“Follow me, watch me, go through my shit and keep distant? If it was me –”

His voice held a hint of humor and a hint of hardness when he cut me off. “You would have shot me.”

I tipped my head back and grinned at his shadowy face. “Yeah. But if I figured it out, if I learned it was as it was, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

His arms around me pulled me deeper into his warm, hard body as he replied quietly, “If it was you, except for the scar, I haven’t changed. Got older but not changed. There wouldn’t be a reason to delay approach. You…” he trailed off and didn’t speak again.

“I changed and that freaked you out?” I guessed.

“You did and you didn’t but the way you did meant my approach needed to be cautious. That tough skin, those sharp edges, both of them you had in a way a man could work a lifetime and not break through, proceed with caution and still get sliced to shreds. I wanted you back and I needed to find the right way to finesse that. When I went through your house, I saw you’d kept my necklaces so I had hope but I knew I couldn’t go gung ho. I had to understand what forced the change in you and I had to get that from you so I could form a plan.” His hands slid up my still slick back. “Which is what I did.”

And I was glad he did.

I pressed closer and said softly, “It killed.”

His hands stopped moving so his arms could wrap around tight. “Yeah, watchin’ you. Followin’ you. Goin’ through your stuff. Knowin’ your life didn’t go as I was promised it would but something went down that was not good, yeah. It f**kin’ killed.”

I closed my eyes and shoved my face in his throat.

“It’s also over,” he went on.

“It’s over,” I agreed, holding him close.

“And bottom line, it meant you weren’t in Kentucky livin’ a good life without me but open for an approach. It might have sucked for a while but now we got the future we both didn’t think we would ever have, so it was worth every f**kin’ minute.”

I didn’t experience what he did, watching me, following me but I suspected he was right about that too.

“Yeah,” I replied quietly.

“Yeah,” he repeated, gathering me even closer.

I lay in his arms and knew I’d been giving. I knew I’d let him in. I knew he understood this and it was making him happy.

But I didn’t know if he understood it all.

So I gave it to him.

“Creed?” I called.

“Right here, baby,” he whispered.

Yeah he was. Right there. Now and forever.

Now and forever.

I tipped my head so the bridge of my nose rested along his jaw and whispered back, “No matter what’s in our future, no matter if our luck stays good or turns back to shit, from this moment to your last on this earth, know down to your f**king soul I love you. I trust you. You make me happy. There’s been no one but you and there never will be. Okay?”

I felt him lift his head then I felt him move so he could bury his face in my neck and his voice was gruff when he murmured into my skin, “Okay, my Sylvie.”

I drew in breath then reached with my lips to brush them against the skin of his neck.

He settled back, kept me close and ordered gently, “Sleep, baby.”

“Right, Creed.”

In Creed’s arms, sated by his lovemaking, knowing I’d wake up to him tomorrow, my mind cleared and as I’d been doing all night, I did as ordered and slept.

Chapter Twenty

A Few More Months

A cool spring evening in Kentucky, seventeen years earlier, Creed is twenty-three, Sylvie is seventeen…

“I hate him.”

Creed’s hand slid soothingly up my spine. “I know you do.”

It was late at night and we were lying in the dark in Creed’s twin bed.

I had not had a good day.

It started with my Mom calling for the first time in ages to tell me she was divorcing her husband and asking me if I wanted to come out to California after I graduated.

To this I told her that I’d lived without her in my life for years, she’d left me to Daddy and the stepmonster and now that she was again facing being alone and lonely and needed me, because she abandoned me when I needed her, I wasn’t available to plug that hole. I used different words but she got my drift and informed me that she wasn’t surprised, seeing as he’d raised me, that I’d turned out just like my father.

Then she hung up.

A totally awesome phone reunion with Mom.

Not.

Since I’d called Creed to tell him about the conversation with my Mom before coming over, to make my day better, he drove us an hour and a half into the city so we could have an actual going out date and not be seen.

This made my day better, obviously. It got even better when Creed shared his Mom had a new man and she was spending her nights messing up his house and life which meant our evenings would be clear of her.

He also shared that he talked with a realtor about putting his house on the market. He further told his mother he was doing this and told her she was going to have to pull herself together, find a job and a place to live because he was moving into his own pad.

Since she was drunk and she had a new guy to mooch off of, she didn’t react. She would, when she used her guy up and he sent her packing but by then, hopefully, it would be too late.

I knew I shouldn’t feel that way about Winona Creed. I knew I shouldn’t want, even wish that Creed would scrape her off even before he would do it because we were leaving. I knew it made me not a nice person. But she’d never done anything for Creed, so I figured turnabout was fair play.

After our date, after we made out by my car and after I went home, my day being salvaged by Creed (as usual), it went straight to pot again when Daddy and the stepmonster fighting woke me up.

It was its usual loud and vicious then I heard the thump and I knew from years of experience it was the stepmonster hitting the wall thump not the stepmonster hitting the stairs or floor thump.

So I did what I always did. Got up. Got dressed. Snuck out.

And went to Creed.

Now I was lying on my side in his bed, my cheek to his chest, my arm around his belly, his arm under me, curled around, fingers stroking and our legs were tangled.

“I hate her, too,” I told him.

“Shouldn’t hate her, beautiful. Pity her but no reason to hate her.”

I lifted up and looked down at his beautiful face in the shadows. “She went after him. She broke up his marriage to my Mom. She didn’t get what she thought she’d get but she stayed so she could have what he could give her. She’s a drunk. She’s miserable and there are not enough shoes and purses and jewelry in the whole world to make it worth him treating her like garbage and beating her.”