He wanted to carry her in his pocket.

He’d learned the hard way to keep his wants and desires on a short list. Wanting too much, either one thing or a million, only meant he wouldn’t get it. He was clumsy with fragile things—always trying to hold onto them so hard they broke.

The thought was enough to make him pull out, holding onto the edge of the condom.

He went into the bathroom, dumped the condom, and peed.

Twenty-nine years old, and some of those years had been wild, and he’d never experienced anything like Annie. Not once.

The physical reality of the connection they had on the phone blew his mind. Destroyed it. And he didn’t know how he was going to let her walk away from him.

How did anyone walk away from what they’d just shared? They couldn’t. He couldn’t.

One more day, at least, he thought. Fuck the secrets. He just wanted to test this thing between them as far as it would go. Find the red line and hold it there until they both fell apart.

When he stepped back out into the bedroom she had curled up on the bed, her knees to her chest, and when she heard him she pulled the blanket up over her body like she didn’t want him to see her.

“Annie?” he asked, worried suddenly that he really had hurt her. He’d been rough. And angry. Raw. Maybe—

“I’m married.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I’m married, Dylan. That’s what I haven’t told you.”

ANNIE

My words echoed. In my head. In the room. Probably all over this damn mountain.

Get up, Annie. Get up. Get dressed and get gone.

What had happened between us on the bed had been the most amazing experience of my life. It was like we’d used our anger to make it all somehow better and worse at the same time. Beautiful and awful. That’s what we were.

And guilt was shredding me to pieces.

With shaking arms I pushed myself up off the bed. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, standing there in the doorway to the bathroom. His hand on the door frame like he couldn’t stand up on his own.

“I’m sorry,” I said, tears clogging my throat. “I’m so sorry…” A sob slipped out and I shook my head, gathering the duvet around me as best I could before slipping off the bed and heading for the door.

I had to get my clothes. Maybe…maybe he’d let me take the socks. It was cold. I’d leave everything else. The pajamas and the soft shirt. The robe. I’d leave it all. And I wouldn’t ask for one more thing. Except the socks and…Shit. I had no way home.

“I don’t…can I get a ride to a bus station or something? And I’ll need to borrow some money. I’ll pay you back—”

“Stop,” he breathed, as if he’d just woken up. “You’re married? Like right now, you’re married?”

I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at him.

He was naked and still braced in the doorway, as if his feet wouldn’t work. Sweat still gleamed on his chest, across those tattoos. His cock, so pink, lay against his leg.

“Yes,” I said. “Right now, I am married.”

He glanced away and wiped a hand over his face and head, making all the dark hair stand up.

“I didn’t have anything with me when you brought me here,” I said. I wished more than I could say that I could throw on some clothes, grab my keys, and drive out of there, but I was totally at his mercy. “I need help getting home.”

He let out a long breath and when he turned to look at me, his eyes were wide. “Home?”

“Back to the trailer park.”

“Get dressed, Annie,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere just yet.”

He went back into the bathroom and came out with my clothes, which he tossed at me. I caught them with one hand; the other still had a death grip on the quilt. “Go get dressed. We’re going to talk.”

In my bedroom I put on the sun-and-moon pants and the pink shirt. A pair of socks. I found a hoodie sweatshirt, too, and slipped that on, burying my ice-cold hands in the front pockets. Slowly the shaking stopped. The shock of telling the truth wore away, leaving me somehow stripped. I felt weightless somehow…impossibly sorry and deeply guilty, but a boulder had been rolled off my back.

I found Dylan in the kitchen, leaning back in the corner of the counter space. He was drinking a beer. He wore jeans and his inscrutable expression; otherwise he was naked.

When I came in he took a long drink and then set the beer down, very carefully, as if everything hinged on his getting that beer down on the right bit of countertop.

Back on the farm, I used to have a rib that kept popping out of place. And it made it hard to sleep, to breathe. Impossible to work. I’d walk around trying to manage the pain, only half-living. My whole life lived in halves because I couldn’t do anything. And then Smith would notice, give me hell for not saying anything, and he’d give me one of those big bear hugs and it would pop right back into place.

Telling the secret was like that.

For the first time since I answered that phone call, I could take a deep breath. A real one. I had no idea what was going to happen next. But at least I could breathe.

“I’m sorry I got you involved in this,” I said, feeling oddly calm. “I…I didn’t think it would get this far.”

“Adultery?”

I nodded.

“Well.” His words had the sharp edge of sarcasm all over them. “It’s a first for me.”

“When…when we were just on the phone it didn’t seem so…wrong.”

“Where’s your husband?” he asked, and I couldn’t quite stop my flinch. Husband. That word always sounded like a threat. And he spit it out like he wanted to wound me with it.

“Still on the farm, I think.”

“Are you separated? In the process of getting a divorce?”

I shook my head, my hands in knots in my pockets. I couldn’t even give him that kind of comfort.

“Jesus, Annie, tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I ran.” I swallowed, hard, my throat impossibly dry. I grabbed what was left of my champagne on the table and finished it, my throat raw and painful. Had I screamed when I came in his bedroom? Or was it just the pain of telling what I’d never told anyone?

“Two months ago, I packed up a bag and I took all the money I could get my hands on and I waited until three o’clock in the morning, until he was sleeping, and I ran.”

He straightened up from the corner and took a step closer to me but stopped when I stiffened. I could not be touched right now.

“Why?” he breathed.

The tears it felt like I’d been holding back forever spilled over my cheeks. A hot waterfall trickling down over my chin onto my throat. “Because he was going to kill me.”

“What?”

“If I stayed my husband would kill me somehow. It was only a matter of time.”

“Oh, Jesus, oh…Annie.” He stepped toward me and I stepped back, my hand up to stop him. He ignored it. For the first time he ignored it and I realized for all his anger the last day, he’d been mine to control. If I said stop, he stopped.

Not now, though. Now, he pulled out a chair and helped me sit down in it as if I were an old lady. As if I were as old on the outside as I felt on the inside.

“Tell me,” he said, crouching down in front of me.

The urge to touch him, brush back his hair, trail my fingers over that scar tissue, was real and difficult to manage. But he was not mine to touch. Not anymore. Not ever, really. He was something I never should have reached for.