Tripp didn’t respond to that right away, so I studied the ground while I waited for him to make up his mind. Going back to my trailer was the best option for me, but I would feel so bad about Tripp having to spend the gas and time doing that. “You often stay home at night alone?” he asked. The concern in his voice surprised me. I glanced up to look at him, and sure enough, he was frowning.

“Just on weekends,” I replied, and his frown deepened.

“That isn’t safe.” He let out a sigh and shook his head. “I’m gonna take you to Darla. I feel better about that. You shouldn’t be staying home alone on weekends.”

I was almost seventeen! Why was he acting like I was ten? Did I look like a kid? “I turn seventeen in September. I’m not a child. I’ve been staying home alone on weekends most of my life.” I was a little annoyed with him now. I didn’t want Tripp to see me as a kid. I would be a junior this year at school.

A grin tugged at his lips, but he was holding it back. I could see him struggle with it. If he weren’t so dang beautiful, I’d climb off his bike and hitchhike home. I’d done that before, too.

“Never said you were a child, Bethy. That wasn’t what I was thinking when I said it wasn’t safe.”

All it took was that one sexy look and hearing his warm, deep voice to have me at his mercy again, enchanted. I’d go wherever he wanted me to.

“OK,” I replied.

He laughed this time, then turned around to start the motorcycle again. “Hold on tight,” he reminded me.

Once my arms were wrapped around him, we shot back onto the dark road that led to the club. Tonight I’d be facing Aunt Darla’s anger. But it was so worth it.

Tripp

Present day

I sat on my Harley and waited for Bethy to walk out of the clubhouse. Woods had been texting me Bethy’s work schedule every two weeks, and I made sure she made it home from work safely every night. It wasn’t stalking her, exactly. It was just the only way I could remain sane.

Watching over her was all I had. If I got too close, she flipped. The last time I’d tried to talk to her, she’d started screaming. I hadn’t been able to calm her down. I was watching her lose herself slowly. And it was tearing me up.

So I followed her to work every day, and I followed her home every night. Once she was safely in her apartment, I often sat parked across the road and watched her window until it went dark. She never looked at me, even though I wasn’t hiding the fact that I was following her. There was no use in hiding it from her.

The last words she’d actually spoken to me—not screamed at me, because there’d been a lot of that—had been eighteen months ago on the beach when we’d lost Jace. My cousin, my best friend, and the love of Bethy’s life. He’d drowned saving her life when she’d wandered into the ocean drunk and got caught in a riptide. Losing him had taken a part of my soul. He’d been the little brother I never had. He’d been the good Newark heir. He’d been everything I should have been but wasn’t.

And we had loved the same girl. Although he never knew it.

Watching her pull away from life more and more each day was so damn hard. Jace wouldn’t have wanted this. He would have hated it. He loved her more than he loved himself. Seeing her like this would have broken his heart.

Bethy swung her long dark hair over her shoulder as she stepped out of the clubhouse. The shorts she wore had once been tight and cupped her perfect round bottom. But just like she’d lost the will to live, she’d also lost weight. Too much.

The need to hold her and help her heal was so fucking strong. But she didn’t want me. I hadn’t realized how badly she hated me until I’d returned to Rosemary Beach a little more than two years ago. I’d run like hell eight years ago from a life threatening to suffocate me. My father had wanted something for me that I didn’t want, and I hadn’t been able to see my way out.

I’d been eighteen years old and scared, because in three short months, one sixteen-year-old girl had become my sole concern in life. Bethy had stolen my heart the summer I met her at Rush’s party. When I’d been ready to throw away the life I’d been planning for the past year in order to be with her, my father had reminded me of just how much control he had over me.

I wouldn’t have been able to keep Bethy if I’d stayed. That wasn’t the life he’d let me have. So I’d run, hoping that when I came back in two years, when she was old enough, I could take her with me. But first, I’d needed to escape.

I watched as Bethy opened the door to her old beat-up Ford Taurus and climbed inside. The stiff way she held herself and the way she kept her focus turned away from me told me she knew I was here. She expected me to be here.

Once she would have broken into the biggest, most beautiful smile in the world and run into my arms. But that was the past. I had broken that. I had broken her, and I hadn’t even known.

I started my bike and rumbled out onto the road, giving Bethy enough space as I followed her home. She rarely went anywhere else now. Some days she’d go to Grant and Harlow’s to visit with them and their baby girl. Other days she would go to Blaire and Rush’s. But other than those rare times, she just went home.

Her home was another thing that was eating me alive. I hated it. I hated leaving her at night to sleep in an apartment fifteen miles outside of town with questionable neighbors. She’d had a nice condo on the club’s property, completely paid for, but after Jace’s death, she moved out. Blaire said she needed to get away from the memories, that the beach was too painful for her.