The wind kicked up as I climbed out of the pool, the water sluicing off my body to splash on the ground. Elvis gingerly trotted around me, careful not to get his dainty paws in any of the puddles. His collar jingled as he bounded up the steps and back into the house, trailing at Rachel’s heels.

Overhead the sky was getting grumpy. Thick fluffy clouds ganged up together over the ocean, the color of them the hue of a fresh bruise. I ran a hand through my hair, looking for the same person I’d been looking for over the past two hours. Where the hell was Dani?

Ian sauntered over to me, a towel slung around his shoulders. “She still MIA?”

“Well, she’s not here, is she?” I threw out a hand. The sky wasn’t the only grumpy one in town.

“You think maybe she’s feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of us? For someone who seems like a bit of a loner, the group of us can seem a bit . . . tight-knit.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “She’s not you, you know.”

I rewound the last couple of hours—our crazy antics, the seven of us more like a family than a group of friends, roughhousing in the pool. Shit. How had Ian seen something that I’d barely even considered? It didn’t take a stretch of any imagination to put together Dani wasn’t used to our particular brand of comradery. So, of course, me abandoning her upstairs was probably the worst thing I could have done. At the time I’d just been trying to get some space to work out my building frustration, but now I could see what an epically bad decision that’d been.

This weekend was off to a fantastic start.

As if that weren’t enough, a rumble sounded in the distance, the wind whipping up again. With it came the reappearance of Ben, his expression stormier than any cloud in the currently roiling sky.

“Dude,” I shouted. “I promise, your face will not break if you smile.”

“You see Dani down there?” Ian swiped his towel through his hair, ruffling it.

He stopped to rinse his feet off. “I told her to head back.”

Ian’s expression turned calculating. “Is that all you told her?”

The two of them shared a look. It was one of the few brotherly things they ever did. As long as I’d known Ben, I never felt like I really knew him. The surface stuff—his fierce commitment to us and his family, his pining over Rachel, his head for business and numbers that buoyed the band—was all we really got from him. Only Ian and Rachel got to dig any deeper than that.

Ben turned and slipped through the French doors without even answering. Ian cursed at my side. “I think my brother may have had some choice words for your girl.”

I frowned. “For Dani? Over what? She hasn’t even done anything.”

He shifted on his feet, gaze avoiding looking at me directly. “I think it’s more about what she’s going to do, man.”

“What she’s . . .” It clicked and I shook my head. “I know what I’m getting myself into. I don’t need you guys to defend me or scare her off or anything.” Shit, what if he had scared her off? Ben was as cuddly as a grizzly bear on his good days. On his bad ones? Holy hell.

Ian met my gaze. “I hear you, but that doesn’t mean we’re not all worried as hell about how this is all going to go down.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder before following Ben into the house.

I strode over to the stairs and searched the empty beach for a bright streak of red. Be there, be there, be there. It only took me seconds to find her, zigzagging her way back toward the house. The rush of relief I felt nearly knocked me off my feet. I should’ve known better. This damn girl could hold her own.

I waved when she looked up and waited for her as she climbed up the stairs. “We missed you at the pool.”

She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I felt a bit like I was breaking up a party, so I just went for a little walk. It’s been forever since I’ve been to the beach.” A strange look crossed her face, swept away almost immediately on the turbulent breeze.

“You’re more of a city girl?” I rocked back on my heels, hoping she wouldn’t notice me fishing for information again.

Her eyes narrowed. “Something like that.”

A fork of lightning sliced through the sky, a grumble of thunder rolling through. The first fat drops of rain started to patter around our feet. We both glanced skyward and started moving for the house.

“Ben mentioned he ran into you down there.” I held the door open for her.

She brushed off her feet before going inside. “Yup.”

“He say anything . . . interesting?” I shut the door behind us, fighting off a shiver as the air conditioning whispered over my wet skin.

“He just warned me.”

I followed her through the empty living room to the stairs. “Warned you?”

Her fingers trailed up the balustrade. “About the storm.”

My hand found her hip as we reached the second floor, and I pulled her into my side. “Is that all?”

She tipped her chin up so she could look at me. A smattering of freckles paraded across her nose and spread out across her cheeks. “Was there something else you were expecting?”

“Well, no. It’s just that Ben can be a bit . . .” I tried to find a nicer word for asshole. “Surly,” I finished.

“Gav.” She patted my cheek. “I’m a big girl. Ben’s all bark, no bite. I can take him.”

I trailed on her heels into her bedroom. “Ben?” I scrubbed a hand through my damp hair. “I mean I’m not denying you’re pretty damn feisty. And that thing you did in the bar? That was impressive. But Ben is like twice your size and—”

I wasn’t sure exactly what happened, but in the matter of one breath and the other my feet left the ground and I fell face-first onto the mattress, hard. My arm was twisted behind my back, not enough to hurt me but enough that I was certainly uncomfortable. A pressure surfaced in the middle of my back. Probably Dani’s knee.

“Half the time people underestimating me annoys the hell out of me, but the other half I don’t mind because it always gives me an advantage.” The bed bounced as she stood back up. She shook her head. “Gav, believe me when I say I’ve dealt with a lot worse than Ben.”

I rolled over onto my back, propping myself up on my elbows. I probably should have been more surprised or at least a little shocked, but I’d be lying if I said the majority of me wasn’t turned on. She laced her hands behind her head, her stomach contracting as she blew out a breath. My gaze dropped down to the patch of puckered skin a few inches right of her belly button. Seeing it reminded me of the feel of it beneath my fingertips. Only this time I wasn’t nearly distracted enough not to ask.

“Is that where you got that scar from? From someone worse than Ben?”

Her hand dropped immediately to cover it, but it was too late. The question was already out there and I had no plans of taking it back. She could keep shutting me down, but I wasn’t going to stop asking, finding out everything I possibly could about her.

Deep down, in a tiny, dark part of myself, I let myself consider the fact that if I just knew what was going on with her that maybe I could fix it. That there might be an answer, a solution that I could give her that would let her stay with me. It was ridiculous of me to think that this kickass, self-sufficient woman wouldn’t have explored every possibility, but somehow I still let that little seed of hope take root.

A muscle bunched in her jaw as she looked at me, the air between us sparking with tension. She flexed her hands. “You want to know about this scar?”

I sat up, lacing my fingers together. “I want to know everything.”

“Do you want to guess what it’s from?” She stepped closer. “No? Well this is what it looks like when you get shot and then stitched up in some fleabag motel.”

My mouth dropped open. “Shot? When?” I struggled to form a coherent thought. “Where did—”

“In Syracuse.”

My mind whirled like the floor had just dropped out from underneath me. “When we were at SU together?”

“About ten minutes after the last time you saw me.” She stared at me, unblinking. “I’d gotten so wrapped up in you, so careless, that I dropped my guard. You made me forget who I was and it almost got me killed.” Her lip trembled for half a second before she bit it. “So when you wonder why I won’t tell you things or why I won’t stay the night, this is why.” She gestured at her scar. “It’s not a game, Gav. It’s my life. It’s—”

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry.” I was on my feet in a flash, gathering her into my arms. One of us was shaking. I was pretty sure it was me. “I didn’t know.”

She slipped away from me, and I felt the loss everywhere. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“I wish I had.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “Do you know how much time I spent hating you for the way you left? For making me feel like everything between us had been a one-way street? Thinking that everything had been in my damn head? God, if I’d known—”

“You would have come looking for me. You would have kept thinking that I might come back.”

“And you did.” I gestured to her, hands splayed wide.

“I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to move on with your life and fall in love and have all the things that I could never give you.” Her words reverberated around the room, ricocheting off the walls as she practically shouted at me. “I can’t stay. As much as I wish my life was different, it’s not and it’s never going to change.”

I paced, my hand squeezing the back of my neck, afraid to voice the words I’d been thinking just moments ago but unable to stop myself. “Maybe I can help you. If you would just tell me—”

“There’s nothing you can do.” Her eyebrows knitted together. “Don’t you think I’ve dissected the situation in a thousand different ways? If I had the choice—” Her eyes searched mine and she sighed. “But I don’t. There isn’t a choice to be made.” She looked at me with such an indescribable sadness that I could feel tiny pieces of my heart cracking. Her walls were down, every single one, and the truth of her heart was bare before me.

“That’s why you never said it.” I took a step toward her and she took one back. It’d always been a sore spot, rubbed raw every time I thought of Dani. In all that time she’d never once told me she loved me, and now I finally understood why.

She studied the floor. “Words have a power to them. You should know that.” Her shoulders drooped and suddenly she seemed so small, weaker and more fragile than I’d ever seen her. “I used to listen to the radio with my heart in my throat, just waiting for that one song. Waiting for your words to rip me to shreds.” She wouldn’t look at me, just turned and walked to the bathroom. She paused with her hand on the door and said quietly, “Sometimes I think you hating me is so much less painful than you loving me.”