After his reaction when she called me the other day, it was something that had been on my mind and poking me under the skin endlessly. I knew he had cared deeply for Poppy, and that in her usual way my sister had let my dad’s decisions function as her own. What I didn’t know was if he was still hung up on her, and still pining away for something that had never even had a chance. His youthful infatuation following him into adulthood seemed unlikely after so much time. But if that was the case, then no matter how much I wanted him, or how badly I wanted the wonderful thing I just knew we’d have together, there was no way I was fighting memories or the ghost of my sister to have it. I had too much pride and valued myself far too much to do that. I wasn’t going to compete with his idea of first love, not when the person was very much alive and an integral part of my life.

I’d tried to pull the answers out of Poppy the other day, but she was skittish and had blown past the topic like it didn’t matter. Something was going on with her. She told me she was busy and that she couldn’t talk and hung up on me after only a few minutes of conversation. That wasn’t like her and it amped my concern for her up ten notches.

I watched Rowdy carefully as he set the papers he had in his hand on the counter and walked around to the side I was on. He didn’t stop walking until he was right in front of me and I stiffened in an automatic response when he caged me in with an arm on either side of my hips. His head dipped down a little so that we were eye to eye, and I swore I could drown in that blue ocean of his gaze forever. His blond hair was lighter than normal without all the junk he usually put in it to style it up in that pompadour he wore, and the way it fell across his forehead made him look like that little boy who’d always made me so happy in those lost years. My fingers itched to reach up and push it away. They itched to touch him in any way he would allow.

He leaned a little closer to me and I felt his breath move the bloodred hair at my temple.

“I asked Poppy to marry me. I was eighteen, had the world at me feet, and was pretty much guaranteed a shot at playing pro football. I offered her everything and she told me she considered me her brother. She looked me dead in the eye and told me no matter what I did it would never be enough because your parents wouldn’t approve because they knew where I came from. That I wasn’t the right guy for her.”

I felt his chest expand and his breath hitch as dark blue clouds shadowed his hot stare. His lips touched my skin right next to my eyebrow and I was stunned my glasses didn’t fog up from the all heat he was generating. But while I was admittedly getting turned on, I also felt like everything inside of me where my heart and hope lived had turned into stone.

Rowdy asked Poppy to marry him? That was the first I had ever heard of that and I felt like it was life changing. They were both so young. I always assumed it was just puppy love but apparently his feelings for my little sister had been much more complex than I remembered or believed them to be.

“You asked her to marry you?” I wanted to shove him away from me. I really wanted to grab my sweet little puppy and run all the way to someplace where Rowdy St. James was lost back in my memories and I didn’t have this new information hammering away inside of me.

“I did. Poppy didn’t just say no, she took everything I thought I knew about love and ripped it apart from the inside out. The pieces of my heart were so tiny when she was done with me I didn’t bother to look for them. So no, Salem. I am not still in love with Poppy. She broke me and I haven’t bothered to try and love anyone since.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I put both of my hands on the center of his chest and shoved him away from me. I felt like I needed to escape, like his words were building a cage around all the grandiose ideas I had been following when I left Vegas.

“She never told me. We talked all the time back then, and not once did she tell me that you f**king asked her to marry her.”

I was watching the fantasy I had of showing him that there was so much more to us now that we were older disappear into smoke. I felt like he had just pulled a quarterback sneak and I was on the defense looking like an idiot while he ran the ball into the end zone. I never would have come here, never would have made myself at home if I had known just how barbed the ties were that held him anchored to the past.

I spun around to glare at him and to tell him to leave, but it got lost as I gasped in surprise because he had followed me and was once again all up in my personal space. He gripped my upper arms and hauled me up onto my toes.

“You started all of this, Salem. You don’t get to back away just because you don’t like what’s hiding in the dark once the light you’re shining hits it.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” The words were whispered and I couldn’t look away from the burning blue of his aqua-colored gaze. Again my fingers twitched to get that blond lock of hair off of his forehead or maybe smack him across his handsome face.

“That part of the story is hers to tell.”

“That’s why you quit school, why you stopped playing ball? She turned you down and you ran away from it all?”

Slowly his head rocked back and forth in the negative and he pulled me up even closer so that our chests were pressed tightly together. Instantly I regretted not putting on a bra as the tips of each breast got excited being so close to all the hard heat of him. I let my hands curl tightly around the hard flex of his biceps.

“I never wanted to play ball at that level. I wanted to draw. I wanted to paint. I wanted to be creative and make art. I wanted to learn how to be a better artist, but I didn’t know how to do that and chase after Poppy at the same time. I thought once she got away from your dad she would finally be able to see me. That she would see who I really was and realize that regardless of the circumstances that put us in each other’s path, I was worth something.” His mouth turned down and he dropped his head so that our foreheads touched where I dangled in his hard hands. “There was never any chance of that happening. She met a guy the first day of school. An appropriate guy with the right kind of family and the right kind of heritage to take home to your dad. I hated him on sight.”

He let go of one of my arms and reached up to snatch my glasses off, which made me blink up at him as he went a little fuzzy around the edges of my vision. He used the pad of his thumb to rub the high arch of my eyebrow and I thought I was going to melt into a puddle at his feet.

“I beat the shit out of him. Cracked a couple of his ribs, f**ked up his nose, and left him in miserable pile of broken and bloody despair. The thing is, he also happened to be the starting quarterback and all of that went down a few weeks before a major bowl game.”

I gasped and his frown switched to a grin. I didn’t notice he had been walking us backward the entire time he was talking and now I was backed up against the kitchen counter. He grabbed me around the waist and hefted me up so that I was perched on the edge and made himself at home between my legs.

“The school kept it quiet because he was getting ready to be drafted and they didn’t want him to lose his authority over the rest of the team by having to admit he got his ass kicked by a freshman. I lost the scholarship I got recruited with and was pretty much banned from playing football at any college level for the next couple of years. To me it was like getting a Get Out of Jail Free card. I didn’t want to be in Alabama. I didn’t want to see your sister ever again. And football was never really where my heart was at anyway. All of it felt like it was being forced and I was sick of all of it.”

I was still trying to get my head around the fact that he had proposed to my sister and now he was telling me he had tried to kill her college boyfriend with his bare hands. None of that should be a turn-on. None of it should make it okay that his hands were running up the outside of my thighs and into the hem of my shorts where my legs were bracketing his lean hips, but even with all these new revelations I wasn’t inclined to make him stop.

“You beat up some guy just because he was seeing Poppy? You were that jealous?” That didn’t ring as one hundred percent true considering Poppy had dated a lot in high school and it never seemed to bother him. It was hard to think because his hands had found their way around the back of my legs and were now cupping my ass as he pulled me closer to the edge of the counter. There was no missing that our proximity was having an effect on him as well. The hard ridge in the front of his pants was unmistakable and I wanted to rub against him. It felt wanton and kind of wrong now that I knew what had happened with him and my sister in my absence.

“That’s also not my story to tell. I beat him up because he was a grade-A ass**le and I never liked him. He was the kind of guy that made me know for sure football was never going to be what I wanted to do. I was jealous that she cared about him and not about me, but that didn’t have anything to do with why I kicked his ass. So there you have it, Salem. I’m running all the time because those memories hurt when they catch up to me and I’ve had enough hurt in my life.”

I sucked in another breath and put my hands on his shoulders as one of his hands left my ass and danced along the inner curve of my thigh, where all the best parts of me and him were pressed intimately together. I felt him run his knuckle along the edge of my panties and couldn’t help but gulp a little bit. I needed to tell him to stop but I just couldn’t seem to find the words. “That’s why you’re running from the past. Why are you running from me?” I sounded husky and turned on. I really should develop some shame but he felt so good and those eyes were so clear and vivid I couldn’t look away.

He chuckled a little and I could feel it everywhere we touched. His fingers were getting bolder and my desire to keep some kind of control of him—of the situation—was fading into nothing.

“You always saw me, Salem. You understood me when I didn’t even get myself. You were my best friend and then you left. I can’t care about someone, attach myself to someone, when they’re just going to leave me in the end.” He breathed in and out in a heavy way and I couldn’t stop myself from finally putting my fingers on that unruly piece of hair hanging in his eyes. His next words twisted my heart so much that it ached. “Not after what happened to my mom.”

I was going to tell him I was sorry. I never meant to just drop out of his life altogether, but I was young and finally free from my father’s reins, so I had gone a little crazy and lost some of myself. I needed him to know he had been my best friend as well. I wanted to tell him how he was the only good I could remember from growing up but his mouth moved from my temple to my lips and just rested there.

He didn’t kiss me, didn’t breathe me in, didn’t tease me with his tongue. He just rested his lips against my own as we stayed pressed together in silence, tension thick and throbbing between us. I felt like I was stuck. Caught in some kind of slow-motion movie reel where every touch, every move he made was agonizingly deliberate and torturously drawn out. Those talented fingers of his were skating very close to the edge of where fabric and skin met underneath my clothes and he was no longer anywhere near my inner thigh but so much closer to places that were hot and damp. Places that were beginning to coil tight with want and need.

“What about you, Salem? Did you think of me as a brother?”

When he spoke I felt his words as they brushed across my mouth more than heard what he said. I gave my head a tight little shake and let my fingers curl into the strong cords at the base of his neck.

“No. I thought you were a beautiful and sad little boy and then I thought you were a clever and talented teenager.” I gasped and let out a tiny shriek of surprise because there was no longer fabric between his questing fingers and my wet and eager flesh. “Now I think you’re a gorgeous and complicated man, but none of my feelings for you have ever been familial. I never considered you like a brother, Rowdy.”