The scars are faint, pale lines against my skin—but they’re visible. I see them every day and remind myselfthat life is worth living, even if my father and the man I loved made me feel worthless.
His hands close around my wrists. His face shatters. And then—before I can breathe—he bends and presses his lips to the scars.
I freeze. Too shocked to stop him.
He does it again.
His mouth brushes soft against my skin, reverent, desperate.
Ten years fall away in a rush.
I smell him, the clean spice of his cologne undercut with Cade—earth and leather and the boy who was mine.
My Cade.
“What did you do the second time?” I can barely hear him, he’s so hoarse.
“I took pills.”
His eyes squeeze shut. “You can’t die, Dove.”
Dove.
The endearment wrecks me. Tears sting hot in my eyes.
“I’m already dead.” I tremble with the effort to exist in this space with him. “You killed me, Cade.”
His lips lift from my wrists to my palm, to my knuckles. His forehead presses to mine, the heat of him searing.
And then—slow, hesitant, inevitable—his mouth finds mine.
The kiss is soft.
Devastating.
It’s a kiss that evokes everything.
The first rush of teenagelove.
The shattering of betrayal.
The ache of years lost.
It’s erotic in the gentlest way, like the body remembering what the mind can’t forgive.
Yesterday and today collide. Past and present bleed together.
I kiss him back.
Just for a heartbeat. A millisecond.
Then horror grips me, sharp and sudden.
I tear myself away, stumbling back like I’ve touched fire. My fingers press to my lips, burning from his touch, the intimacy of the kiss.
His betrayal scarred me.Yes.
But if I betray myself? If I let him past my defenses again? It won’t just mark me. It will destroy me. I won’t be able to put myself back together.
