The eldest of the siblings, he’d been their rock, and their leader.

He lowered the weight once more, then raised it for a final rep before placing it on the rack of the bench press. Sitting up, he draped a strong arm around her.

She crinkled her nose. “Eww,” she said, pushing his sweaty arm away from her dress.

He grabbed her head and rubbed his knuckles against her skull, his light blue eyes twinkling. When he stopped laughing, he tugged her close. “So what are you going to do tomorrow?”

He was like a teacher, reinforcing the lesson.

“Apologize,” she grumbled.

He punched her arm lightly. “C’mon. Say it with spirit.”

She affixed a too-bright smile. “Apologize,” she said with forced pep. “Even though he’s the one who should be apologizing.”

Michael nodded, his eyes darkening momentarily. He was no fan of Brent. “You’ll get no disagreement from me on that point, but this isn’t about him. It’s about you.” He pointed at her as he spoke in that gentle but authoritative tone he had. His older brother tone. “Who you want to be. How you want to behave.”

“And who I don’t want to become,” she muttered.

He shot her a small smile. “I’m not worried about that in the least. But you can’t give in to anger. Though, trust me, I’d like to with that fucker,” he said. Michael had helped Brent with his proposal. He’d asked their grandmother for her wedding band to be used in the engagement ring.

“He’s not that bad,” she said, and that was the understatement of the night. Brent wasn’t that bad. He was that good. Kissing him was like melting from head to toe, like being dipped in pleasure and coated in a fine dust of hot shivery tingles. He ignited her completely, lust and desire sweeping up and down her skin from his touch.

Not that she’d say any of that to her brother. Maybe to her girlfriend Ally, but Michael didn’t need to know that Brent Nichols still turned her on like no man ever had. Besides, the purpose of the night’s pit stop wasn’t to conduct a post-mortem on being kissed unexpectedly above the Vegas skyline. It was because her brother always knew what to do and how to handle sticky situations, like her having hit a man.

She cringed remembering what she’d done.

But she reminded herself that she and her brothers had risen above their roots. They’d refashioned themselves into upstanding citizens, business owners—successful adults. As the Paige-Prince kids they’d grown up lower class and hadn’t known anything beyond the outskirts of their dangerous Vegas neighborhood. Now they were better than that. They were the restrained, sophisticated, and successful Sloans.

“Call me tomorrow,” he said, pinning her with wide blue eyes until she nodded.

“I will report back,” she said with a crisp salute, then hugged him goodbye, feeling more centered and calm than when she’d pulled into the gym.

But as she drove the final blocks home, that feeling vanished and a deep shame washed over her. She couldn’t believe she’d slapped Brent. What was wrong with her?

She parked and walked into her condo, then slammed the door hard behind her. The loud crash it made in the doorframe was mildly satisfying in the way that throwing a hairbrush or chucking a phone at the wall after a frustrating conversation could be. That was what she should have done instead of slapping him.

A picture frame on her kitchen counter had rattled and fallen over when she shut the door. She picked it up and repositioned it. An image of sunflowers. She brushed it lightly with her fingertips, then slumped into a chair at her kitchen table and untied the crisscross straps from her heels, heaving a sigh as she tossed one red suede shoe across the cool tiled floor, then the other. A heel smacked into the wall, thumping along the wood.

She muttered a curse. She didn’t need to maul a good pair of shoes because she was pissed at herself. She rose, padded to the wall and picked it up, inspecting the heel to make sure no damage was done.

Safe and sound.

Unlike her heart.

Unlike her ego.

Unlike her stupid brain that was tricking her

She and Brent had gone from zero to sixty in mere seconds, it seemed. One minute he’d been holding her in the hallway asking if she was safe. The next she was grinding against him by the window. She was ready, so damn ready to have gone home with him, to have tossed out the past, ignored the hurt, and just let him take her. He was her good drug—when they were younger, one hit and he’d washed away all the anger and shame.

She’d been practically addicted to sex with him when they were together. Brent had been the only thing that had felt good after far too long spent feeling nothing but bad. Nothing but the black mark of her family that trailed behind her all through her teenage years. Nothing but being the Paige-Prince kids.

Before him, she’d only had dance and her brothers. Then he came into her life, and she had something pure and unsullied by the cold, cruel world. Brent was her sweet, sinful addiction, and she rationalized that it was much healthier to need him than the bottle or a needle. But it wasn’t just the sex that had burned brightly between them. It was everything. He’d made her laugh, he’d made her smile, and he’d brought her so much happiness. She’d hadn’t been close to anyone like him since. While she hadn’t turned into a nun when they’d split, she hadn’t been busy fornicating during the last ten years, either. Her list of lovers was remarkably short—no one had compared to him because no one could compare to him.

She’d spent the last decade mostly alone. She’d had dates here and there and a few longer-term relationships. But sex and love residing in the same person? That had happened to her once in her life, and it had been with the man she’d wanted to go home with tonight. That moment in his arms had reminded her of how much she’d needed him, relied on him, and healed because of him. And how she’d cratered when he took that away by leaving. Thinking of his departure was like punching a hole in her chest. It was turning off her gravity.

That was why she’d snapped in the lounge.

She hated wanting him so much.

Shoving a hand through her mussed-up hair, she spotted the mail she’d brought in earlier. On the top of the pile was a letter from her mother. Maybe because she felt like she deserved punishment tonight, she picked up the white envelope. It bore the same return address her mother had had since Shannon was fourteen.

Dora Prince. Inmate #347-921, The Stella McLaren Federal Women’s Correctional Center, Hawthorne, Nevada.

Shannon took a deep, fueling breath, steeling herself for the latest round of unstable, needy, borderline insane words. With a hard stone residing in her gut, she pushed her finger under the flap and ripped it open. She took out the letter and unfolded the lined paper, girding herself for what lay on the page.

Baby,

How are you? How are your dance shows? Are your dancers as talented as you were? Sometimes at night, when it’s quiet, and everyone’s asleep, I close my eyes, and I swear I can see you on stage, with a smile so bright you light up the whole recital hall, like you did when you were my little girl in her candy pink tutu, up on the stage with your pirouettes.

I know it’s different now, but in my mind you’re still dancing. You’ll always be dancing. Just like someday I’ll be free. You’ll get your knee fixed, and I’ll get out of here, and life will be as it should again.

That’s what I hold onto when it gets all dark and black in my head, because I swear, it gets darker every day. It’s been more than seventeen years now, and the light is fading. I thought by now I’d be out of here. That they’d see I didn’t do it. I didn’t. I swear. I wish someone would find the people who did.