Heat exploded between us. His beautiful, scarred lips, my scarred knees. Every car and machine between us—it just incinerated.

What I knew about him I could hold in my palm and when he looked at me like that, it didn’t matter.

“I fix race cars,” he finally said. “Build engines. I…invented a fuel injection valve that…sort of made some money.”

I nodded, fighting a smile. “Sort of.”

“Trust me,” he said. “No one is more surprised than me.”

He walked back over to his bench and I sat down on my step. I was pretty sure that he was going to shoot me down if I tried to talk about the accident, but it was worth a shot. And maybe his mind was a little scrambled too. “After the accident you started fixing cars.”

“Before the accident I started fixing cars. That’s how most drivers start. Souping up the engines on their dads’ old Fords to see how fast they can go before things fall apart.”

I watched him putting tools away in big metal cases, like filing cabinets on wheels. He grabbed greasy rags and threw them into a cloth bin in the corner.

“So,” I said, stepping lightly into this conversation. “When you were a kid, messing around with your dad’s Ford, he didn’t mind?” I watched him out of the corner of my eye because I knew what I was doing, the sleeping dog I was poking at.

Dylan stilled, his back to me. “My dad taught me. I keep forgetting that.”

I pulled the sun on my knee into a fold. Obliterating it.

“Ben said he didn’t have any kids,” I whispered, my voice carrying through the cavern right to him, and he flinched. Just once. But then he started moving again. Pushing himself back into motion.

“Put that together, did you?”

“I thought for a long time you were related to the girl in the fire.”

“Nope. I’m related to the murderer.”

“Dylan? Why would he say he doesn’t have kids?”

“Because he stopped being my pop a long, long time ago.”

“But you didn’t stop being his son?”

Dylan turned. Amazing how inscrutable he was. He could close a door so fast, so hard, there was no chance to get in, no chance to see anything but what he wanted to show.

I nodded like I understood, and the silence between us started to get chilly. “So that makes Max—”

“My brother.”

“The badass you wanted to be like.”

Dylan watched me a long time. “Yeah,” he said.

Looking at Dylan, strong and fierce in this beautiful house, with Margaret and the money implied in all of it, I could not connect the dots between him and Ben. They were so many miles apart.

“Is your mom Maria?” I asked. He could not control his shock. His drop-jawed astonishment.

“How did you know about Mom?”

“Your dad—”

“Ben,” Dylan said with a mean laugh. “That man is no dad.”

“Fine…Ben told me about her.”

Dylan blinked as if he really couldn’t believe what I was saying. “What exactly did he tell you?”

“That he missed her, but they were bad together.”

“Bad together,” he laughed, humorlessly. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Did he hit her?” I asked, wondering how Ben could look me in the eyes when I was telling him about Hoyt. How could he look me in the eyes and have done the exact same thing to another woman?

“No. Good Saint Ben never lifted a finger against her, like that was what made all the other shit he did all right. There is more than one way to hurt a woman, and Ben found them all.”

I did not need to be sermonized on the many ways men could hurt women. I glanced away from the intensity of his eyes. They saw too much, those eyes of his. He started throwing tools back into the toolboxes. Each one landing with a clatter and a bang that made me jump.

“Is it really dangerous at the trailer park?” I asked.

He leaned back against one of the cars and crossed his arms over his bare chest, looking like every single sexual fantasy I never allowed myself to have.

“Ben is an old fucking man. Harmless. But if Max is coming around, then, yes.”

“There are other people there. Families. Young kids.”

“Yep.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“The world is rough all over, Annie. My brother is an outlaw. My father was an outlaw. They are both involved in shit that’s not safe.”

I put my head in my hand. I ran away from Oklahoma to try and get safe. To get away from violence and abuse. I thought I’d done it, in my Febreze-scented escape.

“Annie, listen…” He came over to stand in front of me.

How odd, I thought, to know that skin so well. The taste of it. The feel of it. And to know the man inside of it not even a little. At that moment I let the fact that I didn’t tell him about Hoyt be okay. Cowardly, yes. Awful, sure. But I let it. “I have a house in Charleston. You can stay—”

“No!”

“Why no?”

“Because I don’t know you! I’m not going to live with—”

“Slow down there, killer. I’m not asking you to live with me. I have a house where you can stay. If you’re going to be uptight about it you can pay me rent.”

“I don’t like cities.” My gut made me say that.

“What’s wrong with cities?”

“People.”

He laughed. “That I can understand. You don’t have to tell me right now; you can think about it. But I gotta say, it seems like a pretty easy call to me. Shitty trailer or a beach house in Charleston.”

“It’s a beach house?”

“Oh, that changes your mind?” He laughed.

“I’ve never been to the beach.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

“Jesus Christ, honey. Did you live in a box before you answered that phone?”

The smile died on my face and I ducked my head, rubbing my cheek against my shoulder. I did. I lived in that box. And I smashed it right open.

“Anything else you want to get off your chest?”

“What day is it?” I asked.

“Thursday. The twenty-fourth.”

“It’s my birthday.”

For a minute he gaped at me.

“Everyone has a birthday,” I said when it seemed his shock went on a bit too long.

“You’re twenty-five? Today?”

I nodded, back to nervously obliterating the sun on my pants, but then he smiled. Not one of his half smiles, or mocking grins. It was a smile that revealed a very real amount of happiness. Of joy, even.

It did not make him more handsome, he was already far too good-looking, but it made him very human. And again, that dangerous affection for this stranger curled through me.

He pushed off the car and…well, he prowled over toward me. Loose-hipped and gleaming, he came to me. To me. Annie McKay. And he bent down, one hand braced on the wall, the other on the railing.

His smile…I swear to God, it was beautiful. Beautiful because it was rare, because of those scarred lips, because it was all for me.

I couldn’t stop myself. I tipped my face up, like a plant toward the sun, and smiled right back.

Softly, sweetly, he kissed me. Again. And again. And again, again. A thousand small breaths across my face. His mouth was delicious and I was starving.

“What do you want for your birthday, baby?” he asked, so low, so quiet, I felt the words more than heard them.

“One more day.” The words came without thought. Without a plan. I wanted one more day in this magical house on the edge of the cliff. “One more day with you,” I said.

I reached up and touched the edge of a scar, a thick, white wrinkle on his neck. He had the Virgin Mary tattooed over his heart. I felt my own buckle in my chest.

And then it’s over. It has to be.

He nodded like he heard me.

“One more day,” he agreed, and those arms swept me up.

For a second I was awkward in his hold. All legs and arms caught up between our bodies. I jerked away and he gave me a quick jostle.

“You want me to drop you?”

“No…I’m just…This is awkward.”

“Relax.” Another kiss. Another jostle and my arms were out and around his neck and my legs were around his waist and suddenly, it was the most natural thing.