I wasn’t hurting her, I knew that. I knew it. If Aly wanted, I’d be disabled with a knee to my balls. But the moment was heavy with tension, with sadness and hate and bitterness and not all of it came from me. Not all of it was solely internal. She was hating herself too.

“Aly, please, please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say…”

“Shut up. Just…please… lage’m, let go of me, Ransom…”

But I couldn’t, not when I needed her. Not when I was desperate for her not to hate me.

“Please,” I told her, pinning her to the wall, keeping her shaking head still with my palms on her cheeks and my forehead against hers. “I am so sorry. I was with you, Aly, I promise. I was only with you. I wanted you. Just you.”

She stopped struggling, but the tears came anyway and when Aly closed her eyes, when her chin wobbled and her nostrils flared as she fought to keep herself from sobbing, I took her against my chest, my skin wet, my fingers tight in her hair.

“It will always be like this, won’t it?” I closed my eyes at her question, wishing she didn’t need to ask it.

“I don’t know.” She stiffened in my arms and my stomach got tight. I didn’t want her pushing away from me, giving up before anything real could begin. “I’m sorry, Aly. I don’t want it to be like this. I don’t want to…”

I felt her nod, a small gesture meant to shut me up. “Ransom,” she started, stepping away from my body. “Have you…have you told anyone about this? About what you’ve been feeling?”

“I don’t do that, Aly.” It was honest. That wasn’t something I deserved. The pain, all of it, it was mine to bear. I created it, I would carry it. My embarrassment, my shame at calling out Emily’s name wouldn’t let me step away from Aly and I didn’t, though I could guess where she was going with her question. “I never have. Music, football, those are my only releases.”

“But you said you hadn’t played in a while and you play football for a free ride to college, right?”

There were still tears clinging to her lashes and I let them distract me, rubbed them away with the pad of my thumb. “Basically.”

“Ransom.” Aly held my hand, pulling my fingers from her face so I would look at her. “Do you want to try this with me? Really try?”

No matter what I’d said, how I’d acted in the past, my body and brain hadn’t let me stay clear of Aly. I wanted her. “More than anything,” I told her, kissing her before she could refuse me again. “More than any damn thing.”

She nodded, holding my face away from her when I tried to touch her again. It was her eyes though that kept me still. They had returned to green hazel and were bright, a little tired, but still alight, searching my face. Whatever Aly hoped to find in my expression, I prayed it would calm her, would have her heart softened, her forgiveness pouring over me.

“Then you’re going to have to talk to me.” When I stiffened, a little panicked, a little anxious, Aly grabbed my arm, keeping me still. “I’m not going to share you with a ghost. You have to tell me everything.”

So I did.

“It was late September.”

I couldn’t look at her when I spoke, kept my gaze on the knotted whitewash floor at my feet, but I knew Aly stared at me. We were dressed, but still on her bed, as though the memory of what we’d done on it would make this easier, keep me from breaking away from the safety both Aly and this place brought me.

“I was a stupid, jealous kid back then.” I glanced at her, unable to ignore Aly completely. “Still stupid now, but was epically stupid then.”

“I remember you being happy.” The look on her face was soft, a little sad, but I got that maybe how Aly remembered me back then, the way I’d been before Emily went away, might have been what caught Aly’s attention.

“I was especially stupid about her.” I scrubbed my face and sighed, figuring Aly deserved to know what I remembered. “I loved her like the sunset when you can barely make out the sliver of light that separates night and day. And sometimes, when I really think about it, maybe the sunset isn’t always the best for you. It means the end. It means that you’ve run out of chances.”

“No, Ransom,” she said, moving her head into a tilt. “It means you get a whole other day, another chance to live to the fullest.” I could only stare at her, blinking back at that soft, slow smile. I’ve never known anyone like her and I wondered how I’d managed to luck up again, to have someone so beautiful, so sweet, wanting to save me from myself.

Shaking my head, I rested my elbows on my knees and looked back down at the floor. “Her father hated me because he didn’t think I was good enough for her. Then he found out we’d sent nudes to each other.” I shrugged, thinking how stupid, how careless we’d been. “And with that damn video of me tossing that creep Mikee Sibley through the window going public, well, he thought I was violent, too.” Another glance at Aly when she leaned back against the headboard and I clarified. “I was very violent then.” She nodded and I continued. “So we snuck around, getting her friend Becca to cover for us, telling her father they were volunteering at the food bank, stuff like that. Hell, we’d tell him anything.” I didn’t blame the man for hating me. I had never been honorable in his eyes and I certainly hadn’t acted that way.

“The week before the accident, her father had made her go on a date with Eddie Parker, some rich punk from Biloxi. She went because I’d acted like a twit about Parker being around so much—at her house, on the golf course with her father. The man was gearing them up for some sort of rich white people marriage that would put him into bed with Parker’s old man’s company. Hell, she was only seventeen and her father was planning out the rest of her life.”

Aly made a noise like she knew what that was about, but then she turned her attention back to me. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

“What happened on the lake?” Aly asked me when my voice got a little too loud. Always calming me, keeping me focused. It was natural for her, some smooth magic I’d never seen anyone else ever weave.

“She showed up at the lake house the next day telling me she wanted to talk. I knew what that meant.” If she’d meant to break my heart that day, she’d dressed the part. She’d looked beautiful with her hair pulled away from her face and a thin, green sundress making her look like a wood nymph. “Em was a good girl, for the most part, and maybe she got tired of lying to her father. Maybe she thought I wasn’t worth all the sneaking around and all the bullshit it took to see me. Maybe she actually was starting to hear the shit that her dad was relentlessly spewing about me, I dunno.” I massaged my neck, hoping the tension there was temporary.

“I…I didn’t want to hear it. I thought I knew what she was going to say and it sure as hell didn’t help with my parents there, hanging out with Leann and her husband. Hell, even Tristian was there with his little brother, I just wanted us to be alone if she was going to dump me.”

Getting her on the boat had been easy enough. She’d barely spoken to my family, like she knew being too friendly with them would make cutting ties that much harder.

“We were on the lake for at least an hour. It was windy that day and a storm was coming in. I saw it in the clouds. There was lightning and the thunder sounded too close for comfort.”

The mattress dipped as Aly scooted closer but she didn’t touch me.

“Em was crying, telling me how much she loved me. How she still wanted to see me, but also make things right with her father, but he was so fucking stubborn.”

I could only stare at those roiling clouds, trying to guess how long we had until they were overhead, not really caring if they were. Wondering if Emily ripping out my heart could possibly do less harm than some fucking storm.