“I’m not sure of anything, except that I want this . . . want you . . . now.”

Neither spoke as Christy-Lynn led him to her bedroom. Her hands trembled as she loosened her robe and let it slip from her shoulders. The seconds ticked heavily as she stood there, naked and trembling in the wash of moonlight from the open window, reveling in the feel of Wade’s gaze moving over her.

And yet there was a prickle of indecision too, a tiny voice reminding her that it wasn’t too late to stop this. Now, before things went too far. Was she testing herself? Testing Wade? Or was it only forgetfulness she craved, a place to hide for the night, as she had once hidden herself in Stephen? She didn’t know the answers, but suddenly it didn’t matter. She was reaching for him and he for her. There was no more time for second-guessing.

The contact came as a shock at first, all warm skin and hard angles against her bare flesh. She heard Wade’s sharp intake of breath and knew he felt it too. They had crossed that line, that fraction of an instant when it was still possible to retreat. She was clinging to him now, breath held, head thrown back, surrendering to the dizzying assault of his mouth along the ridge of her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat. Slowly, maddeningly, he teased his way up to her lips.

Christy-Lynn rose on tiptoe to meet the kiss, unable to ignore the sweet ache spreading through her limbs. She breathed his name and heard hers in return. A plea. A promise. And then suddenly they were falling, spilling onto moonlit sheets, a tangle of straining limbs and unleashed need.

They lay quietly afterward, touching but not talking, slick but sated in a tangle of damp sheets. Christy-Lynn lay with eyes closed, listening to the thrum of blood in her ears. Beside her, Wade’s breathing was deep and even as he drifted toward sleep, the warmth of their lovemaking still radiating from his skin. He had touched her in a way she’d never been touched before, as if he’d been given a key to all the hidden places she’d been guarding so carefully, had broken her open and laid her bare. And now, as she lay reliving each exquisite moment, she knew she had made a terrible mistake.

It was only a matter of time before Wade knew it too. She’d been willing but not ready, desperate to believe things had changed, that she had changed. But it wasn’t true. The day’s events had dredged up her past like slime from the bottom of a stagnant pond, a glaring reminder that trust was a dangerous thing. Her mother. The Hawleys. Stephen. A trail of betrayal and broken promises. And now there was Wade. Except, in Wade’s case, she was the one likely to prove dangerous, weighed down with emotional baggage and a flight risk by nature.

Without warning, Charlene Parker’s face appeared, floating behind her closed lids like a specter on a movie screen. Dar’s words were there too, disembodied in the darkness. Let the memories catch up to you . . .

Perhaps it was time she did just that.

She waited until she was sure Wade was asleep before pushing back the covers and easing the bottom drawer of the nightstand open. In the moonlight, the envelope glowed an eerie white. She took it out, hesitating only a moment before grabbing the clothes she had discarded earlier and slipping out of the room.

In the kitchen, she scribbled a hasty note and left it on the table. There was no nice way to explain leaving him in the middle of the night, but she had to say something.

Wade—

You were right. I wasn’t ready. I’m so sorry—about everything. There’s something I have to do. Please forgive me.

CL

It seemed terse when she read it back, cold and dismissive, but she didn’t trust herself to wait until morning to explain where she was going. He might try to talk her out of it, and maybe he should, but this was something she needed to do, even if it came to nothing, which it probably would. It was time to stop hiding and face her past head-on, to lance the old wounds if she could and drain thirty years of poison.

Scooping the still-packed overnighter from the living room floor, she slipped out into the night, trying not to think about the moment Wade would wake up and find her gone.

She stopped for coffee in Raleigh sometime around nine, then dug out her phone to pull up the site she’d used to find Charlene Parker’s last known address. She groaned when she typed the information into her GPS. Still three hours to go. Suddenly she began to question the sanity of what she was doing. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in six years, hadn’t seen her in more than twenty. What did she hope to gain by poking at her past with a sharp stick? The smart thing—the sane thing—would be to go back to Sweetwater and clean up the mess she’d made with Wade.

As if conjured, her cell phone rang. Wade’s number flashed on the screen. She cringed, briefly considering letting the call go to voice mail. But that was the coward’s way out.

“Hello, Wade.”

“What’s going on, Christy-Lynn? Where are you?”

“In Raleigh, on my way to South Carolina.”

“You left me in your bed in the middle of the night to drive to South Carolina?”

“I’m sorry.”

“So your note said.”

Christy-Lynn blinked against the sudden sting behind her lids. “I wish I knew what else to say, some other way to do this.”

“To do what? What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we made a mistake, Wade. That I made a mistake. You were right. I wasn’t ready. I’m never going to be ready.”