“Of course not.” She knew she was lying the instant the words came out. It was at least partly because of him. To some degree or another, she knew it was. Even if he hadn’t lived here anymore, he’d be home someday. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye again—even if he hated . . . wanted to hate her. “He drove me home today. Stopped by his home to remove my sutures before he dropped me off.”

“Huh . . . well, that’s something idn’t it. . .” It wasn’t a question. Her mother was riddling it out in her mind. Trying just like Michelle to figure out what the hell it all meant. By the sound of her overlong silence, she was just as stumped as Michelle—just as stumped as Bailey for that matter.

Now, though, she was soaking wet and alone after her shower, still trying to whittle it out in her mind. She was startled out of her reverie as she stood staring in the fogged mirror at her loose, wet curls that cascaded down her back. The knock at her door scared her to the point of causing a yelp to escape her lips. She wrapped the thin robe tight, tying the sash at her waist and plodding out to the front door that opened onto her screened front porch.

She gasped when she opened the door and saw him standing there. It had started sprinkling, and he was wet. His dark hair glistened with droplets of rain water. It wasn’t pouring, and he had to have been standing outside for some time to get so wet, but his T-shirt was soaked through, and he stood, barely looking higher than her mouth. She didn’t have any idea what to say, and so she stood there as still as he was, waiting. She waited until she was certain he intended to say nothing, and then she opened her mouth to speak.

“Dar—”

“Shut up.” His eyes finally flashed to hers, and the expression made her gasp again. “I’ve thought endlessly . . . years. . .” His pauses were overly long, and his voice was hoarse. “I have relived that night so many times. So many mistakes. So many things. . .” He was nearly stuttering over his words. He was emotional, and her own eyes were tearing at nothing more than the choked, husky sound of his voice. “Could I go back . . . God, could I have just gone back and changed it all. All I wanted was you. I wanted to have you, throw everything else out the window for you. Maybe if I had. Maybe if I’d given in sooner, the fight would have been over. There’d have been no girlfriend keeping me from you, chasing me away from you. Maybe if I’d have had backbone enough, I’d have stayed for you.” He started pacing then, speaking in a flurry, but none of that explosive emotion compared to the moment he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her to the wall beside her. He reached for her cheeks, cupped them with his hands as his expression moved from fury to pain over and over again. “You did this! You did it! And I’m the one who feels guilty for it. Fuck!” He pulled his hands from her cheeks just to rake them harshly through his hair as he stepped back from her. “I want . . . I want so much to hate you. Do you know what that’s like? Do you have any idea what it’s like to see you, smell you, be near you again, feel your skin? Can you imagine what it is to hate someone so much, and yet . . . You destroyed everything.” He staggered back farther from her in defeat, his back sinking against the doorframe, bracing himself as she stayed rigidly planted against the wall, afraid to move, afraid to speak but wanting so much to do something.

She held her breath as he stared at her naked feet. She was having a hard time staying on her feet. Her legs felt like putty, and she was afraid if she even attempted to take a breath, her legs would melt and she’d end up on the floor. He wasn’t doing any better. He seemed to be in a stupor—his eyes might have been focused on her feet, but his gaze was blank and dead. She didn’t need to see his mind to know it was anything but blank. He was lost in there at the moment, and she had no idea if he’d come out from the depths hating her more or less than he did going in. She hoped less; she thought likely more.

“Do you remember the game?” His voice was croaked out as though he couldn’t get his throat muscles to function, but his focus was slowly shifting up from her feet, and she waited, refusing to look away. Of course she remembered. “You know the game. Our game.” His gaze made it to her eyes—his so dark and intimidating, hers with tears watering her vision. “But it wasn’t really a game at all, was it?” His focus had settled on her lips, and his brow flinched when she licked them in nervousness. “It was the only way we knew how to be honest with one another. We were so afraid of crossing that line. I was so afraid of crossing that line.” He slowly let himself sink down to the floor, sitting with his knees propped up, and his arms slung casually across the tops. But there was nothing really casual about him at the moment. However calm and relaxed his body appeared, she knew it was more a wasted exhaustion than a calmness. Bailey stood rigid for a moment, still breathing shallow breaths, the gears in her head spinning.

She finally joined him, stretching her legs out straight, crossing her ankles, and pulling her robe tight across her lap. It hadn’t escaped her attention that she’d said literally nothing to the man, but she knew her words wouldn’t help anything, and she wanted him to keep talking, painful as his words might be. “It was the only time we could really say what needed to be said.” His focus was now solely on her eyes, and she was listening intently. He was right—everything he said. She couldn’t even remember how or when they’d started playing . . . their game, only that it was theirs alone, and they’d never shared it with anyone else. Their relationship, subtle, unacknowledged, ignored as it was by them, was virtually unseen by anyone else, including Jess. They’d hid it well, and it wasn’t until she’d been sitting in a prison cell for nearly a year, analyzing every last aspect of her life that led her there, that she’d finally actually seen it herself.

What happened between them that night at the seawall, hell the night before that even, had been set in motion long before. Her crush on him was not merely some juvenile whim, nor were his feelings for her, whatever they might have been. They cared entirely too much for one another. Their words, every last one of them, were a confession of something important, something they couldn’t say outside the confines of their game, and that night was a catastrophe—an incredible catastrophe they’d avoided for so long but which they failed to control in that moment.

Odd how long hours in a cell day after day had finally given her that clarity. Odder still that it took so many endless days to see what was so obvious. And oddest of all, how well they’d hidden their feelings from even themselves. She’d loved him. She didn’t know what that love had actually meant, didn’t have a chance to find out, and now, sitting on her small cottage floor, she couldn’t help but remember the very moment she realized it. Her eyes had been staring at her cell ceiling as she lay in a stupor, and the understanding was simply there where it hadn’t been before. Looking at Darren’s expression now, the dark and pained emotion on his face, she knew he’d figured it out too. Somewhere along his own path, he’d realized just how deep they’d gotten into it all those years ago. She had no doubt it made his pain even worse.

“I wanted to finish playing the game that night. I wanted to tell you everything I’d refused to say the night before in the kitchen. But by the end of the night, those words were gone, and the only ones I had left . . . Well, let’s just say they weren’t anything like the words I’d started with.”

She nodded slowly, staring at his lips now. She understood what he was saying. It was her fault. She’d made the man hate her, and she’d left him with nothing good and decent to say to her. Her fault. Entirely. Her. Fault.

“I should never have left you at the bar. I should have stayed. I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay with you, be with you, deal with you, deal with what had happened. Hell, I wanted to do it all over again and keep going until I’d finally made love to you. I didn’t have the nerve to handle any of it the way I should have. I was such an immature prick. I made so . . . many . . . mistakes.”

She was shaking her head. “No . . . no. . .” She found her voice then. She couldn’t believe the man who held her so responsible for his misery was trying to share her guilt. None of it was his fault at all, but he was doing a damn fine job trying to convince her and himself that he somehow deserved to share her guilt. “Darren, please, you can’t. . .” She met his eyes, and her voice died in her throat. His expression was harsh. He didn’t want her sympathy.

He reached for her ankle, gently trailing his fingers over her skin, circling her joint. He was looking at the path his fingers were tracing, and Bailey suddenly couldn’t keep her mouth closed. Her lips parted at the intimate touch, and she was sucking in sharp, quick breaths of shocked air. That air left her in a rush when he grasped her ankle and pulled her swiftly toward him. She slid smoothly across the polished wood floor, her robe riding up as she moved, but she stopped before the hem passed her bottom, saving her rear the pain. It did not save her modesty, and she was left sprawled beside him with her legs splayed apart, completely exposed to him.

Her eyes were wide and shocked as she tried to push herself up to sit with her arms that were barely propping her up. His eyes were searing into her, but he was no longer looking at her eyes. His focus was on her sex. He stared, and when she tried to close her knees, he pushed them apart, refusing to let her hide. The moment she tried to close her knees again, he pounced toward her, pinning her to the floor and pushing his way between her legs. His hands held her wrists to the floor, and she could feel his hard arousal through his jeans pushing against her sex. He was breathing deeply as he watched her, his brow flinching. Her body was tingling, prickling in hot need, and his hard erection that was between them was taunting her.