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I was still so full from breakfast even though we’d spent the past few hours walking around the Palace.

“This place is so magical. It feels like I’m in a fairy tale,” I said as we meandered through the gardens. I understood why he’d wanted to come here. A piece of his past was connected to this place.

I hated it and would never admit it aloud, but he was right. No matter how ridiculous this whole trip was, it was right. I understood what Ledger was trying to do—he wanted me to get to know him better. Instead of telling me, he was showing me.

We were hand-in-hand, and truthfully, we hadn’t left each other’s sides the entire day. The rain had cleared, but the fog lingered.

I paused halfway along our walk when we were in a more secluded area of the garden. “You okay?” Ledger asked.

I didn’t know what washed over me. Maybe it was the whirlwind of where we were and what we were doing, or maybe it was the simple yet profound conversation we’d had at breakfast this morning. Shit, it could’ve been the fact that I was finally with someone who made me feel safe for once in my life.

But I needed to talk to Ledger. I needed to give him this last part of me so I could tell him…I was in love with him.

My heart hurt so much from how much I loved Ledger, and at the same time, if I bore this to him, he would be disgusted by me and run away. No one had ever loved me enough for me to share this, and I never felt like it was something important to share, so he would be the first. Well, aside from the many years of therapy I’d had to do in adulthood.

“Can we sit down?” I asked, pointing at a small bench in the corner of the garden. We were surrounded by blooms of bright-purple wisteria. I looked at the bench, then back at Ledger.

“If you fit,” I added for jest. The bench was tiny, and it was impossible not to notice how tall he was compared to it. But I was trying to avoid the conversation with him, using humor to deflect.

He smiled, and I wondered if he sensed my apprehension, like an animal picking up on my nervousness. We both wandered over to the bench and sat down, holding hands as his thumb gently traced the top of mine.

We sat quietly facing outward, watching the wind and fog blow softly and listening to the fair chirp of a bird in the distance.

You are safe , I repeated. Despite the quiet external world, my thoughts were brewing. I was running through every possible scenario of how he might react. Only when he squeezed my hand was I grounded back to reality.

“You can pace if you want,” he said, nodding ahead with his chin. I cracked a small smile.

“No. It’s okay.”

His thumb ran over my hand.

“You also don’t have to tell me anything?—”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand. I need this.”

Ledger nodded, and I swallowed and slowly turned my body to face him. My shoulder was pressed against the wooden edge of the bench, and the pain of it pushing into my back was actually helping me remember that I was…safe.

“I know it’s pretty obvious that Austin’s father isn’t ever at his games, and I know I’m young so it’s pretty easy to deduce without having to say it. I had Austin when I was seventeen.”

All I felt when I was talking was Ledger’s thumb which alternated between giving me soft circles around my palm and squeezing. “Austin’s biological…sperm donor wanted nothing to do with Austin.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. “I don’t remember him.”

“Sunshine—” Ledger reached over toward me, but I inhaled deeply.

“Let me finish,” I said, and he nodded but never let go from the movement of his hands upon mine.

“I never had many friends except for Emma growing up. We were the nerdy kids in high school…”

18 years ago (TW: on-page sexual assault)

May be read past

“This is our junior year and the first party we’ve ever been invited to. We have to go,” Emma insisted. “Plus, your mom is out with her boyfriend, so she won’t notice that we left.”

I was reluctant. I was a teenager who preferred to stay in the background of our high school in our town. It wasn’t like it was big, everyone knew who everyone was, but I preferred to stay out of the drama of it all.

“I don’t want to,” I groaned as I walked over to my bright-pink vanity. I’d been blessed with a huge pimple right by my lip that was red and angry. My mom insisted I needed to put a Band-Aid on it when I left the house because she was embarrassed to take me out in public.

She was known to chastise me for putting shame on our family. Because she was a single mom meant that we had to keep up with appearances harder than most in the town, and having an oozing pimple-faced teenager was too much for her. Truthfully, it made me pick at it more.

“I promise, just one party. Greg is going to be there, and normally, I would never push it, but he’s the first guy who I actually like who says more than three words to me in school.”

I turned around to see my best friend lying on my bed. Lately, my mom had been convinced that Emma and I were secretly hooking up behind her back. Because of this, Emma, who used to be able to sleep over and hang out freely when my mom wasn’t home, was no longer allowed in my room, so she’d snuck in.

Emma was already dressed in a pair of low-rise jeans and a halter top she’d stolen from Hot Topic.

She giggled as she dug underneath my bed. I jumped up from my vanity. “Emma!” I shouted.

“I’m going to do it,” she said, pulling out a box I had hidden beneath all the junk at the back of my bed. Only Emma knew about this box, because we had put it together ourselves. We made it during our freshman year, packing it with a cute top, another item stolen by Emma, and a notebook that we had both signed. The note inside essentially said that if one of us pulled out the box, we had to go to a social event without asking any questions.

She grabbed the fluffy pink box and pulled out the small tube top. We’d figured it would be a style that wouldn’t go out of date in the four years we were in high school.

“Please,” I whined as I threw myself on the bed next to her and held up the notebook we signed when we were naive kids. “This doesn’t count. We didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Emma was on her back as we stared at the bright-pink top, the tops of our heads touching as my curly blonde hair splayed all over the bed sheets. “No, no.” Emma giggled. “It so counts. It was a promise to our future selves, and it took me three years before I pulled it out.”

She looked over at me, her eyes large and her lips pouting. “Ugh,” I complained. “Only an hour.”

Emma squealed, then gave me a hug before insisting I wear my favorite flare jeans.

* * *

Ledger smiled as the birds came over to the wisteria and played around us. “I knew you guys were close, I didn’t realize you guys grew up like sisters.”

“Who? Me and Emma?” I asked, and Ledger nodded.

I sighed. “The best of friends. She was, or is, more like a sister to me.”

“You must miss her, being in Chicago and her back home in Michigan.”

I nodded. “Endlessly.”

I swallowed and looked up at Ledger’s face. “I have to keep telling you. I—the party?—”

* * *

“I hate this,” I lamented, shoving my hands across my chest to try to hide the fact that my boobs were spilling over this top that didn’t take into account that I would grow freaking massive boobs over the last three years. It was far less clothing than I was used to, and Emma told me it was practically social-suicide if I wore a sweater or hoodie over it.

“Come on,” she commented. “It’s not that bad.”

It was that bad. I ran my hands over my straightened hair, hating the way I didn’t feel the curls bounce as I touched the smoothness. We were in the middle of JXX’s house. He was the most popular guy in school by far. Even though he was a junior, he—along with everyone else—knew he would be captain of the football team next year, and rumor had it that his parents were flight attendants, so when they both worked, he had the house to himself, which was why he threw these massive parties.

“There he is,” Emma said, and grabbed my hand, squealing into it as she guided me through the pumping living room. There must’ve been hundreds of people from school and people I didn’t recognize littering the house. Though it was dark inside the house, there was no doubt the house was destroyed. We walked past a dozen couples humping and making out on couches.

Ew. In front of everyone.

“I’m going to get a drink first.” By a beverage, I meant I would scrounge for something non-alcoholic. My mom had let me taste some of her wine once, and it wasn’t for me.

I was standing in a corner of the crowded living room, watching Emma as she made her way over to the bar. She was distracted by a few guys from the football team.

“Great,” I muttered to myself as I pressed my back against the wall. I couldn’t leave her here, but I also knew there was no way she would come back anytime soon.

Glancing around the room, I noticed a few hundred fewer people outside. I bet I could wait out there for her until she was done, and I would still have a clear shot of the bar area.

I summoned the strength to get off the wall and make the step a few feet toward the door, reminding myself to touch as few sweaty bodies as possible.

I looked down, tracing my steps, then smacked into the chest of a sweaty man.

I looked up and recognized JXX.