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His fingers slide from my chin to my throat.

“One under your shirt. The other up your skirt.”

I shove at his chest as if I can physically push the past away. Not because it was forced on me. But because I wanted it.

Because that desire cost me years of my life.

Years locked up, being told purity was everything. Years being molded into something I never agreed to be. I let a boy touch me and somehow that became proof I couldn't be trusted with my own body. Or my own life.

I lost the chance to go to college with my friends. The chance to experience a life that belonged to me. And eventually, they didn't have to tell me desire was dangerous. I learned to punish myself for feeling it.

The shed darkens.

I lunge for a canoe because it’s the only escape left.

His hand catches me again.

This time when he pins me back against the rack, there’s no trace of teasing left in him. No playful amusement. Only an intensity that borders on dangerous.

I stare at him, keeping my spine straight. “How do you know?”

“Oh, I know everything about you.” His thumb shifts lightly over my throat. “One little chat with Mr. Thomas about the girl who disappeared after that night was quite illuminating.”

“You talked to him?” I had thought about Jordan over the years after our encounter and wondered where he ended up. Probably at a good university with a beautiful girlfriend. All while I was kept like a child in my bedroom after Mother caught us.

“In the hospital.”

My brows pull together. “What happened to him?”

“Someone cuffed his hands over cinder blocks and took a bat to them.”

My pulse spikes in my tight chest.

Edwin’s icy blue eyes are so cold they burn. The same eyes that were fixed on the stranger in the playroom before the gunshot echoed.

That frightens me almost as much as it comforts.

I push weakly on his chest again. Hard muscle refuses to give. I leave my hands there anyway, confused by the contrast of my own feelings.

Tears well before I blink them away.

“Let me go.”

“Poking around will get you hurt in this town,” he says. “Especially when you start looking for us.”

His hand trails up the outside of my thigh, sliding beneath my dress. A chill races through me.

“I’m going to drag every filthy fantasy out of you,” he says. “I’m going to make you do the things you’ve spent years imagining.”

The ache between my legs turns deep and warm. I close my eyes for a second, ashamed of how my body reacts. When I look at him again, he’s studying me with a hunger that looks carved into his face.

“Why are you doing this?” My voice trembles.

His jaw tightens. “I’m going through a trying time.” Grief cracks his control. “And the only place I want to be is with you.”

The fear in me loosens at the pain in his eyes.

He’s hurting too. Hidden behind all this control and intensity, grief lives inside him just as heavily as it lives inside me.