“That doesn’t mean I stopped caring.”
Tears started to well in her eyes, and something in my chest cracked.
“I can’t go back to him. I can’t go back to that apartment or that life,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “And I can’t tell anyone what he’s done—it won’t matter. His parents will make sure he gets away with it. I just want to run away from all of this… but I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Where?”
I leaned forward and took her uninjured hand in both of mine. Her fingers were warm but trembling, and I was careful not to grip too tightly, as if she might break.
“You’re coming home with me.”
She stared at me for a long moment, and I saw a dozen emotions flicker across her face—gratitude, fear, hope, confusion. Finally, she squeezed my hand with what little strength she had.
“Why?” she whispered. “After all that time, after everything that happened between us, why would you want to help me?”
8WILLA
TWO WEEKS LATER…
“You’remy best friend’s little sister.”
His words from that night echoed in my head for two weeks after I asked why he’d want to help me, reminding me exactly where I stood in Kieran Cross’s world. As always, I was Jude’s sister first, Willa second—the girl he felt obligated to protect out of loyalty to my brother, not because I meant anything to him personally.
The arm sling was a constant reminder of how my life changed in a single night. Two weeks of recovery in Kieran’s guest room, two weeks of being cared for by a man who once kissed me under moonlight and then disappeared from my world, two weeks of trying to reconcile the boy I fell in love with and the sophisticated stranger who saved my life out of duty to my absent brother.
His penthouse was everything I expected and nothing I was prepared for. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city like he owned it all. Furniture belonged in design magazines. Art on the walls probably cost more than I made in a year at my marketing job. Everything was pristine, expensive, untouchable.
Just like him.
He was kind but distant, professional in the way he arranged my medical care, my physical therapy appointments—clothes delivered in my size when I realized I had nothing but the blood-stained nightgown I wore when he found me. But there was a careful space between us, invisible boundaries that reminded me I was a guest here, a temporary problem to be solved.
Not someone he chose to have in his life.
“You don’t have to do this,” Kieran said that morning when I finally worked up the courage to ask for his help. He was sitting across from me at his glass dining table, both of us picking at the breakfast his housekeeper prepared. “I can send someone to get whatever you need.”
“No.” I shook my head, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at my healing shoulder. “I need to do this myself.”
He studied my face with those dark eyes that seemed to see too much.
“What is so important that it was worth risking another encounter with him?”
“The key to a small metal box Jude gave me.”
He carried it through every foster home we were placed in, protecting it like it held the secrets of the universe. And in a way, it did. The box contained all the memorabilia we had of our parents—photos, my mother’s wedding ring, my father’s watch, birth certificates, and a few letters they wrote to each other before they married. Proof that we came from something, that we weren’t always orphans. Evidence that we once belonged to a family that loved us.
Jude guarded it fiercely through the years, keeping it hidden from social workers who might have taken it, from other foster kids who might have stolen it, from the world that tried to erase our past. He promised me when I was fifteen and crying over another failed placement that someday, when I was ready, he would pass the responsibility to me.
“You’ll take care of it one day, Will,” he said, holding the key against his chest like it was his heart. “When you’re old enough to understand what it really meant.”
He didn’t give it to me until I graduated, right before Kieran kissed me under the moonlit sky.
“Keep this safe for me, Will,” he said, his expression more serious than I ever saw it. The key rested in my palm, old brass dulled with age, its weight heavier than it looked. “Guard it with your life. Promise me.”
“What’s it for?” I asked, though I knew. I always knew.
“Everything that proved we were more than what happened to us. Everything that said we came from love, even if we lost it too soon. Everything that should remind you that you always have a family.”
