisses promised to fulfil. He pulled my thighs apart, sliding his body against mine like a puzzle piece moving into the space it was meant to fill. His hardness was against me, reigniting the rush that had been tempered just slightly. But it was back with a force that sent my head spinning, my sense of reality completely destroyed. He reared his head back as he entered me, filling me with more than just his body. The sounds that had so shocked me were music as they came from his lips.

I wrapped my legs around his, my hands smoothing themselves slowly over the small of his back, the full roundness of his ass, gripping him, pulling him inside, deeper. He rolled his hips, his entire body, creating a friction that was like nothing I’d ever known. He touched me in places no one else ever had, touching me with his body, with his soul, touching me until it was impossible for me to separate what was him, what was me, what was this thing we were creating around us.

And then the tension in my lower body built and built until it exploded, the waves of pleasure pushing my sanity over the edge. For a moment, I was pretty sure I’d lost my mind.

I would never tell him this…but it was worth waiting for.