“And yet you’re going down there on Wednesday.”

“For Ethan. He doesn’t know any of this, and there’s no way I’m going to tell him. So he just thinks I had a teenage falling-out with our parents.”

“You don’t have to go,” Jackson says gently. “You can spend time with Ethan here. If he knows there’s a rift, he’ll understand.”

“Maybe. But he really wants me there. And there’s not much I wouldn’t do for him.”

Jackson is looking at me, and then he says, very slowly and very carefully, “Including letting a predatory photographer molest you?”

The tears that I have been holding back burst out of me with the force of a breaking dam. “Yes.” My voice is harsh. Choked. “I could have walked. I could have stopped. I could have done something—anything. But I didn’t.”

“Oh, baby.” There is grief in his voice, but I don’t hear pity, and I am grateful.

“I blame my dad, but it’s on me, too.” My voice is shaky and thick with tears. “All this shit that has colored my life. It’s my fault, too.”

“No.” The word resonates through me, as violent as an earthquake. “You were a child with a sick brother you loved. Your parents should have taken care of you, not used you. And none of it—none of it—falls on you. Christ.”

He pushes away from me, and I see the rage rising inside him. He wants to break something, that’s easy enough to see. And I think that given the slightest provocation he would reduce the furniture in this room to splinters.

“Are you okay?” I ask, and he responds with a self-deprecating laugh.

“Am I okay?” He closes the distance between us, and I can feel the power and heat—the rage and compassion—rolling off him. “Sweetheart, right now I only care about you.”

He brushes a kiss over my lips. It’s soft and it’s gentle. But I know that’s only an illusion. Inside him, there’s a volcano of my making, and I can’t help but wonder when it will explode.

nineteen

“Jackson.”

That’s all I say, but it’s enough. He scoops me up, then holds me tight against his chest, his strong arms as firm as iron bands. “Yes,” I murmur as my pulse kicks up simply from the rightness of being in his arms. “Whatever you need. However you need it.”

I expect it wild. Wicked. I imagine that he will spread me on the table and fuck me hard in a frenzied rush to drive out his own demons by banishing mine.

By claiming me. By controlling me.

I do not expect the sweetness of his kiss. The butterfly-soft touch of his lips against my eyes, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “You,” he says, and the word is both gentle and firm. “All I need is to touch you. All I need is to make you feel. To take you softly and gently. And to make you forget.”

“Jackson, I—” But I can’t get any more out. My throat is too thick, and his name cannot slide past the emotion that fills me.

He carries me down the stairs, pausing before he does to open a small control panel on the side of the stairs and press a button. I look at him with curiosity, but his mouth just curves up in an enigmatic smile. I know better than to ask—he’ll tell me when he’s ready. And I hold my tongue as we continue down toward his bedroom.

It’s a small, narrow hallway with Jackson’s bedroom on one side and a guest room on the other. At the end of the hall is the bathroom—a simple toilet and shower. At the other end of the hall, just by where we are now standing at the foot of the stairs, is a storage closet. Or, at least, I had always assumed that it was a storage closet. Now, Jackson turns in that direction.

“Where are we—?”

But I stop talking the second he opens the door. It’s another bathroom, only this one is dominated by a luxuriously deep tub and beautiful, gleaming fixtures.

The water is already running in the tub and the lights are dim. Soft music plays through speakers—a low, slow saxophone piece that I’m not familiar with, but that is sweetly seductive.

“Oh my god,” I say. “How did I not know this was here?”

“I’ve been having it remodeled. It’s still not quite ready,” he adds, pointing to some unpainted trim and some exposed wiring for light fixtures. “It’s been a work-in-progress, and once we got back together I wanted to wait until it was ready to show you. But I think it’s ready enough.”

“It’s fabulous,” I say, as he carries me to the tub and sets me on the side. It’s pushed up beside a wall of glass bricks against a blue background, and though I know that this is not an actual window to the sea, the color is such that it suggests the ocean beyond. The tub itself is surrounded by dark wood that forms a three-sided box, with steps leading up to the top where I now sit. Though the front has room only to sit on the ledge, both sides are as wide as a couch, providing a flat sitting area outside the tub.