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  The air left my lungs and I didn’t quite know how or why I didn’t collapse.

  Bright, bright blue eyes bore into me like daggers, looking at me exactly the way I imagined he’d look after what I did.

  What I did years ago.

  His wide powerful shoulders tensed and his face hardened up straightaway at the sight of me, commanding attention to the perfect chisel in his jaw and the deep angles and planes God took his time to sculpt into his face.

  His was a face I’d spent years committing to memory.

  His was a face I saw in my dreams, and nightmares because he wasn’t in my life anymore.

  Friend… old friend…

  No… he was so much more than that. He represented the past and all I’d left behind. He was supposed to be my future.

  He was Ryan O’Shea.

  Ryan O’Shea, the man who was my nightmare and savior. The man who was my first everything.

  He was the man I was never to see again.

  The man I was told to leave alone.

  He was the man my heart sacrificed and I never thought I’d come face to face with him again.

  I never planned to.

  I hadn’t seen him in seventeen years.

  Why was he here now?

  Chapter 2

  Ryan

  Great…

  She was just looking at me.

  Seventeen long years had passed and that was all she could do.

  But then… what the fuck did I expect?

  She was here in L.A. living the life I knew she wanted. Living the life she told me she dreamed of. In fact, she all but predicted everything she was now, and I noticed even more had come her way.

  D’Angelo was a nice name. Great for her brand and a great cover. Had to admit though that I preferred her real name, Lana Connell. Although I’d had plans to give her mine.

  What a fool I was with that fantasy and what kind of fool was I to drop my guard and let her in?

  I wished like fuck someone could have told me that the memory of her would plague me this whole time and the void she left would never be filled.

  Now look at her.

  I’d gotten on the plane this morning from Wilmington International full of wrath, ready to breathe fire. I was ready for war. Literally ready to destroy everything in my wake.

  Yet… as I gazed at her I couldn’t stop myself from remembering her the way I used to.

  Nearly twenty years had passed, but she still looked like the Lana I knew.

  Standing before me with her feet planted to the ground in her heels and the little summer dress that graced her body, the shock of seeing me might have robbed her of speech but she still looked every bit like the girl I’d loved.

  Silence filled the space between us. Her standing paces away from me, both of us just staring at each other.

  “Ryan…” she spoke my name, but I didn’t answer.

  There was so much I’d wanted to say. I just didn’t know what to start with. It felt a little like the past when I used to watch her and think about what we could talk about.

  I was the bully, an asshole of a guy who probably should have known better than to stick my nose where it didn’t belong with a sweet girl like her.

  Our maid’s daughter.

  Our maid, Amelia Connell, who was like a second mother to me. If I were honest, I’d have to admit that there were many instances where I’d felt her love exceeded that of my own mother.

  Her daughter though… sweet as she was, there had to have been a side to her that had no compassion. Had to be to explain what she did, and how she crushed me.

  I should have stayed away from her back then and I hated that I was still so drawn to her now, even after so long.

  Her with that dark brown skin that looked bronze in the sunlight. Literally like golden metal with the hint of a shimmer that always sparkled. And her warm brown eyes that constantly held aspiration and hope, like she carried her dreams with her wherever she went.

  As she shifted her weight from one foot to the next I could still see it. The sunlight beaming from the window caught her in all the right places, and enhanced the aspiration in her eyes and her beauty.

  Seventeen years older looked good on her but I wasn’t here for that. I’d flown across the country to see her face to face with one mission on my mind.

  I was here to get information, and clarification.

  “Lana are you okay?” Asked the woman beside her at the door.

  It was only then that Lana blinked and turned to her.

  “Yes… um... Georgie… can I call you later?” There was a tremor in her voice that I didn’t miss.

  “Are you sure?” Georgie asked, looking me over with deep curiosity. “I wouldn’t like to leave you knowing you aren’t safe.” She continued to stare at me.

  Ballsy. A little like Lana in the moments where she’d surprised me.

  “I’m safe and fine… I’ll call you later.” Lana told her and with that the woman left and Lana closed the door.

  She tucked a lock of her long black hair behind her ear and those bright brown eyes returned their focus to me. “Ryan… how did you find me?”

  I balled my fist at my side and intensified my stare.

  Maybe I expected her to say sorry she left the way she did. Without goodbye. Maybe I expected an explanation of why she left.

  Not her asking me how I found her.

  “It’s not relevant, Lana Connell.” She tensed when I said her old name. “That part is not relevant in the least. Fucking hell, you must have really wanted to stay hidden, changing your name and all. How come you kept the first name? Why not change it all?” My nostrils flared.

  “Ryan… I …”

  I narrowed my eyes at her and decided that actually, I didn’t want an explanation. I didn’t want anything that didn’t form part of why I was here.

  “Save it.” I dismissed her next words with a wave of my hand as her mouth opened like she was going to say something more. “I’m here to find out why you sent the police to my family to interrogate them on something that wasn’t their fault.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “What?”

  “The police are reinvestigating your mother’s death. Clearly you must have sent them to us. What the fuck is that all about Lana? You couldn’t leave well enough alone. You told me you thought her death was suspicious, I just never realized you were talking about my family. We cared for you. We treated you and your mother like family. How dare you do this to us?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she blurted, hands shaking. “I don’t know what you’re saying to me. I would never do that.” A tear ran down her cheek.

  While she looked like she was telling the truth, I didn’t know if I could believe her. She’d looked to me like she was telling the truth too when she first told me she loved me and look how that turned out.

  “I don’t know you… I never did. And I’m just guessing that with your newfound cushy lifestyle you’ve just decided to hire the best people you can find to dig up a seventeen year old unsolved case. I get that you grieved for your mother. We all did. But this is shit. Absolute shit and you’ve made a big mistake coming for us with this bullshit.”

  “I didn’t,” she countered.

  “Whatever. Whatever Lana. Just call off your hounds. My mother has cancer. She is a very sick woman and doesn’t need this. You know I don’t stand for any shit, and if I’m made to fight back I will and you won’t like it.”

  “This is insane. I haven’t done anything. I’ve been in Brazil for the last four weeks. I don’t know who contacted the police but it wasn’t me.”

  “Somebody did,” I retorted, still not quite believing her. She didn’t have to physically go to the police, with all the money she had I was certain she could have arranged something with someone.

  I came from wealth so I knew how things worked. I knew money talked when you needed it to. I’d seen it many times in my life and career as an attorney. There wasn
’t anything money and power couldn’t accomplish and Miss Lana here had grown up to be a very powerful woman.

  “It wasn’t me. You have to believe me. Ryan, that whole time was a very painful part of my life. It was the worst, and very difficult to move past, but I have. When I left Wilmington I closed that chapter of my life.”

  I wished like hell I didn’t feel the sting her words dealt me. Like a blow to my heart.

  But there…

  That was the answer.

  My father always told me the answer you were looking for wasn’t always the one you wanted, or the one you wanted to hear. I always had the disadvantage of being stubborn. It made me hold on to stuff that I shouldn’t. Memories I shouldn’t.

  Memories of her I shouldn’t keep. Not a guy like me.

  I nodded. “Yes, you did. You absolutely fucking did close that chapter of your life. It just would have been more humane to tell me you didn’t want to be with me rather than leave the way you did. Would have been nice for me to also know that chapter was closed.”

  The vibrancy in her skin faded as I spoke. “I didn’t mean that,” she breathed.

  I smirked without humor. I didn’t know who the fuck she was trying to fool. Not me. I was many years away from being the fool.

  Looking away from her, I walked out of her office leaving her staring after me open mouthed.

  This here was it. I’d close the chapter too.

  I needed to.

  You ask the girl you think you’re in love with to run away with you, you plan it in every detail and even agree to go where she wants so she can go to college, you offer to pay for everything and take care of her. You think it’s all in motion and while it might be crazy, it will work because you love each other.

  Except she never showed up.

  She never met me and since I’d refused to believe she’d just left like everyone else assumed I looked for her everywhere. For years.

  I’d never allowed myself to get over her, not properly and I swear to God it was the way she’d left me bamboozled that accounted for the poor choices I made afterward.

  She’d hurt me the most.

  Finding out my five year old son wasn’t mine didn’t even hurt me as much as her departure.

  Maybe that was because I was already broken.

  Can’t fix something that’s already damaged.

  My visit may have been a lost cause if the whole police thing wasn’t her doing.

  Whether it was or not, it was closure for me.

  I’d said what I wanted to say.

  I just wished it had made me feel better. Maybe that would come with time and I would forget her as easily as she’d forgotten me.

  Chapter 3

  Lana

  Oh God…

  My breath caught in my throat. It caught right there and I couldn’t breathe.

  I had to rush over to the window and open it to let some fresh air in.

  The whoosh of air that flowed in cascaded over me and soothed the tingle in my nerves. But, only a little.

  I didn’t think anything could truly calm me down.

  Shit… that really was Ryan.

  It was really him. Not a dream, not a figment of my imagination. It was him.

  It was him and he’d just dropped a bomb on me about this reinvestigation.

  What the fuck?

  I suppose no one would have contacted me because I’d had my name changed by petition. It was my way of starting over after what happened.

  I kept my first name because my father gave it to me. He named me Lana after my great grandmother, and I kept it in honor of him. He died in the Gulf War. I was only two years old and I didn’t even know him, but the way Mama spoke about him kept him alive for me.

  D’Angelo was a cool name I’d made up. It took me places and helped me to heal, but not forget.

  I never forgot Ryan.

  Never.

  People said you never forgot your first love. It was true, and worse when your first love was your everything. It was soul crushing when you never had the life you thought you were going to have with them.

  If only he knew the truth.

  The truth of what happened was nothing like what I made it look like, and definitely not what he’d thought.

  The truth was so awful that when I’d left Wilmington, it was never to return.

  That was the plan until today.

  The police were reinvestigating Mama’s death.

  Why?

  What had they found?

  She died seventeen years ago.

  What could they have possibly found?

  I had to find out what was happening. I needed to.

  So that meant going back.

  The door opened and I turned to see Georgie coming back in.

  “I’m sorry. Call me the worrywart but …” her voice trailed off when she saw my face and the tear drift down my cheek. “Jesus, Lana what happened? Are you okay?” She rushed over to me and took hold of my shoulders.

  I shook my head. It was all I could do to answer.

  “Talk to me Lana. Who was that guy?”

  “Ryan… Ryan O’Shea.” The minute I said that her eyes glazed with shock and her jaw dropped. She was the only person I’d ever told my story to.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah.” I moved my hand up to my head and exhaled a ragged breath.

  “Lana… It’s gonna be okay. I’m here.” She pulled me into her arms for a reassuring hug. “Talk to me.”

  We pulled apart and I motioned for her to sit on the sofa by the bookcase.

  We sat next to each other and I shuffled to face her, trying to combat the numbness that had taken me.

  It was strange how not even twenty minutes ago, I was consumed with my photoshoot and getting my work done.

  Shit, I’d even been thinking of food and girl time with Georgie at Bob’s Diner.

  Now my stomach had twisted into so many knots that I didn’t know if I could eat again, and my brain was scrambled.

  “What happened with him?” Georgie asked.

  I was momentarily stuck on how to proceed, still I willed myself to continue.

  “He said the police are doing some kind of reinvestigation of my mother’s death.”

  Her eyes clouded and her brows pinched. “They would only do that if they found something to reinvestigate.”

  “Yeah, but what? What could they have found? She killed herself.” I brought my hands together to stop them from shaking and when she saw she reached over to take them into hers.

  Saying it still didn’t feel real. I still couldn’t believe it. Mama jumped off a bridge and her body was found washed up on the riverbank. That’s what happened. That’s what the police said, except it never sounded like something my mother would do.

  “Ryan said the police contacted his family. He thought I sent them. That’s why he came to see me,” I continued. “I don’t know how he found me.”

  “He seemed to know exactly where to look. Lana, you’ve moved around a lot since and this place has only been set up for the last year.”

  “Yeah. I guess somehow he knew where to look.”

  Clearly he’d checked up on me. I’d looked in on him too. Not for long and not often. Just enough to know he was okay, and doing what he was meant to do. Then I willed myself to move on.

  My shoulders slumped and I looked down at the marble floor, nearly getting lost in the swirly patterns. I brought my gaze back up to meet hers and pulled in a deep breath.

  “I loved him… Georgie,” I stated breathlessly and her eyes filled with deep sympathy.

  “I know. I… know.”

  “He thinks I just left. He was so angry with me. It’s hard to look at someone who used to love you and see hate in their eyes.” What else could it look like with the way I’d departed? I was so stupid. I’d said that like I expected him to think something else. I’d never even had wishful thinking on my side.

  “Maybe this is a way of telling him the truth.”
She actually looked hopeful.

  I shook my head. There was no way I was doing that... “No… there’s no point.” The time had passed for that. “It’s minor in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Well, I’m here for you, whatever you need. Whatever you decide.”

  “I have to go back, Georgie. I have to.”

  She nodded. “And I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you mustn’t. Georgie you just got married. You can’t leave Pat just like that, the man can barely stand to be without you for a day.”

  She chuckled. “He’s going to have to be okay. You’ve always been there for me when I needed you. Now’s my turn to be there for you. This isn’t something you should handle on your own.”

  Well… I couldn’t argue with that. I absolutely couldn’t refute her words. Right now I wasn’t sure how I’d get through the next minute, let alone make the arrangements to get myself to Wilmington.

  “Thank you. Georgie… thank you. I never expected this to happen.”

  “I know. It feels very ominous to me. We don’t know what instigated this reinvestigation.” She raised her palms and lifted her shoulders.

  I didn’t… I had no idea what it might be and when Mama died I was beside myself with grief. The world turned every which way except the way it should have.

  Georgie tapped my knuckles and gave me a little smile. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll go grab us some lunch and we’ll plan out our travel and make all the arrangements we need.”

  I took her hand, now grateful for her assistance. “Thank you for being here, and staying back. I would have fallen apart on my own.”

  “You know you’re welcome.” She stood to go. “I’ll be back as quickly as possible, but call me if you need me.”

  “Thanks.”

  I watched her leave and as soon as the door closed my shoulders tensed with the weight of the situation. And memories.

  The memories were always something I’d never been able to deal with.

  I saw Ryan O’Shea today. I still couldn’t believe it.

  Ryan.

  My Ryan.