Page 35 of Before Broken Vows

I see the library and decide that maybe reading will help.

I run my hands along the books on the shelves. It's got everything you'd imagine. History, philosophy, and then therewere my favorites: Greek poetry. I used to make him read them to me.

I instantly remember that one night after our trip to Santorini. We'd both been sunburned to hell, exhausted, and too sore from cliff diving and wild sex to do anything. So we covered ourselves with aloe vera lotion, and he just read to me.

He sat in the patio lounge chair wearing nothing but a towel, with his legs stretched out, a chilled glass of white wine in one hand and a book of poems in the other.

"Read me something," I'd said.

He laughed, turned a page. Then he looked at me with those eyes that made me feel like the center of the goddamn universe.

"Eros shook my mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees," he read in his sexy, low voice.

I remember the way he looked at me when he said it. Like he wasn't just reading poetry, he was reading me. My soul. My longing. My fear.

He saw everything in me.

I didn't say anything then. I just crawled across the lounge chair and kissed him.

And for that moment, the world wasn't dangerous yet. It wasn't complicated. It was just him and me, sunburned skin and all.

It's these kinds of thoughts that have been clawing to get out for four years.

I don't know how long I stand there before I realize I'm crying. Silently. No sobs, no sniffles. Just tears sliding down my cheeks like I'm made of nothing but grief and regret.

I wipe them away quickly, afraid someone might see them, or might have to acknowledge them.

I close my eyes and try to push the memory away. It doesn't work.

Instead, my mind offers me a different image, one burned deeper than anything else.

A motel room in Los Angeles. A flickering "Vacancy" sign outside the window of some shitty run down place. Me sitting on the edge of a bed with a burner phone in my lap and a loaded Glock under my pillow.

I'd been living under a different name for nearly five months. My hair was cut. My ID was fake. Every time I checked in, I made up a new story. New past. New hometown.

But what I carried never changed.

And I never stopped thinking of him.

If he knew the truth…

If Theo knew the whole story, why I left, what I was protecting, what I've been hiding, he'd never forgive me.

Not just because I lied.

But because I made the choice for both of us.

I take a deep breath and shake my arms in a poor attempt to shake away those thoughts and bring me back to reality.

Maybe a book isn't what I need.

I leave the library, and when I do, I glance down one of the halls and see the light on in Theo's office.

I walk slowly over to his door without second-guessing myself. Like a moth to a flame, his light my beacon.

When I get to the door, I stop.

I hear him. I hear movement.