“Jack’s having a party next weekend,” Aiden said a week later as he dropped onto the couch beside me. It was Saturday and we were spending the day in, watching movies on Netflix and eating junk food he bought on his way home from work last night. He’d just warmed a plate of frozen pizza rolls and held them out to me. I wrinkled my nose, not sure I wanted to try something that smelled like tomato-covered gym socks.

“Next weekend? Isn’t that the Fourth of July?”

“Yeah.” He popped one of the hot rolls into his mouth and hissed as the filling burned his tongue. I laughed, watching as he swallowed half his beer in one gulp.

“Thank you. We have another show this evening at seven” he said with a deep bow that was actually pretty impressive considering his position on the couch.

I laughed again, sitting up to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Sorry, babe.”

“No, you’re not, but that’s okay.”

He pulled me close and stole another kiss before he allowed me to lie back down. He bit more cautiously into the second roll, sitting back so I could rest my feet in his lap again.

“The party,” he said a while later, “is at the family estate out near Germantown.”

“Yeah?”

“We grew up there. Dad left it to Jack when he died.”

My eyebrows rose, curious how that worked, but I didn’t ask.

Aiden picked at one of the last pizza rolls, not really looking at me or the television. It was a strong clue that whatever he had to say was important to him. I paused the movie and sat up, tucking my legs under me.

“What?”

He shot me a glance, then turned his attention back to the rolls. I took the plate out of his hands, too invested to play this game right now.

“What, Aiden?”

“So, I know you don’t particularly like going out, but I thought it would be cool if we could make it to this party.”

I stiffened even as he turned to me, taking my hands in his.

“The whole thing is a big celebration. It’s not just the Fourth of July. We’re breaking ground on a new training facility at the office and Gentry’s back. At least he will be next week.” He met my gaze. “I really want to be there with my family.”

“Then go.”

“I want you to go with me.”

I pulled my hands away from his grip and started to stand, but he grabbed my wrist and tugged me back down.

“Come on, babe! It’s just family. No one else will be there.”

“That’s what you said about the movies. We wouldn’t see anyone we knew, but you ran into your brother’s ex. Not once, but twice!”

“That was just chance. But this is on my family’s private property! Only family will be there, I promise.”

Fear gripped me, both fear of going out in public and being recognized, as well as fear that if I kept refusing to go out with Aiden he’d move on to someone who didn’t have the same hang ups I had. I couldn’t bear the thought of either happening.

“Aiden…”

“I want to introduce you to my family. I want them to know you and love you as much as I do. Please, Carson?”

I shook my head, but then I heard what he’d said. And my heart pushed logic away.

“Okay.”

His eyebrows rose and hope burst into his eyes. “You’ll go?”

“I’ll go.”

He laughed and pulled me into his arms, his lips pressed to my temple as he continued to laugh, short puffs of air brushing against my skin. I closed my eyes, telling myself that the chances of running into someone who might recognize me on his family’s estate were pretty slim. Hell, running into anyone in Memphis who would connect me to that mess that happened so long ago was slim. Who would have expected me to come to Memphis when I had family connections here? Wouldn’t that be pretty stupid on my part? Besides, I’d changed my hair so drastically that even I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. What were the chances that a casual observer would recognize me?

This would be okay. I knew it would be.

I hoped it would be.

Aiden lay back on the couch and turned the movie back on. I tried to relax, but my legs were suddenly crampy, refusing to let me rest. Despite my interest in the movie, I had to get up and move around. I went into the kitchen to get a bottle of water, feeling the need to flush some of the junk food out of my system. I don’t think I’ve eaten so much melted cheese and fried food in all my life!

Aiden came to find me when I didn’t return to the living room immediately. I was standing at the sink, looking out into the side yard through the window there, my thoughts a million miles away.

“You okay?”

He rested his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs kneading at the knotted muscles there. I leaned back into him, again wondering what would happen if I told him the truth. This was getting so serious so quickly that I was coming to rely on him. That was new for me. I’d never relied on anyone, never counted on anyone being there for me at a particular time or for a particular reason. I was always on my own, dependent on nothing but myself. Not even when I was a kid. I couldn’t depend on my mom because she suffered from depression. I never knew when I came home from school if she’d be in bed, hiding under the covers, or if she’d be working at the dining room table, worrying over the bills that always managed to get paid somehow.

But I was dependent on him. I relied on him being there in the middle of the night when I rolled over and reached for him. I relied on him being there in the evenings, bringing home some concoction his sister had baked, or a bag full of junk I could hardly eat. I relied on him coming to find me when I couldn’t sit still and watch some silly movie that had seemed so interesting twenty minutes ago, but was fluff now.

I either had to tell him, or I had to walk away.

“Why don’t you ever talk about what happened over there?”

He stiffened, the movement of his thumbs stopping mid-knead. “What do you mean?”

I turned and pressed my hands to his chest, tugging at the material a little. I wasn’t even sure where I was going with that question. It just seemed that we both had so many secrets, that maybe if I started there he would take my secret a little easier.

“I know it haunts you. You call out in your sleep sometimes.”

“I do?” He brushed his hand over his skull. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t bother me. I just worry about you. If there’s something haunting you, I want to know.”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was darkness there, a darkness that spoke of things we’d never addressed before. It scared me a little, reminding me that I was opening Pandora’s Box and I wouldn’t be able to close it again.

“War is not a thing people like to talk about,” he said softly. “It’s something I learned a long time ago not to address in serious company.”

“But you have to talk about it with someone.”

“I do. I have friends at the veteran’s hall downtown.”

“Yeah? I didn’t know you went there.”

“Sometimes. Not so much recently.” He touched my jaw gently. “I’ve been a little busy here lately.”

“Doing what?”

He chuckled. “You’re a funny lady, you know?”

“I try.”

He took a deep breath, then turned from me, grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge. “We should finish this movie before we forget what we’ve already watched and have to go back and start over.”

“Don’t brush me off, Aiden.”

He stopped, his back to me. “Why not? I’ve learned a lot from you.”

That hit me like a slap to the face. I picked up my own water bottle and headed for the door, but he grabbed me, tugging me back into his arms.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

He studied my face, surprise mixed with curiosity and fear and half a dozen other things in his eyes. He tugged at the braid my hair was twisted into and pulled to force my head back.

“What are you hiding, Carson?”

Everything…

Tears filled my eyes, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the necessary words aloud. What kind of danger would I be putting him in if I told him about my past?

He brushed a tear from my cheek. “I guess we need to accept that there some things we’re not ready to talk about.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “But when we are—when I am—you’ll be the first to hear about it.”

“Ditto.”

He smiled. “Until then…let’s go finish this movie, okay?”

“Okay.”

I followed him back into the living room, trying to push it all away, all the fear and uncertainty, the truth that was so far from this reality that a part of me insisted it couldn’t be true. But I couldn’t erase the past three years of my life, could I?

I lay awake beside him a long time that night, listening to him snore softly. He was resting well tonight, no bad dreams. They came less often now, which had to be a good sign. Maybe whatever it was had lost its hold on him.

I kissed his forehead lightly and slipped out of bed, sneaking downstairs in my thin robe. I booted up the computer, glancing over my shoulder to be sure I wouldn’t wake him with the brightness of the screen. I could still hear him, his soft snores floating down to me from the loft.

I pulled up a familiar website, one I’d looked at far too often. I had to be careful about everything I did, not just leaving the house and exposing myself to the potential of being spotted by a cop, an associate of the people after me, or even just someone who paid attention to the news a little too closely, but things like the phone calls I made, the sites I surfed on the web, the people I researched. I didn’t even go on Facebook or Twitter anymore out of fear that someone somewhere would be monitoring, watching for me to visit the pages of people I used to know.

This was definitely a site someone might be monitoring. But I couldn’t help myself.

When I started college, I began doing a little research into the stories my mom told me. She mentioned the name of the horse farm where she’d grown up more than once. It wasn’t hard to find. They were still in business, still having great success on the racetrack. That year alone they’d won a major race and were retiring the stallion, offering stud services to other farms hoping to raise a champion.

For years, I came to their website, kept track of what they were doing professionally, even following the little personal stories they printed on the bio page. My grandfather was still alive, still involved in the business despite being well into his seventies. My uncle was twenty years younger, living on the property with his family, running the place beside his father. And now his daughter, Reese, was training the horses, working closely with the jockeys, getting her hands dirty with the everyday activities of the farm.

Sometimes I’d stare at the picture of Reese on the bio page and wonder if that might have been me if things were different. I’d never been around horses, never really had an interest in them outside of this aspect of my family tree. But things would have been different if I’d grown up on the farm like Reese did.

I considered driving out past the farm a few times. I had a car and I doubted anyone would notice a single car on a rural, two-lane road. I mean…yeah, they probably would, but they’d assume I was a city person who’d gotten lost or something, right? I was curious. I wanted to meet my mother’s family, wanted to know if they would have rejected her the way she’d been so convinced they would. What would they think if I just pulled into the yard and announced myself to them?

But then there was the whole danger thing. The people looking for me would have figured out the connection between me and the people living on Ross-Bailey Farms. The feds had. That’s why I moved to Memphis after fleeing Denver. I figured it would be the last place they’d look because it was the first place they’d looked.

I was right under their noses and they had no idea. And I must have been right in my assumption because I’d been here nearly a year, longer than I’d been anywhere else since everything happened. Three months I spent in Florida. Five in Denver. It probably helped that I was on my own and I’d paid cash for everything, including this house. No rental contracts, no credit cards. No bank accounts, nothing traceable. I paid my bills in cash, used a pay service over the internet that was registered under a fake name. None of my clients knew my real name or what state I was located in. I was extremely cautious this time around. I left nothing to chance.

Until I met Aiden, that was. Aiden was my only vulnerability.

Aiden and my obsession with my mother’s family.

I cleared out my history and logged off the computer, telling myself once again that it was time to move on. But I couldn’t help but wonder how coincidental it was that I met Aiden and his family’s estate happened to be in the same area as my mother’s family farm.

I didn’t believe in coincidences.

Maybe all this was meant to happen. Maybe I was meant to go to that party.

And maybe I was just being reckless.

I wasn’t sure which it was, but it was enough to keep me awake most of the night.