“Emy . . .”

“And you didn’t even remember me.” My voice breaks on a sob. “You didn’t remember. Oh God . . .”

“Kid . . .”

“And that hurt, Rai,” I cry angrily. “It fucking hurt.”

“Emalie . . .”

“And now you love another woman, and it hurts, so badly. It’s not your fault, I know that . . .”

“Look at me,” he demands, his voice thick with emotion. I lift my eyes and gasp at what I see. He’s got red eyes and there’s a tear running down his cheek. Oh God, he’s hurting. He’s . . . broken. “You have no idea what leaving you did to me.”

“Then why did you do it?” I sob brokenly.

“Because I was protecting you, and then I got into more bad shit and I got sold. After that, my mind was a mess.”

I hiccup loudly and wrap my arms around myself.

“Before I met Pippa, all I thought about on that slave farm was you. Every second of every day, I prayed I had done all I could to protect you.”

“Rainer,” I cry, my voice shaky.

More tears run down his cheeks. “I loved you. You had to know that . . .”

I press a hand to my heart. “You left me.”

“I saved you.”

“Rainer . . .”

He steps closer. “I’m sorry, Emalie. I am so fucking sorry.”

“I just—I don’t know where to go from here. The fact that you know doesn’t change the fact that you love her.”

“No, Emy, it doesn’t but this does change things . . .”

I start shaking. “Don’t come in here and give me false hope . . .”

“I love Pippa, I do, but Emalie . . . fuck . . . your name is tattooed over my heart. You can’t think I’m not going to see where this goes .”

“Rainer, please. Don’t let me believe in something that’s dead.”

He steps forward, catching me in his arms. “It’s not fucking dead.”

“You were just fucking me.”

“It’s not dead, Emalie.”

“You didn’t even kiss me.”

“It’s not dead.”

He doesn’t let me respond anymore, because he drops his mouth to mine and then he’s kissing me. It’s an explosive, wild kiss. It starts off slow and desperate, then it becomes deep and frantic. I reach up, tangling my fingers into his hair and tugging desperately, crying out his name against his swollen lips. He groans and spins me around, pressing my body against the wall.

He never stops kissing me.

“Emy,” he breathes against my lips. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“This is a dream,” I whimper against him. “It has to be.”

“If I could explain my life and how it has been, you’d understand what this means to me. Having a piece of the man I lost back makes me feel like there’s hope.”

“There’s always hope, Rai Rai. I’m here now.”

And I’ll never leave. No matter what.

~*~*~*~

“What happened to you?” I ask later that night, as I’m tucked into Rainer’s arms. “I know you were dealing with bad things, but then you just disappeared. I was heartbroken.”

Rainer squeezes my shoulders and brings me closer to his chest.

“As you know, my dad left some bad debts. I thought I could clear them easily enough by helping some people out.”

“Drugs?” I whisper.

He nods. “Yeah. I knew a few people, and I figured it would be easy enough to do a few jobs and pay back the debts, but it wasn’t that easy.”

“It never is,” I mumble.

“I got in deeper and deeper, and one night I made the fatal mistake of selling the drugs to the wrong person because they offered me more money. I took the money and figured I could pay Dad’s debt off and leave with you. I was young and fucking naive. I was dealing with a bigger drug lord than I thought and he caught up with me. He gave me a timeframe to pay it back, or he’d come after you.”

I gasp. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t; I wanted it that way. I knew I had to protect you, so I started pulling away. I figured if I wasn’t with you anymore, he wouldn’t come after you. When the time came and I still didn’t have the money, he told me he was going to take you out. I told him you weren’t even with me anymore and that I’d get his money back. He decided then he had bigger plans. I guess he figured he wasn’t going to get his money back.”

“So he sold you?”

He nods. “Yeah, he did. He got all his men to take me down and they drugged me. When I woke, I was in the hands of a monster.”

“That’s where you met Pippa.”

“Yeah. As you know, we were paired up. It was hell, Emy—I can’t even explain it. It changed me. When I escaped, I thought my life would be so much better, but it wasn’t. Pippa was still there, and I couldn’t find her. I sunk into depression and started drinking heavily. I ended up in rehab.”

“Oh, Rai, I’m so sorry.”

“Buying the bar grounded me; it helped me fight my demons. When she came to me that night, and I saw she was alive and free, things finally started looking better for me. Not being able to find her was hell.”

“I understand that,” I admit, because I can only imagine how hard it would have been, knowing she was left behind.

“I had memory problems after returning, and when I started drinking. I know who you are, Emy, but even now I can’t remember your face from back then. I had no photos—nothing. My father’s house was raided and cleared out when I went missing.”

“I know,” I croak. “I watched it being auctioned off.”

“I’m sorry, kid. Please know that.”

“When you look at me now, do you see it?”

He’s silent a minute. “If I try really hard, I do, but my mind is a fuzzy mess. I know certain features you had, like blond hair, but you don’t now, so it’s not sparking anything. When I look into your eyes, now I know, there’s a familiarity.”

“Then how do you know I’m not an imposter?”

He chuckles. “Because you’re the only person in the world who has ever or would ever call me Rai Rai.”

I smile and nestle into him. “Yeah, that’s true.”

We fall silent. “What do we do from here, Rainer?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“You love another woman. I don’t think I can just look past that.”

“I know that, and I can’t just turn off what’s there for her, but I can tell you that I want to keep doing this. For ten years my life has been a mess, up and down, high and low—I’ve been unable to do anything right. I can’t hold relationships; I have few friends. Having you back, it makes something inside me feel like there’s hope . . .”

“There is hope, Rai Rai. We just have to find it.”

“One thing is one hundred percent sure,” he says, pressing a kiss to my hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

He adjusts the blanket around me, then says, “Tell me how your life has been. I want to know.”