Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

The News Building

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2017

Copyright © Jennifer M Voorhees 2017

Cover design by Studio Takoma/Zoe Norvell © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover photograph © Deborah Kolb/ImageBrief

Woman’s hair © NULL / Alamy Stock Photo

Jennifer M Voorhees asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008116309

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008116316

Version: 2017-07-10

Dedication

This one is for the survivors. The fierce and the fighters, the ones who refused to break. This book is for anyone who needs to know it can and will get better … Those who need some reassurance that there are good guys out there. Believe that there are hot, sweet, special nice guys who don’t mind finishing last. *wink wink

I saved the best hearts for last

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Bonus (Because my Readers are Rad) Epilogue

Salvaged Playlist

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Jay Crownover

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

When I introduced Poppy in Rowdy and Salem’s book, I had no idea she was going to become the character who readers asked me about the most. Every day someone asked me if she was going to get a book, asked when her story was coming, but more than that, they really really wanted her to get a happy-ever-after. They demanded that she love and be loved better than any of my other characters. She’d been through hell and back, and without a doubt, my readers felt she deserved someone who would treat her right and be good to her.

I think that speaks to why we all love to read romance so much. It’s the idea that the heart can heal from anything and that there really, truly is someone out there who can make all the bad things that may have happened to harden a heart disappear. That there is someone who can find us and guide us to a better place no matter how lost and alone we might feel. Readers didn’t want her to be afraid anymore. They wanted her to be romanced and won over.

Make no mistake, I can give some good romance;) … but it’s not the norm for me. I have never considered myself a romantic at heart. I love love, and I adore all the sexy, sweaty things that go with it. But hearts and flowers, wooing and soft persuasion … yeah … I ain’t got no time for that. I like my romance a little ugly, a little dangerous, and a whole lot messy. So that made getting into the groove for this book—the one that was about hearts healing and real romance—challenging. It required soft and I am much more comfortable with hard.

It’s not very often I sit down and put two people with pure hearts together. It’s a rare case when I’m writing two people who are genuinely kind and caring, who are simply looking for something better out of each other and out of themselves. I tend to drift toward making at least one of my main characters all kinds of twisted and torn, but that isn’t the case here. Yes, they both have demons to slay and mountains to climb, but Poppy and Wheeler are simply good people who have had more than their fair share of bad thrown their way … they are so much more than what they have experienced. More than any other characters I have ever written, when they stumble they get right back up and keep going. I’m going to be honest, I had a rough end of 2016. Things with family, my dog, things changing professionally … it made the task of writing about perseverance and unwavering optimism, writing about hope and courage, a bit of a challenge. But that’s why I write, why I tell the stories I do. It’s an escape, a way to live in a place that has all the things reality might be missing at the moment.

In order to do these two justice, it took some digging deep, some honest self-evaluation and self-examination, on my part to get to the soft center of myself that I usually keep hidden from the world. Really, I like to pretend it doesn’t exist at all. I desperately wanted to get it right—for Poppy and Wheeler, but more for the readers who were rooting for the girl who had been ruined to be Salvaged and returned to her former glory. For the tenderhearted who wanted the nice guy to finally catch some kind of break.

I think I ended up exactly where I was supposed to with all of it … I mean at the end of it all I was emotionally spent and exhausted in the best way. I think I took a hundred naps! It’s been a journey, the best adventure I could have ever asked for, one shared with my readers through these eleven books set in my favorite place. I couldn’t be any happier with where we (and all of our friends caught between the pages) ended up.

This is where we belong

~Love & Ink

Jay

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

—Joseph Joubert

I was the kind of guy that thought I had it all figured out. It came from having spent my entire childhood caught up in chaos and upheaval. When I was old enough to call my own shots and make my own way, I did it with a single-minded determination and unwavering dedication. I knew what I wanted. Every move I made, every step I took, moved me toward that perfectly planned future I had been dreaming of from the minute I realized I was all on my own. A realization that came far too early and was brutally reinforced every single time I was forced to bounce from one temporary home to the next.

I clung to the idea that I would do everything differently. I would make decisions which would lead to a life that was easy, smooth, and as steady as a car with a new alignment and high-end shocks. I found the girl that was meant to be mine and clutched her in a death grip. I went out of my way to be whoever she needed me to be, to never give her any kind of reason to go. I made her the center of my entire world, not realizing she might feel trapped there as time went on. I was holding on so tight I never felt her trying to wiggle her way free.

I started a business, bought a house, and made plans … so many plans. Plans that would be considered simple and boring to some, but they covered everything I wanted since the time I was four years old. They were the plans that would give me the life I’d been longing for since the minute I was left on my own.

I had my eyes on the prize, the promise of what could be if I worked hard, took care of my woman, and did everything that the person who was supposed to love me and care for me didn’t do. I would have held on until the bitter, burning end, but there was nothing I could do when the rope was cut.

At that point all I could do was fall.

I felt my grip on everything I was trying so hard to hold on to slip the day she walked into my garage, hiding behind one of my friends. Rowdy St. James worked at the tattoo shop where I got the majority of my ink done. He called and asked me to empty out my shop of employees and other customers one Saturday afternoon so that he could bring his girlfriend’s sister in to look at a car. He didn’t need to explain why the garage needed to be cleared out, not that I would have asked. The girl had been all over the news months before. You couldn’t get away from her terrified face and shaking body as her horrifying ordeal was splashed all over the news. Her husband had abducted her at gunpoint. Salem, her sister and Rowdy’s lady, had been a victim of the attack as well. Poppy Cruz only went with the lunatic she was married to, in order to keep her sibling safe. It had resulted in a nightmare that I couldn’t imagine anyone coming back from. Without question I cleared out the shop so she wouldn’t have to worry about being surrounded by a bunch of dirty, boisterous men that wouldn’t know how to behave around someone as fragile and delicate as she appeared to be.

I didn’t want her to be scared of anything ever again. It made no sense, but it resonated inside of me.

Things at home had been rocky, rougher than class-five rapids in spring, but I was paddling for my life and prepared to ride it out. I couldn’t let go. I wouldn’t let go. I saw Poppy the day she walked through my shop and I started to feel how sore my hands and my heart were from holding on.

Her head was down, eyes focused on the tips of her shoes. Her shoulders were hunched over and her long hair hid her face. She was skinny, so skinny, nothing but skin and bones. She was nothing that I should have noticed, not because she was clearly doing everything in her power to be invisible, but because I was supposed to have my eyes locked on my future and doing whatever I could to salvage it. But I did notice her and I couldn’t look away once I did.

She was obviously terrified, clearly out of her element and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t her unease that called to me … it was her loneliness. I could feel it filling up the space that separated us. Stretching, growing, expanding until it was all I was breathing in and exhaling back out. It was bitter on my tongue and heavy across my skin because I knew the feeling well. I lived with it pressing me down and pushing me forward every minute of every day. The reason I was so set on the way things had to be, the reason I was singlemindedly set on settling down and building a life with the girl that was slipping through my fingers was because I never again wanted to be as alone as this girl was. I didn’t want to be left and forgotten. I’d barely survived it the first time.

I did my best to sell her a car that was as beautiful as she was … a classic with clean lines and a flawless finish. She picked something practical and boring but that was ultimately safe and reliable. I understood her choice but her reasons behind it grated and annoyed me long after she left the shop. When she wasn’t standing in front of me, she should have been easy to forget; after all, everything in front of me, everything I had been working for and toward, was falling down in front of my eyes. My world was collapsing in on itself and everything I thought I was so goddamn sure of turned out to be nothing more than lies and illusions. In the middle of all of it, I couldn’t forget her sad eyes and shivering, shaking form. Her loneliness clung to me, unshakable and unforgettable. I didn’t think I would see her again and against my better judgment I often found myself wondering how she was doing and if she had gotten a handle on all the things that seemed to be crushing her under their inescapable weight.

I was wrong about seeing her again, just like I was wrong about doing everything in my life differently from how my mother had lived hers would ensure my happiness. I was wrong about hard work and sacrifice being enough. I was wrong about holding on when what I was holding on to desperately wanted me to let go. I was left with bleeding palms, rope burns around my heart, and scars on my soul.

The next time I saw Poppy Cruz it was my loneliness that was filling up the space, suffocating me, choking me, making me forget to handle her with care. I was nothing more than a searing, open wound. One that was raw, aching, throbbing, and leaking my broken heart and shattered emotions out everywhere. I felt like I’d lost everything, like my entire life had been nothing but a waste of time, nothing more than building blocks knocked over with the swipe of a careless hand. The girl I loved didn’t love me back, my future was ultimately nothing more than a fuzzy, fractured blur. I couldn’t see anything clearly other than the waste and ruin of all my best laid plans.

But I saw her. And I saw that I scared her.

It was the last thing I wanted to do but my loneliness was just as big and just and consuming as hers was. It spread out, hungry and angry, looking to consume anyone that might try and challenge its reign.

I tried to pull myself together, apologized because I knew our paths would cross again now that she lived next door to my best friend. I didn’t want to be another man that she was terrified of. I locked the loneliness down, wrestled it into submission, and tried to quiet down the wild inside of me that was howling, screaming at the loss of its mate. I wanted to be nothing more than gnashing teeth and tearing claws but I swallowed those instincts and allowed myself to act like a kicked puppy that just wanted to whimper and cry.

Poppy had been through more than I could imagine. She was the one I couldn’t look away from, but even then, she managed to slip past me and disappear. She looked like honey but she moved like a ghost. I memorized everything about her even though she hardly let me see her face.

I wasn’t supposed to be looking at anything other than how to salvage the mess my life was in, but she was all I could see.

Poppy

I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

I was pretty sure sometime over the last week my body and brain had been taken over by an alien life force that was making me act the opposite of how I normally acted.

Even before I was scared of my own shadow, I wasn’t the type that went out of my way to seek attention from the opposite sex. Making boys drool and collecting broken hearts was more up my older sister’s alley. I tended to be the girl that only spoke when spoken to. I was always shy and hesitant, especially when I was around someone I found attractive. I’d had more than one man tell me that it was endearing … little did I know my obvious uncertainty about my own appeal and allure clearly marked me as prey to those same men. I was an easy target. Something I swore to myself I would never be again. Which was why there was no logical explanation for why I found myself currently parked in front of a very industrial-looking building as I tried to work up the courage to go inside.

The garage was on the outskirts of downtown Denver. Tucked away among factories and buildings that were now gentrified and redeveloped into upscale apartments and trendy eateries near Coors Field. The garage looked like it had escaped every dime of big money sunk into making LoDo prime real estate. It was a throwback to when this part of the city was still rough and unsafe for people to be out walking their little dogs on designer leashes after dark. The bricks on the outside had faded paint from when the garage was some kind of shipping warehouse. The old paint blended in with newer graffiti that the owner hadn’t bothered to power-wash away. There was also a mural, a beautiful depiction of the Rocky Mountains, that stood off in the distance; it covered all three of the massive metal doors that allowed the cars access in and out of the building. It was a statement piece. One that was impossible to miss. It softened the entire feel of the building and the tall metal fence with its wide gate that surrounded it.

I knew that one of the guys who owned the tattoo shop where both my sister and her boyfriend worked had painted the mural in trade. Wheeler, the guy I was here to see, if I ever got up the nerve, worked on Nash Donovan’s muscle car and in turn Nash had turned the garage doors into something that even the most dedicated taggers and graffiti artists appreciated too much to deface. Salem, my sister, mentioned that Wheeler was never opposed to a solid trade. Which explained why the majority of the mechanic’s skin was inked in colorful images courtesy of Nash and the rest of the artists who worked at the Saints of Denver.

I was used to being surrounded by heavily tattooed individuals—heck, my sister started marking her flawless golden skin before she was legally old enough to get a tattoo in order to annoy my father. However, Hudson Wheeler was by far the most decorated human I had ever come across. The designs swirled up each side of his neck and across his throat. They dropped down over his wrists and splayed wide across the back of his hands. He had artwork across his chest and it crawled from the base of his hairline all the way to the top of his jeans across his back and abdomen. He was a walking art installation. And while all that ink and color might have been overwhelming on someone else, with the graceful, thoughtful way he moved and the quiet, measured way he spoke, all the color and noise that covered his body worked for the man that was known as Wheeler. I figured out after the first time I met him that his skin was telling the world his story because he didn’t want to be bothered with repeating it over and over again.

My father would be appalled by the way Hudson Wheeler looked. He would hate everything about him. That meant I allowed the trickle of attraction that had worked its way through the fear and doubt that suffocated me on a daily basis to take root and grow. Anything that my dad disapproved of was something that I was more than willing to embrace with open arms. I was late to defiance, but did it ever feel good.

Taking a deep breath and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I looked over at the little box that was on the seat next to me. A small grin tugged at my mouth when my eyes landed on the contents. I had no idea if Wheeler was in the market for this particular kind of gift but I figured if he didn’t want it I would take it home until I figured something else out. It was a bold move, bringing a man I hardly knew this kind of gift, but as soon as I saw it I knew Wheeler had to have it.

I scolded myself for being foolish and impulsive, silently telling myself that I was setting myself up for the kind of embarrassment and ridicule that would cripple me. It had taken me endless hours of therapy and unwavering amounts of tough love from my family and friends to get to the point where I could leave the house without having a full-on panic attack. Taking a step so far out of my comfort zone felt like I was jumping off a cliff without knowing if there was anything down below to cushion my fall. If Wheeler rejected the gift, if he made me feel stupid for trying to do something nice, it very well might undo all the hard work I’d put into getting back some semblance of a normal life. Trying to cheer up a man that I had no ties to or no investment in seemed like a foolish risk to take, but I still packed up the box and drove down here. I tried to talk myself out of going inside, my mind screaming that this was a mistake. It didn’t work. Even though I was a nervous wreck I still ended up grabbing the box, muttering under my breath at the contents like they could reassure me this wasn’t going to blow up in my face. I was shaking from head to toe as I exited the car.

The box shifted in my hold, making me gasp and mutter a few choice words. My father would hate that I was swearing, so I made it a point to do so at least once a day. I had to shut the car door with my hip and I jumped when it slammed shut. I watched wide-eyed as one of the painted metal doors started to roll up. I squinted behind the dark lenses of my sunglasses as a lone figure walked to the edge of a bay and deftly jumped down, ignoring the ramp that led up into the building. I gulped a little bit because there was no mistaking the tall, lean figure that was making his way toward me. The late-afternoon sun made his already burnished hair glow like autumn fire, and highlighted the dips and valleys in his arms and across his broad chest as he wiped his hands on a red rag that he pulled from his back pocket. He had the top half of his coveralls unfastened and hanging around his waist, leaving him and all that artwork that covered him on display in nothing more than a black tank top that had a hole on the side. He looked dirty and a little rough. Both things totally worked for him … and for me. I’d almost forgotten what lust felt like. I was attracted to him and that terrified me because in my world attraction led to nothing but heartache and hurt. Still, here I was, standing in front of him even though everything inside of me was screaming to run as far away from him as possible.

I moved as the box shifted again and stopped as he lifted his chin up in the direction where I had parked my very nondescript sedan. “Something wrong with the Camry?” Wheeler’s voice was warm and smooth, like expensive liquor sipped on summer nights, but his eyes were cold. They were the palest blue I had ever seen, a blue so washed out and light that they had a silvery shimmer to them. They were also sharp and intent, not missing much, including the box I was having a hard time keeping a hold on as he got closer.

“Um … no. The Camry is fine, thank you.” Rowdy, my sister’s boyfriend and the father of my soon-to-make-an-appearance niece or nephew, had strong-armed me into buying a car from Wheeler when I finally decided I was emotionally well enough to live on my own after I fell apart at the hands of the last man that was supposed to love me. Wheeler tried to sell me a 1957 Bonneville that was hands down the coolest car I had ever seen, but I balked at the idea of riding around in something that was guaranteed to attract unwanted attention. Especially attention of the male variety. Rowdy cringed when I handed over the cash for the Camry but Wheeler just smiled like he understood why I made the choice even if he didn’t think it was the right one.

I nervously shifted my feet and watched as that icy gaze of his landed on the box clutched to my side. Right on time the contents let out a little half bark, half yelp that had Wheeler’s rust colored eyebrows lifting up almost to his hairline and made his tattooed hands pause where they were still wringing the red rag tightly between them.

“Is that a puppy?” He sounded curious and slightly amused, which I took as a good sign. Most of the men I’d dealt with in the past would have been furious that I had not only showed up unannounced but did so with a tiny, wiggling puppy in tow.

“It is a puppy … I … uh … well, someone dropped them off at the vet’s office where I work and I thought that since Dixie is leaving and taking Dolly with her, and you seemed so fond of her that maybe you wanted one of your own … well …” I was rambling and talking too fast but I couldn’t stop the words from rushing out one after the other. Dolly was my neighbor’s pit bull, my neighbor who just happened to be Wheeler’s best friend. “Plus, you own a house, so you can have a pit bull or maybe you need him as a guard dog for the garage. With some training he could be perfect. You can take him to work with you, which is great since most puppies have to live in a crate while they’re being trained.” I shifted my feet again and looked down at the dog, who was whining up at me like he felt sorry for me because even a nonhuman could tell I was making a mess of this. “Pit bulls are illegal in the city limits so we have to adopt them out because shelters will euthanize them if we can’t find them homes, and no animal deserves that.”

He didn’t answer me but he did reach out and take the box from me. The brindle-and-white puppy immediately jumped to the edge of the box and started yipping at and sniffing the new person that was within licking distance. Wheeler put the box on the ground and picked up the solid little body and held the adorable animal up in front of his face while the puppy barked excitedly and wagged his stubby little tail. “He’s cute.”

Oh lordy, was he ever … and I wasn’t talking about the dog.

“Um … I know it’s kind of presumptuous but I thought maybe you two could help each other out.” I cringed as I unwittingly stumbled into personal territory where I absolutely didn’t belong. It had been nothing more than bad timing and admitted curiosity that landed me right in the middle of Wheeler’s personal life imploding. I shouldn’t know that his now-former fiancée had cheated on him, prompting him to cancel the wedding only a few weeks before they were set to walk down the aisle, and I also shouldn’t know that this wasn’t the first time his woman had stepped out on him. But I did know and it had me feeling all kinds of ways about what he had been through. I knew that Wheeler was a nice guy, one that deserved a bit of happiness while he healed from that kind of devastating heartbreak. And really, who couldn’t be happy when they were holding a puppy, especially when that puppy was already clearly in love with him.

“I’m going to miss Dixie more than I’m going to miss Dolly.” He gave me a crooked grin as he mentioned my neighbor.

The fact that I lived next door to Dixie was the reason I knew all the gory details of his recent breakup. She was his ex-fiancée’s sister as well as his best friend. The walls were thin and Dixie was one stranger that I trusted enough to get close to, so I spent a lot of time at her place. It sucked that she was getting ready to move to Mississippi right when Wheeler needed her the most. But her boyfriend was there and she missed him. It was obvious she wasn’t happy being in Denver when Church wasn’t.

I cleared my throat and lifted fingers that had a visible tremor in them to my hair. I pushed some of it behind my ears and winced when the motion knocked my sunglasses sideways. I didn’t know if I could handle this conversation eye to eye but it was move the sunglasses or look like more of a spaz than I already did. With a sigh I pushed them to the top of my head and froze as his frosty eyes locked on mine. They were so cold, they could freeze me from the inside out … instead I suddenly felt warm all over and heated in way that was foreign and strange. I’d never been so physically drawn to anyone and it made me anxious and agitated. I didn’t know what to do with it. I wasn’t in any kind of place emotionally to be crushing on a guy with the kind of complicated history and tangled future Wheeler had. I was only recently able to take care of myself in the most basic of ways. There was no way I had it in me to take care of him as well … and that’s what he needed … a woman that would step up to the plate and fix all the things that woman he wanted had broken. A woman who was selfish and thoughtless. A woman he very well might still be in love with.

“If you don’t want him I’m going to ask Dixie to take him. Dolly can always use a friend. One of my coworkers took home his sister and the doc I work for found homes out of state for the other two boys in the litter. This little guy was the last one that needed a home. I couldn’t stand seeing him left alone while the rest of his family found forever homes. Like I said …” I shrugged a little and looked away from that piercing stare. “I immediately thought of you.” Wheeler was looking for his forever home too, I just knew it.

He bent down and put the puppy on the ground. The stout little animal started to jump on his lower legs and nipped at the worn leather of his sturdy and stained boots. Wheeler put his hands on his hips as he watched the puppy. I was almost a hundred percent certain that bringing the abandoned ball of slobber and love had been the right call when those arctic-colored eyes lifted back up to me. His expression was hard to read but it was clear something was stopping him from embracing my gift with open arms.

“I don’t know that I have the time to take on a puppy right now, Poppy.” He lifted a hand and rubbed it across the back of his neck. His mahogany-colored eyebrows pulled into a vee over the top of his nose and the corners of his mouth pulled down in a frown that was too harsh for his pretty face. I liked it much better when he smiled and his twin dimples cut deeply into his cheeks.

I bit my bottom lip to keep the distressed noise that I could feel climbing up the back of my throat at bay. I knew he might say no but I couldn’t hide the fact that I was disappointed by his decision. I honestly felt like he and the puppy would be good for one another, that they could bring a little joy into each other’s lives. It stung that Wheeler wasn’t ready to open his heart up again, even when it was to something that was so obviously eager to love him unconditionally and irrevocably, unlike his ex.

“It’s okay. Like I said, I’ll take him home until I can find a place for him.” I crouched down and wiggled my fingers to get the dog’s attention, and grinned when he bounded over, tripping over his front legs as he scrambled in my direction. “I can take him to work with me and hold on to him until I figure something out. One of the boys at the shop will step up if Dixie doesn’t want another dog.”

I heard him sigh and looked up to see him watching me intently. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then snapped it shut, his teeth audibly clicking together. I didn’t know much about Wheeler, but what I did know I liked. He was nice. He was polite. He was thoughtful and he was kind. But more than any of those things, he went out of his way to hold himself in a way that wasn’t threatening or intimidating because he was aware without me saying a word how jumpy I was around people, men in particular. I hated that they were bigger than me. I hated that I knew firsthand how badly they could hurt me if they had a mind to. I hated that I wilted and cowered under their attention, even if it was innocent and friendly. The fact that he took care not to spook me spoke volumes and made me feel awful for putting him in such an awkward position.

“Poppy …” He sounded regretful and I had no interest in dragging the torture out any longer for either of us. I scooped up the dog and buried my nose in the top of his head.

“Seriously it’s no big deal. I love him and I’m happy to hold onto him until I can find him a proper home. It was stupid of me not to consider how busy you are with everything you have going on in your life right now. A puppy is a big commitment and that’s not something you can put on someone else without discussing it with them first.” The dog swiped his tongue across my face, no doubt feeling my distress and rising panic. I wanted to tuck his warm little body to my chest and run away like I was trying to score a touchdown in the other team’s end zone. “I should have known better.” That was a common refrain, one that chased me in my nightmares and blasted through my head every single second I struggled to survive the torturous hands of my abusive husband. I found myself repeating dangerous, harmful patterns where the men in my life were concerned, and through it all I told myself over and over again that I should have known better. My therapist would tell me I was being too hard on myself, that I was shouldering the blame for the actions of men that I had no control over. But blame was hard to let go when it was what you lived and breathed.

Wheeler made a noise that sounded like he was choking and then bent over at the waist so that his hands were resting on his knees as his breath wheezed in and out. His wide shoulders shuddered and then tensed like he had taken a blow that knocked the wind out of him.

I didn’t touch anyone, not even the people that had grown up hugging me and loving me. But I was compelled to reach out a shaky hand and put it on his colorful shoulder. The puppy gave a yip of approval and I tried not to fall to my knees as the warmth from his tattooed skin blazed through my fingers and shot up my arm. It had been a long time since I’d let myself have any kind of human contact, and even longer since that kind of contact didn’t leave bruises and welts on my skin and tattered lesions across every surface of my soul. He felt so vital. So necessary.

“Are you okay?” The shoulder I was lightly touching tensed even tighter and I let go as if his skin burned me when he righted himself and I ended up frozen in that frigid stare of his.

“No. I’m about as far from okay as I have ever been.” He let out a brittle-sounding laugh and narrowed his eyes at me. “When a pretty girl shows up trying to make the shit show that has become your life better, it should be okay, but it’s not.”

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face like he was tired. “I can count on one hand the times in my life someone bothered to ask if I was okay, Poppy.” His mouth twisted into a wry grin that would look harsh on anyone else but with those dimples of his still managed to look downright adorable. “Most of those times have been Dixie asking. It wasn’t even the right sister.”

I was horrified and didn’t bother to hide it as I huddled the wiggling puppy to my chest like his warm little body could protect me from the images his awful words brought to mind. “That’s terrible, Wheeler.” My voice shook and the words sounded squeaky. I already knew too much about him and this was more information that I didn’t feel like I had earned the right to have.

“It is pretty terrible but not nearly as bad as my ex telling me that she’s knocked up with my kid.” I gasped and took a step backward as his words landed like blows. “A kid we definitely didn’t plan on. A kid I am in no way ready to raise with a woman I can’t stand to be around. A kid that is going to have to bounce between houses and be shuffled from one place to another always trying to figure out exactly where home is.”

He sounded shattered and he looked the same. Those eyes of his were colder than anything I’d ever seen, his skin was pale and taut over the sharp angles of his face, making the smattering of freckles that dotted his nose and cheeks stand out even more than they normally did.

A baby.

Those words always hit something delicate and unprotected deep inside of me. When my sister first told me that she was expecting a baby, I wanted to be happy for her but that happiness had to fight its way through remorse and sorrow so thick it felt like it was crushing me. The same thing was happening right now as Wheeler watched me. Everything inside of me wanted to unravel but I was holding it together, barely. He should be happy that he had a precious little life on the way, even if he was less than thrilled with the circumstances surrounding the arrival.

I took another step backward and almost fell over. Wheeler reached out a hand like he was going to catch me or stop my fall, but I flinched away and tightened my hold on the dog so much so that he yelped in protest. Frantically I pulled my sunglasses from the top of my head and shoved them back over my eyes. I could feel moisture building, and if I started crying I needed something to hide behind. He wouldn’t understand why his words stripped me bare and I didn’t have it in me to explain the reasons why they cut so deeply. I’d used up all my limited courage and nerve getting myself out of the car and offering up the puppy.

“Well, congratulations on the baby.” I didn’t sound like I meant it even though I honestly did. “I’m gonna take this little guy and head home and make some calls about who might be in the market for a puppy.”

I scrambled back some more and watched wide-eyed behind my sunglasses as Wheeler advanced on me. He followed me until my back was flat against the side of the car and he was looming in front of me with only the puppy to separate his chest from mine. It was the closest I had been to a man in a very long time. Even with him being irritated and riled up, I couldn’t say that I was worried about him taking out his feelings on me. He didn’t scare me. The way he made me feel did.

“I’m sorry, Poppy. If I was in a different place in my life I would be pretty fucking excited that a girl like you had me on her mind and went out of her way to do something really sweet for me. If I wasn’t already struggling to get my head around being a new father, I would happily take on the task of being a puppy parent.” God, he was nice. Even when he was looming over me looking not very nice at all. “There’s something about you, something about those eyes and the soft way that you speak, that makes me want to tell you all my secrets. Secrets that sting. I want to tell you that the last time my life was this fucked up was when my junkie mother was dropping me off at a fire station in some rinky-dink mountain town in the middle of a snowstorm. Our car broke down, because it always did. She didn’t take care of it and she sure as shit didn’t take care of me.” I felt my mouth drop open in shock but couldn’t move as his voice dipped lower and his eyes got even colder. His words sent shivers up and down my spine.

“I was lucky that it was a manned station and not one of the volunteer houses that sits empty until a fire is called in. There was a very nice fire captain there that took me in for the night. The next day I was dumped with child services and I spent my entire childhood jumping from one foster house to another. She didn’t even have a coat for me. She dropped me off in jeans that were too small, a T-shirt that was stained and torn, and in tennis shoes that were shit for the snow because they were mostly duct-taped together.” He blinked at me as I gasped in horror and that harsh scowl that cut into the pretty lines of his aristocratic bone structure was back. “I was fucking four years old.”

I wanted to hug him. I wanted to comfort the little boy he was and the man that was clearly struggling in front of me. Knowing that I would freak out if we actually made that kind of contact while both of us were so raw, I scooted to the side, careful not to brush up against him, and pulled open the door so I could put my panting, slobbering bundle down in the passenger seat. I kept the door between us as a barrier while all I wanted to do was get away from his desperation and pain. I needed to take a minute to process the fact he had a baby on the way with a woman that had destroyed him and ruined the idyllic life they could have had together. That hurt in ways I didn’t want to pick apart while he was standing so close looking at me like he could see right into the center of my every thought and feeling. I had too much of my own hurt; I couldn’t believe that I was feeling his as well.

“I’m so sorry you had to suffer like that. Good luck with everything, Wheeler.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I would be around if he needed me, even though the words were tickling the tip of my tongue. I slipped into the car and wrapped my fingers around the steering wheel like it was some kind of lifeline. I reached for the door to pull it shut but it wouldn’t budge because his hand was wrapped around the top of the frame. He bent his head to look down at me and I could see a riot of emotions blowing through his cool gaze. He was pissed. He was frustrated. He was sad. He was irritated and he was maybe, just maybe, a little bit excited.

“Gonna need more than luck. But seriously, thank you for thinking of me. I can’t recall the last time someone did that.” If I was someone else, someone stronger, braver, someone fearless instead of fearful, I would have climbed out of the car and given him that goddamn hug. He looked like he desperately needed one.

But I wasn’t someone different.

I was the girl that had almost died trying to make her father happy and win his approval.

I was the girl that let her sister leave without begging her to take me with her when that was all I really wanted.

I was the girl that fell in love with the wrong boy and paid a price so heavy for it that I lost everything.

I was the girl that married a monster, and even though the demon was physically dead and buried, he still lived inside of me, where he haunted me, hounded me, hurt me.

As always, I was afraid, so I didn’t do anything other than shut the car door when he let go and drive away. I really couldn’t fix all the things that were wrong with Wheeler’s life and I wasn’t about to let him close enough to see exactly how broken my own existence was because I’d yet to be able to fix myself.

The puppy whimpered like he knew what I was thinking and disagreed with me. Luckily, he was a lot easier to ignore than the taunting voice in the back of my head that kept up the steady refrain of You should have known better.

Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.

—Lord Byron

Wheeler

What you’re looking for isn’t between the blonde’s legs, Speedy.”

I shifted my gaze away from the blonde that was very obviously eye-fucking me and turned my attention to the bartender that offered up those unwanted words of wisdom. As always they were spoken with a distinct southern drawl. I lifted an eyebrow at him and was treated to one lifted right back.

“You didn’t find it between the brunette’s legs last week or between the redhead’s the week before that.” He put another drink in front of me even though I’d had more than enough. I watched as he leaned on the bar across from me so that I had no choice but to look up at him as I slid the mixed Southern Comfort and ginger ale closer to me. “The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard you try, you can’t fuck away a broken heart. You aren’t going to find a magical cure for heartache spending an hour inside a pretty girl or one spent at the bottom of a bottle.”

I knew Asa was right but I had no intention of telling him that. Instead I took a healthy swing of the drink and flashed a smile that was fake and forced in the direction of the blonde. When I turned back toward the bartender he was shaking his head at me. I didn’t know Asa Cross very well even though I’d sold him a sweet Nova that needed some work a while back. We shared common friends and his boss at the bar was a silent investor in my garage. Something I tried to keep in mind so that I didn’t make an ass out of myself while trying to drink myself numb.

For reasons known only to the overly observant southerner, he’d taken it upon himself to be my voice of reason every single time I stepped into the bar. Admittedly each time I did so I was looking for dangerous distractions. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house with nothing but regret and dread for company. I appreciated that he didn’t want me to chase after my own ruin, but I’d handled my love life so carefully for so long that I was beyond ready to dirty it up a little. Being thoughtful and considerate got me nothing but being abandoned and betrayed. It was time to see what I got when I was careless and reckless.

“I’ve told you before, I’ve been with the same girl since I was sixteen. Nothing wrong with seeing what else is out there now that the shackles are shaken off.” I wanted to sound more excited about the prospect of sleeping my way through the entirety of eligible women in Denver than I actually was. The reality was that women liked me, they always had, but I’d been saying no for so long that saying yes felt weird. Misplaced guilt took the fun out of being a player. That was something I couldn’t even convince myself I was until the third or fourth drink.

“Anybody that takes a little bit here and a little bit there is going to end up hungry at the end of the day, Speedy. You’re a man that’s used to having a full plate, these snacks aren’t going to do anything for you. You’re going to starve.” Asa nodded and pushed off the bar, leaving his convoluted words hanging heavily in the air. He made his way over to a customer at the other end of the bar top, giving the blonde the opening she’d been waiting for to make her move. I tried not to wince when she slid onto the empty stool next to me. Her perfume was strong and sickeningly floral. It was inescapable as she leaned an arm on the bar top and turned her body toward mine.

She was pretty in a very made-up kind of way. I didn’t particularly have a type. I’d been with Kallie for so long that I’d forgotten what my preferences had been before her. Watching this woman’s very painted lips turn up at the edges and her alarmingly long eyelashes flutter flirtatiously at me, I realized that high maintenance and overly done was not high on the list of things that made my dick hard.

Unwanted, an image of Poppy Cruz holding that adorable puppy and looking at me like she was ready to bolt at any second flashed through my mind. Now, her easy and untouched kind of beauty made my dick hard without question. In fact, I could feel it tighten and twitch against my zipper at nothing more than the thought of her.

She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and she didn’t have to do a single thing for me, or anyone else to notice it. She didn’t wear makeup, not a stitch of it. Even without it, her lips were a rosy pink and her eyelashes were long and a flawless fan of inky black. They did a great job of keeping her stunning but sad amber gaze hidden from prying eyes. Her skin had an enviable golden hue that could only be achieved through heritage and blessed genetics. Her hair was an unusual mix of browns that ranged from dark chocolate strands to rich caramel-tinted highlights that I doubted came from a salon. The girl didn’t do anything to enhance her stunning looks, which included hiding her slim frame in clothes that were several sizes too big. I’d only ever seen her wearing the most boring, neutral shades that did their best to wash her out and make her look ordinary when she was anything but. She was born to be a hot rod but for reasons that were hard to think about she was living her life like she was meant to be a minivan. Even camouflaged and covered up, the way Poppy Cruz looked totally worked for me in a way this very practiced blonde did not.

“Hi.” The blonde breathed the word out and put the straw sticking out of her drink to her lips in a move that had clearly gotten her what she wanted more times than not.

I took another swig of my drink, turned my head, and inclined my chin in a greeting that was far less seductive than hers. “Hey.”

“You’ve been sitting over here by yourself all night. I thought I would come and see if you wanted some company. It’s never very much fun to drink alone.” She was right. Drinking alone sucked, so did sleeping alone and living alone and doing pretty much everything alone when you were used to having someone by your side.

“I’m Tessa.” She stuck out a hand and I noticed that her fingernails matched the ruby red of her lips. That seemed like a lot of effort to put into catching company for the evening. The most I’d done was put on a clean T-shirt.

I took her fingers in mine and watched as her gaze drifted over the dark spots of grease and oil that seemed to be a permanent part of my skin at this point. It didn’t matter how many times I scrubbed them, parts of the garage were always marking me as a man that got dirty and worked with his hands. She didn’t curl her lip or pull her hand away and wipe it on her very tight jeans. I always considered that a win. “Wheeler.”

Both her eyebrows lifted and a playful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Is that your real name?”

I grinned back because that was a question I got a lot. I heard her suck in a breath as she watched my face when I smiled. My dirty hands might turn some women off but I’d never encountered one that was immune to my smile. God bless dimples. I’d never understood what the big deal was, but they were the reason Kallie noticed me when she first walked into the wrong class when we were in high school together, so I was always glad I had them. They made the work of going home with a willing woman far easier.

I slammed back the rest of my drink and set the empty glass on the bar in front of me. “It’s my last name.” My auto-shop teacher in high school had started calling me by my last name because there was another Hudson in the class. After a while he’d told me he’d never had a student that was so naturally skilled and adept with cars as I was, so the name became a badge of honor. You couldn’t be a guy named Wheeler and not know your way around all kinds of things that went fast and sounded loud and mean. I’d never had anyone invested in me enough to give me a nickname before. Never had anyone care enough to praise me or compliment me. After high school the name stuck because Wheeler was who I decided I wanted to be. He was someone worth something.

“I like it.” I bet she did. But I bet she liked the way my tattooed biceps flexed under the plain black cotton of my T-shirt even more. I’d started getting tattooed when I was really young. I had more skin that was marked than not. Now that I was single I was finding that women liked the ink and the body it covered almost as much as they liked my dimples. In fact, they liked the way I looked so much I didn’t have to put very much effort into trying to be charming or interesting if I wanted to get them into bed. It made me feel a little queasy when I thought about how superficial and unimportant it all was. I forced another smile to distract us both, which made her sigh.

“Thanks, it gets the job done.” I watched as she sucked on the straw some more, clearly waiting for me to give her some kind of sign that I was good to go. I wanted to be good to go, but the longer she stared at me, the more I silently compared her to the woman that stood in front of me earlier, obviously scared but forcing herself to do something nice for a stranger anyways. There was no question that there was something about the terrified and nervous Poppy that I found charming and endearing. This girl had none of that and it was making everything inside of me slam on the brakes instead of pushing the pedal down to move things along faster.

The empty glass in front of me disappeared and a full one reappeared. “Last one, Speedy.” The southern drawl lost its smooth edge as his gaze shifted between me and the blonde. “You want another one, doll?”

The girl paused like someone had hit a button on a remote that controlled her movements. Her huge fake eyelashes fluttered and dropped in reflex at the sound of Asa’s voice. She’d been so focused on me up until that point she didn’t realize there was other attractive and available dick hanging around. Objectively speaking, Asa was far better looking than I was. There was nothing about him that was difficult or complicated to look at. He hadn’t spent a lifetime covering up his skin in order to keep from being overlooked. There was also none of the edge that I had from being unwanted and left behind that sharpened his gaze. Hell, if I had to pick between the two of us, I would go with the southern bartender myself. He had an easy, effortless way about him that I most definitely did not have. I couldn’t remember the last time anything in my life had felt easy. Plus, he was charming as hell, something I most definitely was not.

“Uh … no. I’m good.” Her painted lips turned up at him the exact same way they had turned up at me and a shiver of unease shot down my spine.

I was tired of being second best and underappreciated. When the blonde turned back to me after Asa moved on to finish his last call, I pushed my untouched drink in her direction and hauled myself off of the barstool. “Last drink is on me. Have a good rest of the night.” She blinked at me in confusion and opened her mouth to say something but I shook my head and walked away from her before she could say anything else.

I really was good at saying no, much better than I was at saying yes. Even after the girl made me feel like a piece of meat, like nothing more than a dick that could be interchanged with any other dick for the night, I still didn’t have it in me to be a total asshole. I didn’t want my rejection or disinterest to hurt her because I was still in the throes of how badly Kallie’s desertion had hurt me. I wasn’t the type that lashed out, which made the fact I’d spilled my guts and dropped all my baggage at Poppy’s feet yesterday super unexpected. There was just something about that beautiful girl with her wounded eyes that made me want to assure her she wasn’t the only one feeling shredded and alone.

It was late fall in Denver, well past the time of year that you could be outside in the dark of night without a coat on. The chill in the air cleared up some of the fog in my head and cooled some of the still-simmering anger in my blood at being disregarded as I walked over to my perfectly restored and lovingly maintained ’67 Eldorado Cadillac. The car was my baby. She was the reason I took shop when I was a teenager and she was the thing that gave me purpose and directed me on the path that would lead to my own business and a way to provide for myself. My Caddy was my passion, the first thing that I’d ever owned that was mine outright, and she was a culmination of everything I’d ever been taught and had learned to apply to something real. There was no way in hell I was getting behind the wheel after a night of drinking. She had a million memories tied to her and I doubted I would be able to recover if anything took them away. I felt like my life hadn’t really had the chance to start until I walked into that tiny, undersupplied garage at Brookside High School and laid eyes on the mangled, dismantled beauty that was the former husk of my baby.

I ordered an Uber and propped a hip on the hood as the cold started to filter through my drunken melancholy. It and the idea of going home to an endlessly empty house made me shiver. I turned my head as the noise from the inside of the bar followed Asa out when he opened the door and did a quick scan of the parking lot. His gaze landed where I was leaning against the Caddy and I saw him let out a breath of relief. He shouted over his shoulder for someone to watch the bar for a second and then he let the heavy door shut behind him. He made his way over to where I was shivering and trying to keep my teeth from chattering.

“I was worried you were going to let the blonde take you home. Didn’t think I had to worry about you taking yourself home when you aren’t in any state to drive.” His breath left little puffs of vapor in the air and he didn’t bother to stop his teeth from clicking together as he rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “I like you, Speedy. Don’t make me take you to the ground for your keys.”

I held up my phone and showed him the map with the indicator that my Uber was only a few minutes away. “Called for a ride. I wouldn’t risk my car by driving drunk.”

He shook his head at me and rocked back on his heels. “You’re worried about your car and not yourself. You need someone to set you straight, Wheeler. I’ve been trying the last few weeks but I’m not getting through.”

I lifted an eyebrow and shrugged at him. “I come by for a drink and the company. I don’t remember signing up for a therapy session.”

He snorted at me and rolled his eyes. “You might not want to hear it, but you should listen anyway. When a man that’s made more than his fair share of mistakes sees another man driving off into the ditch, he isn’t much of a man unless he tries to get all those wheels back on the road. Sometimes it takes a tow truck, sometimes it only requires a little push from some helping hands. I understand your old lady did you wrong, but you aren’t going to make it right by drinking yourself into the kind of man you wouldn’t waste your time on if you ran across him.” He pointed a finger at me just as the Uber pulled into the lot and the driver flashed his lights. “Get yourself out of the ditch, Wheeler. There’s nothing good down there and all you’ll end up doing is spinning your wheels.”

I wobbled a little as I pushed myself off the car and put my phone in my back pocket. “I’m good at fixing things that are left behind and broken down, Asa. Don’t worry about me.” I had booze-fueled confidence to make the words sound more certain than they were.

He sighed again and looked down at the toes of his boots. “It’s never fun to see a good man get knocked down.” When he lifted his head back up there was concern stamped clearly across his face. “It’s even worse when that man doesn’t seem interested in getting himself back up. I’m cheaper than a shrink, Wheeler, and my office is a lot more fun.”

The man was going to be spreading himself thin if he was trying to save every lonely heart that sat down at his bar. He was weeks away from opening his own speakeasy-style bar in the heart of LoDo and that meant double the amount of advice to dole out to people that probably weren’t going to listen anyway.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Asa. Take care of that beauty.” Most would think I was talking about his pretty cop girlfriend, but anyone who knew me or knew anything about how a real gearhead operated would know I was talking about the Nova. He was doing the bulk of the restorations himself but occasionally he would bring it by the shop for a mechanical issue his limited knowledge couldn’t handle. It was a sweet ride and I was glad it found a good home. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone needed to tell Asa to take care of his girl; he treated the redheaded cop like she was his entire reason for existing … kind of the way I’d treated Kallie until it all went south.

I gave the Uber driver the address to my place in Curtis Park and tried to tamp down the now familiar hollow and vacant feeling that came with heading home to an empty house. I’d bought the place a hot second after I slid my ring on Kallie’s finger thinking that she was finally ready to settle down and grow up. We’d been together since we were nothing more than kids; however, while I’d gotten more ambitious and more focused on building something impossible to take away from me over the years, she seemed stuck in place. She was always a handful, a bit of a princess with an annoying tendency toward drama and hysterics, but she loved me and she never left me. So I put up with it all. Now that she was gone, hindsight was startlingly clear and I could see all the ways that we had been moving in different directions long before her first indiscretion. I wanted stability and a solid foundation. She wanted to party and be free all while letting me take care of her and support her. Being needed was nice, but not when it turned into being needed for the things I could provide instead of being needed for the man that I was. I’d turned into an ATM machine instead of a boyfriend and a lover. The worst part was I let it happen by not being able to tell Kallie no. I was too worried that if I denied her she would go. In the end it didn’t matter how much I gave, or how hard I’d loved: she went anyway.

“Whoa, what happened to that house?” The Uber driver’s voice pulled me out of my morose thoughts. He was motioning toward the blackened and burned shell of the house that was across the street from mine. It was the house where Brighton Walker and his daughter, Avett, had lived until trouble came calling in a pretty dramatic way.

My buddy Zeb had bought the ruined dwelling and was slowly working to restore it, but the progress was slow and the building looked like it had seen much better days, because it had.

“Fire, but nobody was hurt.” The driver muttered something I didn’t hear and pulled into my driveway. I tripped over my own feet as I climbed out of the back of the car and I hated that my hands shook as it took several tries to get the key in the keyhole on the front door. I’d never been much of a drinker. When your mom was an addict and clinically unhinged, that tended to make indulging in anything that had the ability to lead to a habit leave a bad taste. The last few months I’d been drinking to forget and to stop the memories, but leaving my car behind and being hungover in the morning was starting to wear thin.

I needed to find a better way to cope with all the things that were eating at my insides. Unbidden, an image of wide, golden eyes looking at me like I’d kicked the puppy she was holding when I told her Kallie was pregnant with my baby and I had no clue what I was doing and no time for another innocent soul in my life rolled through my hazy mind. It also baffled and confused me why that news made her look like she was going to fall over. I wasn’t exactly thrilled that Kallie was having my kid, but I couldn’t see a reason why that would affect Poppy, especially as drastically as it had.

Once I was inside my house I tossed my keys on the fancy table that Kallie had insisted on buying for the hallway. The dumb thing cost a bundle and all I used it for was a key holder and a place to toss the mail when I remembered to check it. It was another reminder that I should have put my foot down, should have found a better balance, not that any of that mattered now.

Sighing, I kicked off my boots, pulled off my T-shirt with one hand, and plopped myself down on the couch. When Kallie still lived here I would have had to completely strip and shower before I was allowed to sit on the ridiculously expensive, pale gray piece of furniture. It was not a couch that was man-friendly … especially when that man was rolling around under cars and was shoulders deep in engines all day. I’d been horrified when the delivery guys dropped it off, but Kallie cried and told me I didn’t understand her decorating vision, so I relented. Now I didn’t give two shits if the dumb thing ended up with grease stains and dirt all over it. I was going shopping for a new one as soon as I had a day off and was sober enough to remember I needed a new couch.

I put my feet up on the coffee table, turned on the TV, not bothering to turn it down when screaming, bitching housewives from some county came on the screen. With any luck the SoCo would do its job and I would drift away before the loneliness suffocated me.

The last thought I had before I let my eyes shut was that if I’d taken the puppy from Poppy there would have been something waiting for me to get back home … hell, I would have had a reason not to go out in the first place.

Maybe a puppy was just the kind of practice I needed before my actual baby made its appearance. And if pretty Poppy Cruz wanted to give me a hand figuring out how to be a good puppy parent, I definitely wouldn’t complain. For the first time in months I went to sleep with an almost smile on my face instead of the frown that felt like it was as much a part of my skin as my tattoos.

Poppy

Trying to get the rambunctious puppy to walk on a leash was turning out to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be. He was tiny, but his little body was strong and he was determined not to cooperate. I was sure we made quite a sight as I struggled in vain to get him to walk next to me. Instead, he danced and leaped around at the end of the lead like a balloon with the air rushing out of it as he bounded from one smell to the next.

I was freezing because I hadn’t bothered to change out of my scrubs after work and the weather was fast turning toward winter temperatures. My heart might be firmly located in Colorado but my blood was still used to the Texas sun and sweltering heat. It didn’t help matters that I could probably stand to add a few pounds on my naturally thin frame. I’d never been built with the kind of curves that could stop traffic like Salem was, and after my husband abducted me at gunpoint and ran with me across state lines, all while doing the most horrible things imaginable to my body and my mind, I’d lost what little appetite I had to begin with. I could go several days without eating because wayward thoughts and memories of being violated and tortured had a sneaky way of creeping into my mind when I least expected them. They always made my stomach turn. I knew I should do a better job taking care of myself, but it was easy to forget that I deserved better, so I was constantly reminding myself to take each little victory as a sign that I was on the right path. There were days I ate three square meals and managed to keep it all down, but there had yet to be a night that I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat with a scream locked in my throat and my heart racing so fast it felt like it was going to explode.

I rounded the corner at the end of my block and came to a halt. The puppy took that as a sign that we were done playing and started jumping all over my lower legs and pawing at my shins. He whined at me until I picked him up, and as soon as he could reach my face, his little tongue started darting all over my chin and cheeks. I wondered if he could feel the tension that made my limbs stiff and the anxiety that tightened all my muscles. I felt my breath catch in the back of my throat and there was no stopping my eyes from rapidly blinking to make sure what I was seeing was real and not a figment of my imagination.

He looked like one of those black-and-white art prints that hung in every diner and restaurant I’d ever eaten in. The one that was a throwback to another era when cool was something you had to cultivate and couldn’t buy on Amazon. He was leaning against a black-and-silver car that looked like it should be on the cover of a hot-rod magazine and not parked on a busy and crowded Capitol Hill street. He had on dark jeans and a dark canvas jacket that had the logo of his garage embroidered on the front. His ankles were crossed on the curb in front of him and one booted foot bounced up and down, giving the impression that he’d been waiting for me for a while. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were locked on mine as I stood still, unsure what to do. He had an effortless kind of charisma that radiated off of him. It was equal parts intimidating and irresistible. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to rush toward him or run as far from him as possible.

The puppy made the decision for me. Seeing another human, and thus another opportunity for pats and rubs, he threw his wiggling little body out of my arms before I could react. He hit the ground with a sharp yelp and then bolted right for Wheeler. I let out a gasp and took off after him thinking I could catch the end of the leash that was trailing behind him. I didn’t want him to run into the street or veer off into a yard where he didn’t belong. I was light-years away from being able to handle a confrontation with a hostile stranger that didn’t want the puppy in their yard.

I didn’t need to worry because Wheeler pushed his long, lean frame off the polished side of the car and reached the scrambling animal within a few strides. He crouched down as the puppy hurled himself into his arms and scooped the excited bundle up in one fluid motion. Then he was rising to his full height, which meant he was towering over me when I reached where he was standing. I was embarrassed at how out of breath I was. I was supposed to be stronger than I was before, but I could hardly handle a little jog up the block or the way my heart raced at the sight of him.

I shook my head and put my hands on my hips as I looked up into those arctic eyes. He was scratching the puppy under the chin and looking at me from under lashes that had the barest hint of red in them. “Why don’t you have a coat on?”

It wasn’t what I was expecting but his question reminded me that I was cold and that the lightweight hoodie that had the Saints of Denver logo on it wasn’t doing much to keep the bitter chill in the air off my skin. The shirt was probably the most exciting garment I had in my closet. It was the only thing I owned that was bright and colorful. I rubbed my arms up and down and fired my own question right back at him. “What are you doing here?”

The puppy barked like he was telling me not to be rude but I was unsettled by Wheeler’s unexpected appearance. It wasn’t the typical unsettled that I struggled with because he was a man that I didn’t know. It was the kind of unsettled that made parts of my body I forget could react to an attractive man feel warm and tingly. The kind of unsettled that had me involuntarily leaning closer to him as he started to shift so that he could pull his heavy jacket off one arm without letting go of the dog.

“I wanted to talk to you about the dog. Did you find someone to take him yet?” He shifted the puppy to his now bare arm and I watched the endless amounts of ink that covered his skin move and flex as he shook his other arm free of the coat.

“Uh … not really.” The truth was I hadn’t put that much effort into finding someone because I didn’t want to let the puppy go. In just a few days I’d grown attached even though I knew I wasn’t allowed to keep him in my apartment. I’d already asked since Dixie was allowed to keep Dolly, but the landlord informed me they were grandfathered in before the laws surrounding pit bulls in Denver changed. My little guy wasn’t that lucky.

My response made Wheeler chuckle. He stared at me silently as he held out the coat he’d taken off in his free hand.

“Put this on.” I stared at him like he’d suddenly started speaking Russian until he shook the coat again and frowned at me. His voice was serious and left no room for argument when he repeated the command. “Put this on, Poppy. I want to talk to you and I know you aren’t comfortable inviting me up to your apartment.”

I winced at the reminder of how spazzy and skittish I acted when I’d had to knock on Dixie’s door while he was house-sitting for her. He’d invited me into the apartment and it took every single ounce of courage I had to step over the threshold. Once inside with him, I’d been so jumpy and twitchy that both Wheeler and Dolly had given me a wide berth and plenty of space to freak out. Wheeler went to find what I needed for Dolly and didn’t even try to hand it off to me. He set it on the floor a few feet away from where I was quaking and shivering and then took himself all the way back across the room to the kitchen so I could gather everything up and make my escape without having to get too close to him. I’d wanted to cry tears of gratitude and sob with remorse at the same time. I hated that I couldn’t fight through the fear and just act normal.

I took the jacket he was holding out for me with shaking hands and fought the urge to bury my nose in it to see if it smelled like him. I liked the way that he always kind of smelled like he’d had his hands in something mechanical and messy. There was no expensive cologne for Wheeler, just the clean smell of soap, the lemony scent of whatever he used in that thick head of reddish-brown hair, and the persistent trace of how he made his living. It was honest and it was real. The way it surrounded me was intoxicating as I slid my arms into the sleeves of his jacket. The material went down well past my fingertips and the bottom hit me at midthigh. I was instantly warm, wrapped up in his scent and his lingering body heat. In fact, I couldn’t recall ever being this cozy.

I took a deep breath and moved my hands so I could push the hair that had escaped my messy topknot out of my face. “It’s cold, you can come up. I can’t promise that I’m going to be a great hostess or anything but I think I can handle a quick conversation without passing out at your feet.” He’d never asked on any of the occasions when we were together why I acted like such a basketcase around him. I figured somewhere along the line someone had given him the CliffsNotes version of what had happened to me. He could fill in the blanks with a quick Google search from there. My nightmare had a million links.

It was his turn to rub his arms up and down to keep warm as he considered me for a second. Apparently deciding he was going to take me up on my less than hospitable offer, he put the puppy down on the sidewalk, wrapped the end of the leash around his tattooed wrist, and nodded toward the front of the building. I scowled as the little troublemaker immediately fell into trotting steps right next to those booted feet like a good boy.

I followed Wheeler up the cement steps and almost bumped into his back as the big, glass security doors swung open. He shifted to the side with the dog but I was still right in the line of fire as four men who appeared to be college aged came out of the building. It was an affordable complex right in the heart of Capitol Hill, so there were a lot of young professionals and students that occupied the apartments around mine. Typically, I was sequestered, safe and sound, in my apartment with the locks thrown by this time. I rarely encountered anyone coming and going, and when I did, I kept my head down and stuck strictly to my side of the hallway. This random run-in was a first and it was going to end horribly as I stood stuck, like a deer caught in headlights. I was going to throw up. I was going to make myself a liar because there was a very real chance that I might end up passing out at Wheeler’s feet the closer the men got to me.

The laughter coming from the young men rasped across my skin and had my breath wheezing out of me in short, shallow pants. I needed to move. I needed to get out of the way. I needed to get safe. I put up a shaking hand as if I could ward off the oncoming collision and closed my eyes, mentally taking myself someplace far far away as I braced for the impact.

It never came.

My breath rushed out and my knees almost buckled as I heard Wheeler’s deep and unfailingly steady voice tell the other men, “Hey, fellas, how about you let the lady slide past you real quick?” There was nothing in his tone but friendly inquiry and maybe a hint of gentle warning that they didn’t want to ignore his request. Since I had my eyes closed I didn’t see, but rather heard, the guys offer up an easy agreement. I couldn’t tell how close they were to me, but in the span of a heartbeat I could tell they had stepped aside and my path to the doorway was clear.

A fuzzy handful was shoved into my unsteady grasp and I could feel Wheeler’s body heat as he stepped next to me, close and reassuring, but not touching. “Come on, honey, let’s get you and the pup out of the cold.”

I forced my eyes open and gave a jerky nod as I buried my face in the puppy’s warm neck. One foot in front of the other, I forced myself through the security door Wheeler was holding open.

“Thanks, fellas.” He flicked his fingers out from his forehead as I kept my gaze locked firmly on him instead of the men that had to be wondering what on earth was wrong with me. I heard the other men mutter back a bunch of “no problems” and “anytimes” but I couldn’t bring myself to look in their direction.

Thankfully my apartment was located on the ground floor. Moving out of Rowdy’s sister’s house and into a place of my own had been a huge step forward in my healing process, but I knew that there was no way I could ever chance being stuck in an elevator alone with a man I didn’t know. That would send me into a full-on breakdown. Fortunately, I found a place on the ground floor that luckily happened to be located right next to Dixie Carmichael’s apartment. I knew Dixie from the bar that Rowdy liked to hang out at, so it wasn’t like there was a stranger sharing the wall with mine. Eventually Dixie and her bubbly, sunny disposition wore me down to the point that I could go over to her place and didn’t freak out if she came into mine. I was going to miss her when she was gone. And I really didn’t want to think about the prospect of having a new person living that close to me.

“Give me your keys, Poppy.” Wheeler’s voice was still even and calm as could be even when he had to repeat himself for the third time because I was just standing in front of my door staring at it like it would magically open for me.

“What?” I looked at him dumbly as I continued to cuddle the dog trapped uncomfortably in my too tight grip.

He held out his hand, palm up, and lifted one of his mahogany-colored eyebrows at me. “Keys, unless you want to hang out in the hallway the rest of the night. I can do that but I think the puppy needs something to chew on because he’s about to make his way through the cuff of my jacket.” He nodded at my arms and I gasped when I noticed that the dog had indeed chewed his way through the too long material that was hanging over my hands.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry. I didn’t notice.” I scrambled to pull my keys out of the wide pocket that ran across the bottom of my hoodie. My fingers were still shaking so badly that I immediately dropped the keys on the ground by my feet. Before I could bend to pick them up, Wheeler moved and not only had them in his hand but had the door open and me moving forward with nothing more than a shift of his body behind mine.

Once we were inside, he took the dog from me so I could strip his coat off and get control of my violently shaking body. Effortlessly, he found the spot in the tiny kitchen where I had been keeping the Puppy Chow and settled the tiny terror in with some food and water. He was far too comfortable in my space but at the moment I was so grateful for his presence I didn’t care.

I put my hands to my cheeks and held my face. I could feel heat under the surface and I could hear the rush of blood between my ears.

“Are you going to be okay? Do you need me to get you something? Should I grab Dixie?” He sounded genuinely concerned about me and that only made me shake even harder.

“No, I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine and hadn’t been in a very long time. “Dixie is in Mississippi. She took Dolly down because Church moved into the house he rented for them and she wanted the dog to get used to their new home and so she could see what it was like to have a yard.” I was babbling but I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. “How do you move me without laying a hand on me?”

He looked up from where he was watching the puppy dig into his chow. Those blue eyes were like lasers as they cut into me from across the room. He put his hands on the counter and leaned forward. “What are you talking about?” His voice still held that same even tone but there was something in it, some deeper note, that let me know he knew exactly what I was talking about.

I wrapped my arms around myself in a protective hug and met his look with a pointed one of my own. “I get stuck, frozen with fear. I end up caught between memories and reality. Most people grab my arm or touch me somewhere to get me moving again. Either that or they go around me like I’m in the way. You made me move without doing anything.”

His eyebrows shot up and the corners of his mouth pulled down in a frown. “People shouldn’t touch you unless you tell them it’s okay, even if you are in the way.”

His words had me shivering in a completely different way than I had been before and I was the opposite of cold. “I didn’t use to mind it.” The words cracked and sounded almost as broken as I felt on the inside. “I mean being touched. It wasn’t until … after.”

He lowered his gaze and I saw his chest rise and fall as he sucked in a deep breath. “The reason doesn’t matter. If you don’t like it, people should respect that. No one has a right to put their hands on you unless you want them there.”

Right there in that moment I thought I wouldn’t mind it too terribly much if he walked across the room and replaced the frail and thin arms that were currently holding me together with his thick, strong, tattooed ones. It was probably the only touch I would ever crave but I would never be brave enough to ask for it, so I cleared my throat and awkwardly made my way closer to where he was standing. I lifted myself up into one of the barstools that was across the counter from him and put my hands on the cool surface separating us and prayed they would stop shaking.

“So what did you want to talk to me about? I’m assuming you reconsidered my offer and want to take the furry little terror off my hands.” The puppy looked up from where his entire face was buried in his water dish and gave me a look of doggie disdain. I couldn’t help but grin at him. “I’m kind of attached to him now, Wheeler. I don’t think I’m going to give him up.” It felt like months ago that I’d stood in front of him, knees knocking together, offering him the puppy. In reality it had only been a few days but that was time enough for my heart to attach itself to the rambunctious and destructive puppy. I would have to move, buy a house or something, but I would do it save the dog. I could be a hero and not a victim for a change.

His lips twitched and I almost fell out of my seat when those twin dimples flashed at me. The boy was a heartbreaker without even trying. Now that I was close enough to him to actually study him, I was pretty sure the light smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose was going to be my undoing. The dimples were too much, and the freckles were overkill. It wasn’t fair. A man shouldn’t be allowed to look both badass and adorable. Hearts weren’t meant to withstand that kind of onslaught and there was no way a vagina stood a chance against that kind of appeal. Speaking of which, I felt something deep inside of me start to get warm and my thighs clenched in response. I hadn’t been aware of my body and its reactions to the opposite sex in a long time.

“Have you given him a name yet.” The dimples cut deeper when I scowled at him in response.

“No, but that’s because I want the right name. He’s going to be stuck with it forever.” I pouted a little as he laughed and shook his burnished head.

“He’s a dog. Call him Good Boy and he’ll be happy.” He looked down at the dog and then back up at me with a barely noticeable wince. “I shouldn’t have let you leave the other day. I wanted to take him. I should’ve taken him, but my head’s all over the place right now and I can’t even tell which way is up half the time.” He lifted a hand and rubbed it across the back of his neck, which lifted the bottom of the black thermal he was wearing up and revealed the tight cut of his abs over the line of his jeans. I wasn’t surprised that he was tattooed there as well, but I was a little shocked that he seemed to be sporting a clearly defined six-pack. He wasn’t built bulky and thick like a lot of the other guys that were now a regular part of my life thanks to Salem and Rowdy and the tattoo shop. I should have guessed that hauling motors in and out of cars and throwing tires around all day led to having the kind of body that would have a lot of women pinning him to hot guy boards on Pinterest left and right.

“I’m terrified about the prospect of becoming a dad. I let that fear take over most of my life and I dismissed the idea of taking on more responsibility out of hand. The truth is, my house is lonely right now. I’m lonely.” He looked at me like I should have something to say to that but I couldn’t figure out what my response was supposed to be. There was a time when I was young and naive to all the ways a man could hurt a woman and I knew that girl would know what to say to him, but she was long gone. I was here biting my tongue to keep from saying what I was sure was the wrong thing. “I think the puppy might help me settle into the idea of being a new dad.”

I made a face. “You want to practice your parenting skills on a puppy?” It wasn’t a horrible idea but it wasn’t the best one I’d ever heard either. If I was in his shoes I would be hitting up all those buddies of his that were well on their way to populating Denver with the next generation of marked men and women. Hell, his best friend from childhood had recently become a father to an adorable five-year-old, the results of an ill-thought-out one-night stand. Zeb Fuller wasn’t any more prepared for fatherhood than Wheeler seemed to be and yet he’d landed on his feet and found himself a perfect little family with only a few mishaps along the way.

“No … well, kind of … I don’t know. In my head it sounded more reasonable and less crazy than that. What I do know is that I need something in my life to focus on besides the panic and resentment that’s been eating me alive lately. I can give him a good home.”

I looked down at the dog, who was now happily chewing on the dangling end of one of Wheeler’s shoelaces, and sighed. I didn’t want to give him up but the only reason he was here now was because of the man standing in front of me.

I’d spent my entire life trying to make men happy, trying to get them to love me by giving them everything I had. Apparently it was a hard habit to break because even though I didn’t want to, I heard myself begrudgingly tell Wheeler, “Fine. You can have him, but if you get tired of him, or if you think he’s too much to handle and want me to take him back, you have to know that I’ll never forgive you for that. I’ll never forgive myself for trusting you. You can’t do that to him.” Or me, I told him silently. The puppy plopped himself on his butt and looked up at both of us. His head swiveled between the two of us as his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. I felt my heart squeeze in my chest and tears burned at the back of my eyes. This sucked but I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew all about needing to find something that tethered you to reality. Without it, the past and the possibility of a shattered present could fling you into a really ugly place that was hard to escape from. At the moment I only had one hand out of that particular pit of despair and I was doing my best to pull the rest of my body out with an uncertain grip.

He cocked his head to the side and considered me thoughtfully for a second. Those dimples flashed again and this time I couldn’t contain a sigh. He must have heard it because his lips lifted up and some of that ice that chilled his gaze seemed to thaw.

“I’m not going to get tired of him and you’re not going to miss him because we’re going to share custody of him. I don’t know what to do with a puppy any more than I know what to do with a baby. You’re an expert on the subject seeing as how you work with animals all day long. I figure you can help me train him.” He pointed to where the dog had abandoned his shoelace and was now in the living room sniffing along the edge of the couch like he was looking for a place to go to the bathroom. I gasped and flew out of my chair so I could stop the impending couch ruinage. “Let’s be honest, there is no way I’ll be able to juggle a dog and a newborn. Once Kallie and I figure out some kind of custody arrangement, you can have the dog when I have the baby.”

I put the dog back on the floor in the kitchen just in case he decided he really did have to go. I looked up at Wheeler like he’d lost his mind, because the way he was talking right now I kind of figured he had.

The dimples were back as he shifted position so he was leaning against the counter with his legs stretched out in front of him. “It all makes sense. I knew you weren’t going to want to give the puppy up after I fucked up and I know I’m not ready for all that responsibility on my own. It’s the perfect solution.”

I shook my head at him and threw my hands up in the air. “I think you’re insane.”

He continued to grin at me and I realized belatedly that when I’d moved into the kitchen it put me close enough to him that I could feel the heat his body generated and could see the way his muscles flexed and moved each time he laughed.

“Well, I think you’re pretty but that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Take me up on my offer, Poppy, please.”

It was the second time he’s brought up the fact that he found me attractive. I used to be, but I’d gone out of my way to be anything except that ever since I was released from the hospital after Oliver died and the police pulled me away from the horrific scene that was our last moments together. How attractive Wheeler found me wasn’t what I should be focused on, and yet I couldn’t stop his words from spinning around in my head or the way they made my heart dip and my breath shudder.

“Fine. I’ll help you with the dog, but once he’s older and you and the baby are settled into a pattern, you have to keep him full-time. Kids need a pet.” Or at least in my experience, they wanted one and were never allowed to have one because their tyrannical father thought they were dirty and unnecessary. I cringed at the memory.

“I can do that.” He stuck out his hand, and before I could think twice about it or recoil at the thought of touching my palm to his, I put my much smaller one in his firm grasp. I let out a little whimper when his fingers closed over mine, too stunned that I was touching another person on purpose to move. “It’s a deal, honey.” His words were quiet and soft. He let go far earlier than I wanted him to but I was still in shock, so I just stood there with my mouth hanging open and my eyes wide as he told me, “He needs a name before I go.”

I took a step back and lifted a hand to my throat. I wanted to get it right, which is why I hadn’t given him a name yet. I didn’t like the pressure of trying to come up with something fitting while Wheeler had those chilly baby blues locked on me. “You pick.”

Slowly his head shook back and forth in the negative. “Nope. You’ve known him longer and spent more time with him. You should get to pick what we call him.”

I looked down at the dog, who was now on his back, all four feet in the air as he wiggled around the floor fueled by nothing more than excitement and joy. I cleared my throat and looked down at my feet. “Happy. We should call him Happy.” I winced as my voice did that thing where it broke in the middle of my words again.

“Happy? Like the guy on Sons of Anarchy? You didn’t strike me as a biker babe, Poppy.”

It was my turn to cock my head in confusion. “What’s a Son of Anarchy?” I didn’t watch much TV. It was all too violent and I’d made the mistake of stumbling onto a Law & Order: SVU marathon on cable a few months ago and ended up curled up in a ball on the couch crying my eyes out because the content hit too close to home. Even something as simple as watching television Oliver had tainted and destroyed.

His eyebrows shot up again and his whole body vibrated as he started to laugh. “Never mind. Why Happy?”

I shrugged, worried that he hated the name and was just being nice. To avoid those prying eyes I crouched down so I could rub the puppy’s pink little belly. “Because he was left at our office, left like he was nothing more than forgotten baggage. He was dropped off by someone that knows how difficult it is to find homes for pits in Denver and that didn’t care that his actions might result in the entire litter having to be put down. None of that matters to Happy. He still wags his tail. He still chases the ball. He gives kisses and isn’t afraid of anyone. He still manages to be happy.” I couldn’t even slightly remember what that felt like but I desperately wanted to.

Wheeler cleared his throat and pushed off the counter. He carefully stepped around me and made his way over to where his thoroughly chewed coat was resting on the back of the couch. At first I thought he hated the name, that he was going to tell me to pick something else. Instead, in that firm tone that never seemed to waver, he told me, “Happy it is. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow so we can set up some kind of schedule. Make yourself dinner and have a good night.” At first I recoiled, thinking he was making a subtle dig about the fact I was noticeably too skinny, but somewhere, some sense of rationality rose up and reminded me sternly that only moments ago he told me he thought I was pretty. I wondered if maybe that girl that hadn’t been broken was somewhere deep down inside of me still.

He flipped the lock on my door before he left and I knew without looking that he was waiting on the other side until he heard that I slid the chain in place and threw the dead bolt before he left. I leaned back against the door and let my head hit the wood with a heavy thud. The newly named Happy trotted over and plopped his fuzzy butt right on my feet as he looked up at me.

I hadn’t had a good night in ages. That being said, this one was as close as I’d gotten in longer than I could remember.

Sighing, I picked up the dog and made my way into the kitchen so I could make myself something to eat.

Wheeler

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I honestly didn’t think you would.”

She used to be my everything; I would have done anything for her and tried my best to hand her the world. Now she was surprised I agreed to have coffee with her before I had to be at the shop. It was crazy how quickly things could change, including Kallie.

She’d always been the prettiest girl I had ever seen (until Poppy Cruz came wandering into my garage all golden-eyed and heartbroken). Kallie had the kind of easy and effortless all-American good looks that appealed instantly to a kid that always felt like he was on the outside of normal looking in. Her long blond hair was shiny and thick. Her baby-blue eyes were wide and guileless looking. Her skin was the perfect peaches and cream with a touch of freckles that was the only thing about her that matched her to her redheaded older sister. Dixie was short and curvy, Kallie was tall and thin with legs that went on for day and days. She turned heads then and she made men weak in the knees … not that it was male attention she was interested in attracting.

But there were subtle changes that only someone that had spent years loving her and memorizing every line of her body and every nuance of her expressions would pick up on. For instance, that creamy, carefully made-up face had a hint of ashy green to it. The way she was picking at the muffin in front of her, and clutching the herbal tea I’d ordered for her, made me think she’d entered the phase of her pregnancy where nausea was her constant companion. Her painstakingly maintained mane of blond locks was also looking a little rougher than usual. Kallie wasn’t the type to throw her hair up in a ponytail and head out, but today her silky waves were piled up in a topknot that looked like it hadn’t been brushed or styled. She was also wearing sneakers. In the nearly nine years that we’d known each other, I’d never seen the woman in anything other than designer footwear that cost almost as much as some of the used cars I moved through the shop.

They weren’t huge differences but they were enough that it made the woman I had thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with feel like a stranger. She seemed unsure of herself and nervous, which was also a huge change in the dynamic between us. For the majority of our relationship Kallie had me wound tighter than a string around her little finger. I was so scared of losing her, of losing her family and the only sense of security and normalcy I’d ever known, that I’d let her lead me around by my dick and dictate the entirety of the way we were together. I never argued with her, never pushed back, and that meant she always had the upper hand. It wasn’t a smart move on my part. She was already spoiled as the baby in the Carmichael household and she had some serious princess tendencies that I’d always secretly hoped she would grow out of. As it turned out, having me at her beck and call only intensified her sense of entitlement. I’d literally created a monster, one that had no problem tearing my world apart and feasting on my heart.

I sighed and rubbed a hand over my tired face. I’d slept restlessly last night, caught between satisfaction and guilt at the artful way I’d maneuvered Poppy into agreeing to spend time with me. I wanted to feel bad for manipulating her into a situation she’d obviously wanted to say no to, but I couldn’t. I wanted to be around her and I wanted her to get used to being around me. I knew it was selfish and that I was walking over very dangerous ground, but I couldn’t stay away. She was hiding and I was seeking.

“I told you I was going to be here for you and the baby, Kallie.” I picked up my coffee and took a healthy swig. “I didn’t say I was going to be happy about it.”

She made a noise low in her throat and her fingers tightened on the mug until they were almost white. “I hate how awkward things are between us.” She looked up at me under her long lashes. “I’ve apologized a million times, Wheeler. Are you ever going to forgive me?”

I blew out an aggravated breath. “Have you told your parents why I called the wedding off yet?”

She flinched and as her gaze shifted away I caught a glimpse of guilt in her eyes. She didn’t need to answer my question when her actions answered for her.

I snorted and leaned back in my seat so that I could put as much physical distance between the two of us as possible. “So your mom and dad still think I dropped you for nothing, that I kicked you out of the house that I bought for you, for no reason?” I wanted to scream at her, to tell her to grow the hell up, to shake some sense into her. Instead, all I did was shake my head in disappointment. “They think I left you out in the cold even though you’re having my kid?” It was so disappointing. They were the only real parents I’d ever known. They took me in no questions asked the minute Kallie brought me home. I fell in love with her family almost as quickly as I fell in love with her. The way they’d had no problem believing the worst about me when Kallie and I split hurt almost as much as letting her go. Dixie had offered no less than a hundred times to intervene. She hated the way her parents had turned on me and wanted desperately to set them straight, but I refused to let her get involved. I was used to being let down by the people that were supposed to love me, so if they wanted to think the worst, I was inclined to let them. Plus, it was practically impossible to come clean about why I’d finally walked away without laying all the secrets Kallie wasn’t ready to share out on the table. Too many years being the one that protected her meant I couldn’t sell her out just to gain her parents’ favor.

She exhaled slowly and lifted her sky colored eyes up to mine. “I’m going to tell them. I just haven’t found the right time. Everything has been crazy with Dixie getting hurt and then deciding to move to Mississippi. I don’t want to put any more on them at the moment.”

It was an excuse. She didn’t want to pull the curtain back on the real reason for our split. She wasn’t protecting anyone but herself. “What does Roni think about all of this?”

Roni was the woman that Kallie had been having an affair with, while she was still involved with me. She was the woman that Kallie realized she wanted to be with more than the man she had spent the majority of her youth with. Kallie loved me, but she was supposed to be with Roni more.

At least that’s what she told me when I confronted her after her older sister let the cat out of the bag by accident. Dixie would never have shared such a personal secret but I’d ambushed her one night after Kallie told me about the baby. I needed to vent and there ended up being a whole lot of yelling and confusion, most of it on my part. Somewhere along the line Dixie thought the reason I was upset was because of Roni when she thought I was talking about Kallie’s affair instead of the baby. Dixie felt horrible for spilling her sister’s deepest secrets but I wasn’t sure Kallie would have ever come clean to me if she hadn’t.

Her gaze shifted away again and she chomped down on her lower lip. “She isn’t happy. Since I’ve been staying with my parents, there hasn’t been much time to see her or to talk to her. She wants me to tell them the truth too, but neither one of you knows how hard it is for me.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m already a runaway bride and an unwed mother. I feel like that’s plenty of disappointment for them to deal with right now.”

I sighed and leaned forward in my seat. “They are not going to be disappointed in you because you fell in love with a woman, Kallie. They are going to be disappointed you lied and hurt people that love you and care about you while trying to hide who you really are and who you really love.” I shook my head at her. “That’s why they’re so mad at me right now. They think I hurt you.”

“My parents love you, Wheeler. You’re part of the family and always will be.” She tentatively lowered a hand to her stomach and gave me a surprisingly steady look. “We are in this together, but you have no idea how hard it is realizing your life is never going to be the same. It’s scary enough coming to terms with that on your own … thinking about how my parents might react …” She sighed and shrugged helplessly.

I nodded at her. “We are in this together, but you have someone else that’s in it too, Kallie. If you plan on keeping Roni around, then you need to be honest with everyone, including yourself, about the role she’s playing and will play in our baby’s life.” I wasn’t going to reassure her that her parents were going to be reasonable and understanding again. I’d said the words a million times in a million different ways but it hadn’t done any good. She was going to have to have that conversation with them and find out for herself that they would love her no matter what. She lowered her gaze and her teeth bit even harder into her lip. Knowing well and good those were signs that she was done with the conversation, I changed the subject. “What did you want to talk to me about that couldn’t be handled over the phone?” She’d begged me to meet her this morning, and like a sap, I caved and agreed. “I have to get going soon.” I didn’t really since I made my own hours and I was the boss, but I could only handle so much time around her. It still hurt, being with her but not (with) her.

She shifted nervously in her seat and let go of her tea. She started tapping her fingertips on the table in front of her and I wanted to reach out and put my hand over hers to keep them still. I didn’t want to make her anxious but until we found our way to some kind of new normal with each other, this was how it was going to be. I felt cut open and raw, she was fidgety and unsettled. I’d never realized how deeply we’d relied on each other to keep our worst traits at bay from the rest of the knowing world. She held me together and kept all my jagged edges smoothed out and less dangerous, I kept her calm and quieted all the restlessness in her that made her so volatile and needy.

“I have a doctor’s appointment next week. I wanted to see if you would come with me.” She was heading into the second trimester, so the baby was starting to seem very real. Soon she would be showing and we would be to the point where we would know if we were having a boy or a girl. I’d gone with her to one doctor’s visit but her mother had been there as well and it was a terrible afternoon for all of us. She’d asked me to go a couple more times and I’d refused thinking it would be easier for all involved. Seeing the nervousness on her pretty face right now, I understood that wasn’t the case.

“Did you ask your mom to go this time?” My tone was flat because she could make this all better if she just stepped up to the plate for once in her life. If she took care of someone else instead of expecting everyone to take care of her.

“No.” The word squeaked out and she jolted. “Uh … I talked to Dixie and she sort of mentioned that it’s our baby and that we’re the ones who are going to raise it, not Mom and Dad, so we needed to figure out how to coparent without them in the middle of us. I don’t want to go alone because it’s scary, but Dixie is right. It should be you and me.”

Dixie was a fixer. It’s what she did. She also had the annoying habit of seeing straight to the heart of a situation and knowing the best way to get everyone involved on the right path. Even more, she was the only person in the world that could make Kallie see beyond her own selfishness.

I groaned a little as I nodded in sullen agreement. “I’ll go with you. Just text me the date and time.”

Her lips quivered into a tiny grin. “Thanks.”

I finished my coffee and pushed back from the table. I stopped and went still as stone when her fingers touched the back of my hand. I expected it to burn or for a familiar tingle to shoot along my skin. There was nothing. There was no jolt like the one that had almost taken me to my knees when Poppy’s shaking fingers lightly grasped mine yesterday.

“Um … I know it’s none of my business and I have no right to pry, but Dixie mentioned you’ve been dating a lot recently.” A tight expression pinched her face and her eyes narrowed. “I … ugh … I just want to tell you to be careful. You’re a really nice guy, Wheeler. There are a lot of women out there that will take advantage of that.” She should know. She was one of them.

I shook her hand off. “I’m fucking … not dating.” She recoiled, which made me soften my tone when I told her, “You’re right, it’s none of your business.”

“Rebounds never work out.” There was some of the old Kallie shining through.

I rolled my eyes at her. “I gotta go.” I turned my back on her and headed toward the door only to be brought up short when she called my name. One of these days all those years of conditioning to heel at her command would break. I couldn’t fucking wait. I looked at her over my shoulder, impatience clear in every line of my body.

“I was the wrong one, but the right one is still out there.” Maybe she really did want me to be happy, or maybe she simply wanted me to find someone so that I was less likely to screw up trying to raise our kid on my own. Either way her words weren’t ones I wanted to hear.

“When you figure out where you want to live, you can have all the furniture in the house. I’ll put it in a storage unit and cover the cost. If you plan on staying with your parents for the long haul, or get to the point where you’re playing house with Roni, you can sell it all and use it for whatever we need for the baby. I’ll see you at the appointment, Kallie.”

I heard her quiet gasp as I pushed out the door into the bright Denver sunshine. That meeting had gone as well as could be expected and I was surprised that spending time with her wasn’t as awful as it had been the first few months after we’d split up. She still wasn’t my favorite person to be around, but seeing her and sharing the same air as her didn’t make me feel like I was suffocating and bleeding to death from a broken heart anymore. Things between us had been rocky before the split, so I think the reason everything felt so exposed and sensitive after the breakup was more the loss of what I’d thought I had, rather than the loss of what I’d actually had. She took my stability with her when she walked away and left me with something totally shakey and unsure. She ripped the foundation I’d steadfastly built out from under me, and that left me in the wind … exactly how my mother had. Exactly how the child welfare people had left me each and every time they had to place me in a new home with a temporary family.

Feeling restless and uneasy about just unsteady everything in my existence currently was, I pulled my phone out and pressed a finger to the name of the single thing that put a stop to all the questions and uncertainty. All I had to do was picture Poppy’s wide, timid eyes and everything that was screaming and thrashing around inside of me went quiet. It was so much easier to focus on overcoming her aversion to closeness than it was to think about straightening out my own mess. I was convinced I could prove to her that there were men in the world she didn’t need to be afraid of, that there were men who would do right by her even if that rightness came with a little bit of maneuvering. She said I moved her without using my hands and she was correct. Everything I did around her was me trying to get her to move closer to me. I pushed her to take steps that she needed to take in order for her to be comfortable around me. I wanted to see if there was any way she would be open to something more than our current tense friendship.

I wanted her, but I wanted her to want me back even more. Partly because I knew I was a safe bet for her once she was ready to jump back into the dating pool. I wouldn’t take advantage of her and had every intention of handling her like I did one of my classics that was on the verge of falling apart. I would tread lightly and deliberately until all the parts were in working order and then I would prime her and make her purr the way she was always meant to. I wasn’t scared of the work and I had every confidence that the end result would be a thing of pure beauty and something that was priceless.

The phone rang for a long time, and just when I was about to hang up and send a text, the call connected and her breathless voice rushed out a quick “hey.”

I frowned at my reflection in the side of my car and trapped the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I unlocked and opened the door. “Are you okay?”

She gave a brittle-sounding laugh. “Uh … I’m fine. I ended up alone in an exam room with a male patient for a little longer than I was comfortable with because the doc had an emergency in another room. The guy’s dog could sense my anxiety and had a little meltdown. You actually called at the perfect time.” She exhaled and I could practically hear her entire body shaking in the way her voice quivered. “You gave me an excuse to get out of the room. I don’t usually freak out so badly at work. I guess that near miss with the guys from the apartment yesterday has me a little on edge. My therapist is going to have a field day with me during our next session. I always think I’m getting better, but then the universe decides to show me that I’m not.”

I heard a dog bark and she called to someone that she needed five minutes. I hated that she was so hard on herself when her reactions were totally normal considering everything she had been through. “You let me into your apartment last night even after those guys scared the piss out of you. You voluntarily stood in the kitchen with me and you shook my hand. You wouldn’t have done any of those things a couple months ago when we met.” She was moving in the right direction even if she couldn’t see it because she was still looking over her shoulder.

She breathed out again and her voice was very soft when she told me, “I think that has more to do with you than it does with me.”

Her words made my heart stutter and skip a beat. I wanted her to trust me but her handing that information over so quickly was unexpected. I didn’t think I’d done a thing to earn her trust yet. I had to clear my throat before I could reply. “I was hoping we could meet up after I get off work tonight and start to work on some kind of schedule with Happy.” I couldn’t hold back the grin when I said the puppy’s name. “I’ll order pizza and make sure you eat dinner.” She went quiet on the other end of the phone and I wanted to kick myself for pushing too hard too fast with her. “I can always come to your place if you’re more comfortable with that.”

She sighed. “It’s not that.”

I scowled at myself in the rearview mirror and reminded myself that this was all about the long game with her. She was a good distraction at the moment but I wanted her to be around long after the dust of my currently imploding life settled. “What is it then?”

I could picture her tugging on her lip and shuffling her feet nervously because her nervous habits were becoming as familiar to me as my own. So hurriedly that the words smooshed together and were barely discernible, she admitted, “I don’t like pizza.”

Stunned that she was worried about telling me something as simple as that, I found it was my turn to sigh. “Is that all? I’ll order Mexican or Chinese food. Hell, I can even whip up some sandwiches or some mac and cheese.”

She gave another one of those laughs that sounded shrill and slightly hysterical. “I don’t eat tomatoes. I hate them.”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Okay, so pizza sauce is out, but they make white pizza, we can always do that instead.” Getting to know this woman was like walking across a minefield. Every step I took toward her felt like the ground below me might detonate and throw me a thousand steps backward, injured and unable to keep fighting my way toward her.

She whimpered a little bit and I felt it like a kick in my stomach. I hated how hard something as simple as telling someone else what she did and didn’t like was for her. If her shitbag husband wasn’t already six feet under I would have gladly helped put him there.

“Oliver loved pizza. He told me it was unnatural and ridiculous that I wouldn’t eat it. He’d demand that we order it for dinner once or twice a week and I’d have to sit and watch him eat while I sat there starving. He always told me if I didn’t want to eat what he provided then I could go hungry.”

I swore and curled the hand that wasn’t holding my phone around the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My voice was gruff and uneven when I told her, “I’ll feed you whatever you want to eat, Poppy.”

She made a strangled noise and then cleared her throat. “I have to get back to work. I have a group meeting after work tonight, so I won’t be by your place until after seven or so.” She hesitated for a second and then quietly handed over, “My favorite is cheeseburgers. I could eat them every day of the week.”

She didn’t look like she’d had a cheeseburger in years but if that’s what she wanted I would make sure she had the best one Denver had to offer. “Cheeseburgers it is. I’ll text you my address and see you later tonight.”

She mumbled a hasty good-bye and I hung up, anger at everything she’d had to suffer through coursing thick and heated through my blood. She deserved so much better and I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that I really wanted to be the one to give it to her.

Thoughts firmly on Poppy and what other kinds of horrors she’d had to endure through the course of her marriage, I drove through downtown Denver and made my way to my garage.

Back when I was younger and Zeb and I had too much time and too much youthful curiosity on our hands, we’d spent many a night at illegal parties held in this very same building. The place had history, both personal and collective, so it meant the world to me that I’d been able to save it. The ancient brick had been slated for demolition so that some developer could come in and build more trendy condos and shops to cater to the LoDo sprawl. I’d scraped together enough money from the sale of my first full rebuild outside of school. It was a 1970 Barracuda that was still winning medals at car shows across the country, to lease the space for a year. I continued that pattern for five years—build, sell, pay for the lease on the building, barely getting by until I got hooked up with Nash Donovan and Rowdy St. James. It started out as a mutual admiration for muscle cars and ink and turned into something that allowed me to get my hands around a major part of my dream. Those two introduced me to Rome Archer, who came at me with a business offer I would have been a fool to turn down. Rome wanted to be a silent partner in the garage. He helped me buy the building outright and set me up so that instead of bleeding money back into the business, I could actually start earning a real living. Rome was the only reason I was able to finally afford a down payment on a house. I owed those Marked Men more than they would ever know.

I parked in the spot that was designated for my Caddy. There was a small office attached to the garage where customers could wait and where the gal that handled all the paperwork and scheduling of projects worked. I’d tried to set Kallie up in that position, thinking the garage could be ours, that we could make our dreams come true together, but she barely lasted a week before I’d had more than one of my guys threaten to quit if she wasn’t gone. She hated how dirty the garage was and she didn’t give two shits about the classics we worked our asses off to breathe new life into. The girl drove a freaking Audi, for God’s sake, even when I offered to find her and build her whatever she wanted. I should have known then it wasn’t meant to be. It was a beautiful car but it had no soul and no story.

Snorting at the thought, I stopped short when a baby-blue Hudson Hornet came pulling in through the open gates. It was a ’53 if my guess was right, and I was pretty sure that it was. It was an incredibly rare year, so rare that this was the only one I’d seen outside of a hot-rod magazine or a car show. I watched the car roll to a stop next to the Eldorado and took a minute to admire it. I was named after this car, at least that was what my mom told me in one of her few lucid moments when the drugs and demons I couldn’t see loosened their hold on her.

A man stepped out, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair, silver sideburns, and expensive mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a dark canvas coat much like the one Happy had ruined last night over the unofficial almost-winter uniform of all Coloradans, a button up flannel over a thermal. I thought he looked vaguely familiar but so many people came in and out of the garage, a lot of them just wanting to look, that I couldn’t be sure we’d ever met before.

I lifted my chin in greeting. “Nice ride.”

He repeated the gesture. “If that’s yours then I return the sentiment.” He indicated the Eldorado with the flick of his fingers.

I shrugged. “It’s mine. She was the first rebuild I ever did. My high school shop teacher felt sorry for me and let me buy her for a song right before graduation. He helped me finish her up and to this day he stops by once a month to see how we’re both holding up.”

The man made a face that I couldn’t read and shifted his weight on his feet. He seemed nervous but I didn’t have time to stand around chatting about my Caddy. I had a Wayfarer that I was trying to restore and finding parts for the old girl had proven to be a real bitch.

“If you need something specific, go in and talk to Molly, my receptionist. She can point you in the right direction. I can tell you now I don’t have any original parts for a Hudson on hand but I know a guy that is a wizard when it comes to tracking down the unfindable.”

The older guy took a step back and leaned on the side of his car like the wind had been knocked out of him. He had really cherry taste in cars and looked pretty cool for an old guy, but damn, the dude was weird. Everything about him seemed tense and a little bit off.

“The garage is yours?” The question seemed like it was ripped out of him.

I shrugged again. “Yep. All mine.” I motioned toward the door that had the “Open” sign on it and inclined my head, eager to get to work. “Like I said, Molly can give you a hand with whatever you need. I’d be happy to get my hands on that Hudson if you need someone to work on it.”

The guy cleared his throat and shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Uh, yeah. I might be back. I just rolled into town for a quick visit and your garage came up when I started poking around asking about who might be able to handle a rare classic. I was looking for something specific. I didn’t think I’d find it so quickly.”

I nodded because I knew how hard it could be to come across the original parts you needed to do a whole rebuild. “You can find anything if you look hard enough. I guess I’ll see you around.”

The guy nodded again and this time he grinned. “Didn’t catch your name, kid.”

I lifted an eyebrow at him. This whole exchange was getting stranger and stranger by the minute. “Wheeler, Hudson Wheeler. I’m actually named after your car.”

The guy flinched and the grin on his face died. “It’s nice to meet you, Wheeler. I’ll be back.”

Without offering up his name in return, he disappeared back into his badass car and pulled out of the parking lot in front of the garage like the cops were after him. I waved a hand in front of my face as the hot rod kicked up dust, and wondered what in the hell had just happened.

Today was a day full of loaded conversations and I’d never considered myself much of a conversationalist.

Poppy

I feel guilty, you know?”

The girl that was speaking couldn’t be any older than sixteen. She was fairly new to the group meetings, but every time she spoke we all went quiet and listened intently. She seemed so strong, so much tougher than I was. Her father had hurt her in unimaginable ways, and when she tried to tell her mother, the woman had accused her of lying and trying to break up the family. As a result the girl had run away from home and had spent the last several years living on the streets. The things she did to survive, the way people took advantage of such an innocent soul, made me so angry. Someone should have been there to keep her safe, just like someone should have been there to keep me and Salem safe from my father’s tyrannical rule. Just like someone should have kept me safe from Oliver and his ruin. That was the entire purpose of these group meetings: to help us all realize that we weren’t alone, that our stories were shared by women across all walks of life. We were there to keep each other safe. The thing that tied us all together was that we were still here, we survived, and that made us bigger and better than the people that had done their very best to destroy us.

I was watching her so closely and she must have felt my stare because her eyes landed on mine and held as she kept talking. “I feel like I don’t deserve a nice house and nice clothes for school. I feel like having all these friends and being popular is all just a scam that I’m pulling on everyone. I feel like I’m in the wrong life.” She gave a bitter laugh and lifted a hand to wipe away a lone tear that trailed down her cheek. “Why should I still be here planning on going to prom with a really nice guy that treats me like I’m something special when so many of the girls I met while I was on the run don’t get a shot at the same thing? What makes me special? Why did I get a chance and not one of them?”

It was a common theme that she described. Guilt about moving on and finding peace after living a nightmare for so long. Apparently her aunt had gotten suspicious when her mother wasn’t able to offer up an explanation as to where her daughter had gone. The girl’s extended family had launched an all-out manhunt to find her, and when they did they were appalled by what they found. They knew all along her father was abusive and dangerous. They’d been trying to get her out of the house for years until her mother and father had gone on the run to protect their dirty little secret. She’d had people in her corner that loved her, but wasn’t allowed access to them, kind of like the way my parents did their best to keep me and Salem apart after Salem left home. Under my dad’s thumb and surrounded by my mother’s passive agreement, I never had a chance to let the idea of rebellion take root. I only wished I could have been as brave as this young woman.

“Eventually that guilt will lessen and you’ll appreciate the fact that you get to have a chance at all the things you deserved from the beginning. It’s part of the conditioning you were subjected to for so long for you to think you aren’t worthy of the good things that are going to come your way, but you are, all of you are.” The woman that ran the group was a survivor herself. She always spoke to us in a calm, even tone and it was apparent to all of us that she took our healing and progress very personally. This wasn’t a job for her: helping women that had been abused live beyond the damage done by their abusers was her life’s calling, her passion. I admired her so much for turning her pain and experience into something that was beneficial for others to learn from. “Good things will find you if you are open to them.”

Without thinking I blurted out, “How do you know that something or someone is actually good? I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been fooled by something that seemed to be good but turned out to be really, really bad.”

When Oliver first started courting me after I moved home after my disastrous first year at college, he seemed nice enough. He was really into me and treated me like a total gentleman. He courted me like the preacher’s daughter that I was and never pushed for anything I wasn’t ready to give. He handled me like I was something delicate and he never, not one time, brought up the supposedly shameful reason I’d had to run back to my less than understanding family with my tail tucked between my legs. That had been reason enough for me to give him a shot after I told myself I was swearing off men forever. I felt broken but he assured me over and over again that what had happened wasn’t my fault.

I should have known … like always … that it was a front. Any man my father practically handpicked for me, a man that was active in my father’s church, and believed the fire and brimstone my dad spouted nonstop, couldn’t be okay with what had happened to me and the choices I’d made.

On our wedding night Oliver called me a whore and yelled at me for an hour about not being a virgin and saving myself for him … even though he knew the nightmare behind why I wasn’t untouched and inexperienced. From there the abuse spiraled and worsened until I was having to hide bruises and marks all over my body. Sometimes the words hurt worse than his fists did and all I could do was question how I let myself end up in a situation that was a thousand times more horrible than the one I’d run from.

Both the teen and the counselor turned their attention to me and I realized that everyone in the small group was watching me. Typically I didn’t say much, I listened and learned. It helped me feel not so alone and less like a fool to know I wasn’t the only one that should have known better. This was probably the first time I’d ever actually spoken up when it wasn’t my turn to add something to the conversation.

The group didn’t use names, to protect anonymity, so the counselor motioned to me with a soft smile. “Well, you can’t ever be absolutely certain something or someone is good because things can change on a dime. Even the happiest and healthiest of relationships can collapse over time and even the best of circumstances are prone to experiencing a rainy day. All you can do is listen to your gut, pay attention to any warning signs and any red flags that are presented. It’s up to you to determine if the good outweighs the bad in whatever you face from here on out. You have the tools. You have earned them by surviving everything life has thrown at you.”

I bit my lip and cocked my head to look at her questioningly. “But my judgment has led to the worst experiences in my life. What if I can’t tell if the good outweighs the bad?” Unwittingly my thoughts turned to Wheeler. He was the first person I had let slip past the iron guards I had put in place since enduring Oliver’s torture. I refused to let anyone close, emotionally or physically, because if I had enough room to run, then there was no possible way I could be hurt again. I kept a wall up between me and the rest of the world, and so far, it had served its purpose, but now I was wondering if it was keeping all the good out as well as the bad.

There was a lot of good in Wheeler. A person would have to be blind not to see it. He seemed like a nice guy, he respected my personal-space issue, he was ridiculously good-looking, and my libido that I thought was long gone lit up like Christmas lights around him. I genuinely didn’t mind being alone with him or being close to him, which felt like a mini-miracle at this point. I liked the way he looked at me and I liked the way I felt compelled to look at him. I didn’t want to hide around him.

The flip side of all of that was that I was smart enough now to not ignore the negative that was also circling around the attractive mechanic. He had a baby on the way that he clearly wasn’t ready for. Soon fatherhood was going to have to be his first priority, not calming a skittish girl that had an obvious crush on him. He had a tumultuous relationship with his ex and I wasn’t sure he was anywhere close to being over her, which had the potential to lead to a whole lot of heartache if I let him get any closer than he already was. Plus, there was the big unknown, the big what-ifs that kept me awake at night and made me wonder if I could ever actually let anyone get as close as they would need to be if I ever wanted to have a real relationship.

Oliver had hurt me in the worst ways a man could hurt a woman and it wasn’t the first time. Sex with him had never been particularly pleasant, it always felt like some kind of punishment for him not being my first. Before Oliver, my only sexual experience had been with the man that I convinced myself was my true love. Sex with him had been exciting, something new and forbidden, since I grew up in such a conservative household. I honestly couldn’t get enough of it. It made me feel free and far more in charge of my life than I had ever been … at least it had until I got pregnant at barely eighteen. At first, I thought it was meant to be. I was foolishly in love and had no problem spinning unrealistic fairy tales around the college football-star that told me whatever I needed to hear in order to get into my pants. I was picturing a life together, a happy little family, but all of that was painfully unrealistic and woefully naive. I told my knight who came clad in cleats and a jersey about the baby, expecting him to be as excited as I was, and was heartbroken and destroyed when he told me to get rid of it.

It was like a slap in the face. I thought college and this perfect boy were my way out, the escape I’d longed for from my father and his long-reaching influence, but in a heartbeat all those dreams were shattered. He told me I was nothing, just another stupid freshman girl that was willing to spread her legs for the campus golden boy. He laughed at me when I cried and scoffed at me when I told him I thought we were going to be together forever. He walked away still laughing but came back months later when I refused to terminate my pregnancy.

Even without him I was planning on keeping the baby. I was going to face my father’s wrath, stand up to his scorn, and suffer through his disownment if it meant I could be the best mom ever. I was convinced this baby was meant to be, that it was a sign that I had a bigger purpose in life than being the perfect daughter and proper little wife he’d trained me to be.

The baby’s dad convinced me to come over to his place with promises of reconciliation. He told me he was done sleeping around, that he only wanted me. He promised that he loved me. I was stupid. I was so desperate for it to be real that I forgot about his ugly, twisted reaction when I told him we were going to be parents. As soon as I knocked on the door, I knew I’d made the world’s biggest mistake.

He yanked me into his apartment and proceeded to beat me within an inch of my life. My dad was a dictator and a tyrant, but he used his words and withheld his love to secure obedience and submission. I’d never had anyone lay their hands on me before. It was terrible. To this day, I could still taste my own blood, blood I choked on as he hit me over and over again, making sure that his blows were focused on and around my still-flat stomach. He wanted to punish me for defying his wishes, but more than that he wanted to make sure there was no way I left that apartment still pregnant.

He got his wish. After fifteen minutes I passed out, and when I woke up I was back in my own dorm room and I knew something was seriously wrong. There was blood everywhere and I felt like my entire body was being turned inside out. I crawled to the tiny bathroom and it was there that my body did what it had no choice to after the football player was done with me. I lost the baby as I sat on the bathroom floor, bleeding, alone, and torn apart in too many ways to name.

Luckily, my childhood friend and the boy that had lived next door to me my entire life was at the same college. At the time I had no clue he’d followed me there, but when he found me hovering on the brink of death in my dorm room, I was so grateful that he did. That boy was Rowdy, who was now desperately in love with my sister and building the kind of family I’d always wanted. He took care of me and then he went and took care of his teammate who was responsible for my condition. The school had a mess on their hands with the three of us, but I was so heartbroken and mortified that I packed myself up and headed back to the only thing I knew without a backward glance. I didn’t stick around to press charges like I should have and I didn’t stick around to vouch for Rowdy like I should have. Because of me he lost his scholarship, got kicked out of school, and disappeared. It was a lucky twist of fate that his path had crossed with Salem’s after so many years.

So sex, even good sex, wasn’t something that I’d had a lot of success with and there were a lot of unanswered questions that were constantly floating around in my head now that I realized I might actually want to have it again. Every time I caught sight of that ink that scrawled across Wheeler’s stomach and across the back of his neck, I wondered where it all went. I wanted to know if it dropped below the tops of his jeans and I was curious if those freckles of his stopped at the bridge of his nose. I’d never been so physically aware of the way I reacted to a man before him but I wasn’t sure I could do anything with the way he made me feel.

The counselor’s light voice jerked me away from the mental scale, where I was weighing all the things that were swirling around in my head. “You have to stop blaming yourself for what happened to you. Those choices were not yours. Your judgment is not in question. All you could do was react to the situation the best you could have, given the circumstances. You were a victim, not an accomplice.” That was a common refrain, both here and during my private sessions with my therapist. I didn’t make the choice to go with Oliver willingly when he abducted me. He’d pulled a gun on my sister and threatened to shoot her if I didn’t go with him. I did what I had to do in order to keep her safe. At the time it seemed like the only option, but now I always wondered if there was another way. If I should have been smarter, stronger … better.

I felt like I couldn’t trust myself to know if what I was doing was right, when it seemed like everything I’d done prior had been wrong. Maybe I didn’t feel like I deserved the kind of normalcy and goodness that was in my life now. Maybe, just like the teenager who was watching me closely, I was also stuck in place where I would wonder what I’d done right to deserve this new life. I didn’t feel like I’d done a single thing to earn it.

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