Page 253 of Kiss Me Tenderly

“I never stopped loving your dad, you know. After our divorce, I felt like I had failed. I wanted to go back and make us right again.” She turns my way. “But love can’t go back, kiddo. You gotta move on and trust it will find you again.”

Words won’t come. I can’t speak with the grip that truth has over my heart.

I need to let Redix go.

I close my eyes, remembering when I should have let the dream of us die so we could find peace again.

Ten years ago, Redix tucked his hair behind his ear and said, “Let me go, Cade.”

His busted lip. His black eyes. His bloody ear. The bruises on his face matched the ones on my heart, aching so bad I couldn’t pull in a breath.

“Please,” he said, “I don’t want to hurt you. Go find someone else to love.”

His blue t-shirt, his back in it, turned on me and walked away. And my world, my heart, he left me standing there.

“Redix, please!” I had no pride, no answers, only an avalanche of pain begging, “Don’t leave me.”

But he never even looked back. I don’t remember the next minutes, the next hour. It was just him driving away and Mama finding me still sobbing on my bed hours later, crying so hard my lungs burned.

“Let it out,” I remember Mama whispering while I let every piece of me fall apart. I remember it now.

“Let him go,” Mama said. She was crying too.

“Well, here comes trouble with a capital T,” she mutters now.

From behind my sunglasses, I open my wet eyes and…

Suck a dick, Fate.

TJ is on his usual prowl, stalking across my complex’s pool deck on his way to the beach.

“Well, this is quite the catch.” His voice rasps, and I retch. “Hilton Head’s finest ladies by the pool.”

That’s TJ’s danger, his delusion. After what happened, it only took two years of me being home and smiling at him to convince him that I magically forgave him. So desperate to believe his sick truth, he denies the facts. It gives him the balls to walk up to our loungers like we’re friends, like I want him.

It is what I want.

With Mama here, it’s not.

Because nothing gets past her.

“We’re just enjoying some family time.” My tone is sweet. “Enjoy your day too.”

Mama doesn’t greet him, though—not her typical tactic. Manners are her default setting. But with TJ, flames could freeze at the cold stare coming off her.

“Did you enjoy taking those pictures with Redix Dean?” The tone in TJ’s voice? It’s flat. It’s creepy. “You lied to me. You said you two weren’t together.”

Damn, he’s a gross fuck.

He thinks I belong to him. He always has.

Swallowing my disgust, I have to make him believe it, so I answer, “When someone pays you two hundred and fifty K for a picture, you can act like anyone’s your center of attention.”

“I see.” He sneers. “Well, you’ll always be mine.”

With a smile toward my mama, he tips his sweaty visor.

“Sheriff, you have a good day.”