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A second nod. “They were. But you left before you found out the biggest one.”

Oh? “And what’s that?”

“You found one of my ledgers, but you didn’t find this.”

Before I can ask what he’s talking about, Adrian stalks quietly over to the desk, pausing only to trail his finger along the back of my shoulders. I shiver as he pulls open one of the drawers on the left side of his desk. Reaching inside, he grabs a small cedar chest about eight inches long, five inches wide.

Setting it on the top of his desk, he flicks the clasp, knocking the lid back.

The first thing I see on top is a lock of hair in a tiny baggie. It’s a little bit reddish, a little bit blonde, and every bit of the hair that grows out of my head.

“Where did you get that?” I breathe it.

“I cut it and you never noticed,” he says shamelessly. “I had a pocket knife on me the first time we slept together. Remember?”

Actually, yeah. “I remember thinking you were such a bad boy for a rich kid. You took out that knife and cut my underwear off of me. I thought you’d nick me, but you didn’t.” I pause, thinking back. “I never saw those panties again.”

“Of course not. I have them, too.”

I glance in the wooden box.

He huffs, a sound that might be a laugh if I didn’t know how serious he was being. “That’s my prized possession, princess. You think I’d let it take on the scent of cedar? No. It’s in a sealed bag, as delicious as the day I cut them off of you.”

I blink. I don’t even know how to react to that.

“Does that scare you? That I’ve kept a lock of hair as a memento all these years? That, when I missed you the most, I rubbed a pair of your ten-year-old panties against my cheek?”

Does that scare me? Not even a little.

But it does scare me how much that turns me on…

Dipping his fingers into the box, he pinches something else. It’s a used cigarette with the faint remnants of a pale pink lipstick around the filter.

“The one and only time you shared a smoke with me. After I put it out, I stole the butt because your mouth had been on it.”

Again into the box, this time pulling out a candid shot of me in a cap and gown.

“When you graduated college. I couldn’t be there, but Connor did me a solid. He snuck in and got a picture of you getting ready backstage.”

He did?

“Adrian.”

“There’s more. If you want to see it, I can show you. But understand this: when I tell you that I love you, Avalon Heller, believe me. When I tell you that I’m obsessed… know that I’m telling the truth.” His eyes darken to a deeper shade of green. “Odds are I’m underselling just how fucking addicted to you I am. Your smell. Your taste. Your laugh.” He lifts his hand, pointer finger ghosting over my cheek. “Those freckles. All of you. Do you know what my first real memory is?”

I shake my head.

“You. In overalls and pigtails, a smudge of chocolate on your nose after you broke you cookie in half and gave it to me. Do you understand what I’m saying? What I mean? You, Loni. It’s always been you.

“Look. I’m not good. I’m not nice. If I ever talked to a shrink, they’d probably fill a notepad with everything that’s wrong with me. But my love for you? It’s the one thing that makes me remember I’m human.”

Oh, Adrian. “You are, baby. You say that like there’s something wrong with you.”

But there’s not. To see this vulnerable side of him… how can there be?

And then he makes another confession: “You’re my greatest love, but that makes you my greatest weakness.”

Oof. “Wow.”