PROLOGUE
BRAM
Standing in the middle of the unusually busy candy shop down in Forbidden Pines, I scan the selection of candy in front of me. Despite having bought a giant candy heart for my niece just a few weeks ago, I’m feeling sentimental.
Besides, she needs a treat after having been grounded and punished so thoroughly by my brother Axel this past week. Not that she didn’t deserve it, she certainly did after the fright she gave us, trying to run away on a snowmobile and almost getting herself killed. But I, like the rest of my siblings, have a soft spot where sweet Little Lanie is concerned and Ididpromise to bring her something back from my trip into town.
Chocolate or an assortment, though, that I’m not sure of. The girl has a sweet tooth to rival my brother Eli’s, so she’ll probably be happy with either option. And as long as it’s a ridiculous amount of candy, Axel will be as pissed as she is delighted, which is certainly a bonus.
There. An assortment of dozens of different candies with little cartoon characters on the packaging. The perfect present for a Little girl.
I’m just reaching for the bag when a laugh reaches my ears and I freeze. Even though I haven’t heard it in nearly twenty years, I would know that laugh anywhere.
But it’s not possible. There is no possible way she could behere.
Gripping the bag of candy, I turn away from the display, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest.
And I see her. Somehow, she looks exactly the same all these years later. Just like that I’m a senior in college again, listening to her talk excitedly about some fascinating new book she’s read or the new philosophy she’s discussing in class.
Her gaze latches onto me and for a moment her brow knits with confusion. Like she knows me, but she can’t quite place me.
I see it the second realization hits. All the blood drains from her face, leaving her pale, as though she’s seen a ghost.
In a way, I guess she has.
As if in a trance, she moves toward me, her gaze darting back and forth, drinking in my features.
“Bennett?”
My name, but not my name. The name I haven’t heard, haven’t used since the night my family fled for our lives in the middle of the night. And with that single word, she’s sealed her fate.
“Hello, Josie.”
CHAPTER 1
JOSIE
Of all the places I might have expected to find my supposedly dead ex-boyfriend, a candy shop in a small town in the middle-of-nowhere Colorado never would have even cracked the top-ten list.
And yet, here he is, larger than life. Emphasis onlarger. When did he get so jacked?
While he was hiding out in the Colorado wilderness with you back at home crying over his empty casket.
At that thought, anger overrides the shock that’s kept me rooted to the spot in front of him.
“Youasshole!” Planting my hands on his chest, I shove as hard as I can. But to my growing fury he doesn’t even budge. All around us, the shop falls silent, every eye in the place turning toward us.
“I deserve that,” he murmurs, his soft voice full of what I can almost convince myself sounds like regret. He reaches for me, and for a fraction of a second I’m tempted to go to him, to let him comfort me the way he once did.
Twenty fucking years ago.
But at the last moment, I jerk out of his grasp, tears blurring my vision. “You deserve a hell of a lot worse than that, Bennett Kin?—”
“Bram.”
The single syllable cuts off my tirade and I can only blink up at him. “What?”
“My name is Bram. Bram Thorne.”
