She scrunched her eyes in an attempt to fight off the array of emotions rippling inside her. She hated remembering that day. She hated everything about it.
Turning her head, she looked at Kayden. While she lay on her back, breaths whooshing in and out of her lungs, he lay on his side, arm heavy across her waist, looking so unbelievably peaceful.
Her fingers itched to touch him. Let his calm slip inside her and wipe away the unrest.
She just stopped herself.
Carefully, she slipped out from under his arm, doing her best not to wake him.
In the kitchen, she filled a glass with water and stood by the window. Seeing her mother in pieces that day…God, it had hurt. Her father had never deserved her mother’s love. He’d never deserved either of them.
She’d just finished her water and was lowering the glass to the sink when hands slipped around her waist. She gasped, her heart jumping into her throat, but then warm breath brushed over her neck.
“Hey. It’s me. Are you okay?”
The air flowed out of her in a long breath before she turned and looked up into Kayden’s beautiful ocean-blue eyes. “Yeah, I just had a bad dream.”
His brows slashed together. “Want to talk about it?”
Did she? She’d had the dream so many times but had never spoken about it out loud. “I dreamed about the day I got home and Mom told me Dad was gone. That he’d emptied their savings and stolen from us.”
The fingers tightened on her waist. “That would have been hard.”
“I remember not feeling hurt or scared for me, just for Mom. Because I knew she loved him. And she loved this town, and we both knew what he’d done was going to ruin everything.”
He reached up and cupped her cheek, his thumb immediately grazing her skin. “Why didn’t you feel hurt for you?”
“Because he’d never been much of a father. From a young age, I realized how selfish he was, only wanting to do things for himself, to betterhislife. I never understood why my mother loved him so much.”
“Sometimes love blinds us from a person’s faults.”
“That’s true.” She shook her head. “I hated that day. And every day that passed after it until we left Misty Peak. But evenin Ohio, my mother’s pain didn’t go away. And I understood why. We’d run from the problem my father had created, hoping a change would fix everything, but it didn’t.”
“It shouldn’t have been your problem to fix or run from.”
“This townmadeit our problem.”
Something akin to pain crossed his face. “I’m—”
She touched a finger to his lips, silencing him. “Don’t say you’re sorry. People are responsible for their own actions. You can’t change how I’ve been treated.”
He kissed her finger, his hand leaving her face to slip around her wrist. “I wasn’t much better than everyone else when you first got here. It’s something I’ll always regret.” He kissed her palm. “I shouldn’t have tried to pin your father’s crimes on you. I should have seen past the connection.”
His mouth shifted to the inside of her wrist, and an involuntary shudder rolled down her spine.
“You’re nothing like him,” he whispered, his kisses now moving down her arm, nearing her shoulder. “You’re good, and you deserved better from your dad.”
Her breaths started to shorten again, but this time for a different reason. At his closeness. His breath against her skin…his lips. When his mouth reached her shoulder, she trailed her hands up his bare chest, feeling every hard ridge…so much strength.
He nibbled her neck, and she moaned, tilting her head to give him better access. “Kayden…”
“Tell me you’re mine, Tilly. Tell me it’s you and me and that’s all we need.”
He found a sensitive spot behind her ear and sucked, making it so she could barely get words out. But she did…just.
“I’m yours, Kayden. It’s you and me.”
His.She’d just admitted that she was his, and that was fucking everything.
