Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried to banish the memories of us, in the quiet of night, once the sun had set, my thoughts always drifted back to Tyson Blackwell.
The only man I had ever loved.
The only man I had ever wanted.
Now that I was home, and he was here, I had my own set of questions for him. He might have wanted to know why I disappeared, why I lied to him on our last night together…but I needed to know if everything before that night was a lie.
While I was washing my face and reapplying makeup, I remembered the look of shock on his face on the plane. The abhorrent look he gave me when I asked him if he’d tricked me like I’d always been told. Something about that night, the way I felt about him, wasn’t adding up in my head.
Brushing out my hair, I closed my eyes and sighed.
I had been a naïve teenager, a girl who always felt out of place in school because everyone knew who I was…who my family was and what my father did. If they didn’t, they certainly had their assumptions, and those were enough to force everyone to give me a wide berth. Everyone but Tyson, who somehow wormed his way into my life, and then my heart, when he asked me to be his date for homecoming.
Those memories that I had never been able to erase still hurt in a place deep inside of me, but if I was truly going to move on from Tyson once and for all, I needed the answers to my questions, just as I assumed he wanted one to his.
It was that fortifying thought that made me set down my brush and turn off the bathroom light. I changed my clothes, slipped into a pair of basic black ballet flats, and grabbed my purse before heading out the door and back down to the hotel’s lobby.
“You’re early.”
I jumped at the voice that came from behind me, and my hand flew to my chest. I gasped and turned around. “You scared me.”
Gone was the suit and professional look. In its place were casual jeans and a simple black T-shirt. The sleeves around Tyson’s biceps looked like they were fighting to stay stitched at the seams. When he crossed his arms over his chest and gave my body a languid perusal, I fought not to squirm in front of him.
“Sorry.” One side of his lips twitched.
I frowned. “You’re not sorry.”
“Nope.” He grinned.
“How’d you change?”
“Got my stuff out of coat check. I had to get out of the suit. You ready to eat?”
About as ready as I was to jump off the top of the hotel’s thirty-five-story building.
I gulped, nerves threatening to spill over. “Yup.”
Tyson lifted an arm and nodded toward the dining room. I took a step forward, flinching as Tyson’s hand landed on my lower back.
“Have I told you yet that it’s really good to see you?”
I shook my head and kept my eyes facing forward. His touch on my skin was incendiary—burning like dynamite and almost ready to explode.
“It is,” he said. “And you’re just as beautiful as I remember.”
I stumbled over my feet but quickly righted myself and cursed.
“Affected?” he asked, laughing softly.
“Just clumsy,” I muttered, feeling a heat spread to my cheeks.
“Don’t remember that about you.”
“People change, Tyson.”
His hand flinched off my back, and then his fingers dug into the fabric of my pale pink top. Even now, with just his fingertips pressing against me, I could feel the strength of him radiating through my clothing and into my skin.
I hadn’t changed. I had always been naturally clumsy. I just used to try to hide it better when I was with him. I used to try to hide my natural self from everyone. My mom’s constant reprimands to act like a Galecki were drilled into my mind, and they often left me feeling like I could never be myself. Tyson was the only one who got glimpses of it, but even then I never fully shed the Galecki skin until I grew comfortable on Eleanor’s farm.
