"I'm sorry you had a bad experience tonight but of all the places you could have gone, you come find me? You told me you didn't want to bother me, yet a week after you find me again, you're hunting me down to help you?"

"Landon, I-"

"What? You're sorry?" He mimicked her voice. "You shouldn't have come. You'd like to take it back. You'd like to make it up to me. What's the line you're aiming for? I'm sure I can help you, since I heard them all before I was ten."

"Landon!"

Daphne's swift tone broke the silence, but it did nothing to break the look of shock and surprise that painted his mother's face.

"Amber's colleagues are all here, and they're all concerned for her. Maybe you can wait for me outside."

His gaze ping-ponged between Daphne and his mother before finally alighting back on Daphne. "I need to go."

Moe had offered to drive her wherever she wanted to go, but Daphne had declined and grabbed a cab to take her back to Landon's. She'd wanted nothing more than to follow him earlier, but she also knew the raw, gaping wound would do well with a bit of quiet before she got there.

His front door was unlocked but the apartment was dark when she stepped in. The dull sounds of the TV echoed from the living room, and she moved down the small hallway until she saw him sprawled on the couch.

He'd changed out of the pressed shorts and polo shirt from the party, trading them for a T-shirt and gym shorts. He had his arms behind his head, and the air-conditioning was on full blast. The darkened room was part vault, part ice chest, and he looked oddly at home in the gloom.

"Hey." She said, dropping her purse near the door.

"You finished up?"

"Yep. I got a cab right away. And a driver who was delighted I wasn't drunk or attempting to light sparklers in his back seat. Or both."

"You're a good cop. You'd never do that."

That vitriol that coated his words at the restaurant had vanished, but they'd left a decided nip in his clipped comment.

"I am a good cop. That's why I stayed to do my job tonight."

Although the TV echoed, shooting light around the darkened room, Landon's gaze stayed on hers. Direct. Challenging. "Yes. Your job. The one thing you're always willing to stick around and do."

She stood there, nerves jumping under her skin. "At least you had the decency to insult me to my face."

"Just giving you a taste of what I put up with tonight. You were there. You took charge. You did your job."

"There was an assault tonight, Landon. I don't give a shit who it was, it needed to be handled."

"So call for a few uniforms on duty. Let them handle it."

"Why? So I can tell them I couldn't come help handle the situation because my boyfriend was upset?"

"Because you were off duty."

"Yeah, right. Because it's that easy."

"Fucking right it's that easy! You pass. You say conflict of interest." He leaped off the couch, the deceptively innocent sprawl just that. There was nothing lazy or deceptive about him now. He was all predator, and he was sleeked out for a fight.

"I don't give a shit what excuse you use, you pass it the fuck on!"

"Look, this problem is yours, not mine. I've made no secret about who I am. About my priorities. And neither have you." She moved in, got right up in his face. "You told me I was a good cop. Was that bullshit? Or some fancy butter-me-up tactic to get in my pants?"

"It's true."

"So how, in the past two hours, did it suddenly stop being true?"

Even as she asked it, she knew the answer. His anger had nothing to do with her doing her job. Nor did it have anything to do, really, with her.

It had to do with Amber. And with the tired, lonely, angry boy inside of him who had never quite gone away.

"You want to fight me on this, go ahead. You want me to leave, fine, I'll do that. But the least you can do is come at me with the truth."

"What do you think I'm lying about?"

"This isn't about my job. And it's not about us, either. You're mad. And hurt. And scared. And lonely."

He stood stock still in the middle of the room, his eyes wide. "Thanks for the pop-psychology bullshit."

"No, baby. It's regular psychology. The real hard work of getting over what came before. And of getting past whatever horrible years and days and hours shaped you."

The air weighed heavy around them, freighted with the emotions of a lifetime, and Daphne wondered how they both didn't crumple underneath it.

The conversation with her mother came back to her, bubbling up in her mind like a balloon rising through leaden skies.

You have a right to know him, Daphne. You earned that right the moment you gave him your heart.

"I love you, Landon. Nothing you can say to me will change that. Nothing you do will change that. Pushing me away won't change that."

"Thank you." The fire that had pushed him to his feet had faded, but smoldering embers sparking resentment and anger remained. She could see it in the set of his jaw and the wide-footed stance that seemed to root him to the spot. "I'll call you a car. I think you should leave now."

Daphne stood still, her head held high. The woman was a goddess. A vision from another age.

And she loved him.

He wanted to run to that. Wanted to wrap his arms around every good thing she was, pull her tight against him, and just be.

Which was why she had to leave.

He didn't doubt she loved him. Nor did he doubt she'd continue to love him. But he doubted his ability to accept it. To tell her the truth and then stand proudly and look her in the eye.

He couldn't bear it if she pitied him. Nor could he handle it if she attempted to make it right.

But as the seconds ticked past, almost mocking in their slowness, something else rose up to mingle with the all the anger and loneliness and fear she'd so accurately identified.

If he loved her, she deserved the truth.

She had her phone out, already punching in the location for a car. Her thumb stilled as he began to speak.

"Two weeks after Louisa filed the papers to foster me, Amber invited a man home."

Daphne made no move to come toward him, but she stopped what she was doing, the light from the face of her phone winking out. The flicker of the TV was the only illumination in the room, other than the fluorescent glow of the streetlamps that filtered in through the living-room windows.

"She invited lots of men home, so this one shouldn't have been any different. I used to hide the front corner of the apartment, shutting out the noise of whatever it was they were doing. Sometimes drugs. Sometimes sex. Usually both.

"I understood what it all meant, and most nights I just hid in the corner and blocked it out, trying to stay as unobtrusive as possible."

He still remembered those long nights. If he caught the light just right through the windows, or heard the steady beat of a police siren wending its way through the neighborhood after midnight, he could be transported there in a heartbeat.

"Most guys she brought home didn't pay any attention to me. They were looking for a score, and if they even saw me, they ignored me. But a few didn't. And I'd seen the way this guy looked at me when they came in."

Something flickered in Daphne's eyes, but she held her ground, her gaze never wavering from his.

"I'd started to go out at night, flopping in other parts of the apartment building where I could find space. Unfortunately, the rest of the building was a shit show, too, and that night I ended up staying in."

He took a deep breath, his throat suddenly dry as bone. "They carried on for a while, laughing and fucking around. And I lay there and thought about the foster paperwork. How Louisa had filed it, and how she wanted me to come live with her, and how she wanted the same for Nick and Fender. We'd just talked about it that afternoon at school, how we were all cool with it. How we all wanted it."

He glanced down at the coffee table, desperate for water and finding none, but somehow knew if he broke the momentum to go to the kitchen he'd never finish.

Silently, Daphne dug in her purse and pulled a water bottle from it. The cap had been cracked and she'd had a few sips, but he took the bottle and downed it, desperate to assuage the dryness.

"I'd just fallen asleep, stuck there beneath the front window, when I heard footsteps, and this guy she brought home loomed over me. His pupils were blown. I could see it in the light from outside, and he was a big fucker. Sort of flabby but enough strength underneath that I knew I'd never get away. I'd never beat him to the door."

Without warning, he was back in that place, stuck in that moment that still turned his blood to ice. He'd had mere seconds to calculate the angles and figure out how he was going to get away.

And then his eyes had alighted on the solid little plaque from soccer still sitting on top of his books. His team had finished in third place.

With the feel of that wooden plaque still heavy in his hands, Landon finished telling her all of it. The scent of the guy, nearly overpowering in his nakedness. The way he'd reached for him, intent more than clear even as he stumbled toward the small space Landon had claimed as his own. The hard, heavy crack in that moment when Landon had taken his shot, the small plaque in hand.

"I screamed as I did it, my hand flying up with the trophy. I managed to hit him square above the ear and hard enough to do damage."

Whatever was in the scream-part war cry, part wounded animal-Landon had never been quite sure, but it had brought Amber running from the bedroom.

He described that, too-the avenging angel who ran to his rescue.

"I saw it, you know. I saw her eyes. Her pupils were shot like his, that hazy twilight when the drugs were in full swing. But there was something else there. Something that flashed in misery and acknowledgment of what she'd brought home. She grabbed something from the counter and hit him a few more times. And then she told me to call 911. The fucker lived, but he needed help."

Daphne had remained quiet throughout, still as a statue even as raw emotion winged off her in great, gulping waves. "No one should live through that. No child. No man or woman. No one. And I am sorry."

He nodded, his still-dry throat knotting with the pain of the truth.

"The cops came. One of them had experience with cases like mine, and had been aware of the woman who was looking to foster three little boys. He was the one who made sure Mama Lou was at the station when they brought me in."

"She was there?" Daphne asked.

He'd held it together. Through the telling and the memories and the cold fingers of fear that had gripped the fucking back of his neck and wouldn't let go, he'd held it together.

But at the memory of Louisa standing there when they brought him in, arms open at the precinct, he broke.

"Yeah. She was there. And she got permission to take me home."

The haze of memory mixed with the reality of the moment as Daphne moved toward him. She pulled him close, her head finding his chest while her arms wound like strong bands around his waist and lower back.

The immediate tears that clogged his throat faded. In their place was a hot wash that poured down his face like a steady rain.

Twenty.

Daphne tried to bury herself in the haze of sleep, eager to hang on to the warm twilight state that cocooned her. Her body was loose, her head supported in the soft cradle of her pillow. She was dimly aware of the fading twilight and tried to roll over and capture a few more moments of sleep.

Of blessed oblivion.

She nearly had it-was so close to dropping off once more-when strong hands swept decidedly lush motions over her skin.

"Mmm. Sleepy." She made a halfhearted swat at the fingers dancing over her stomach, then found herself guiding them when they floated up to fondle her breast. Pleasure coursed from within, drawn by the leisurely play of those fingers upon her flesh, and Daphne gave herself up to the moment.

Willingly gave up that glorious twilight to surface into wakefulness for something even better.

She opened her eyes and smiled into Landon's, separated by the narrow space between their pillows. "Good morning."

"You promised your mother we'd be on garbage duty this morning."

"So I did." She arched into his hand, his expert ministrations a glorious way to wake up.

Landon's attentions strayed to her other breast before shifting once more as his mouth followed the path of his hands. She sensed the fire in him-and the desire to give pleasure-and was a more than willing subject.

Languid moments radiated between them, both urgent and relaxed as she took the simple pleasure to be found in his arms. She reveled in his touch, suffused in the joy of being together, before she shifted their positions and rolled him onto his back.

He gently pushed on her shoulders but she held her ground, suddenly wide awake and ready to put a fresh day's energy to good use. She slid down his body, her lips tracing a path over his chest and down the inner edge of his rib cage before she ran her tongue over the hard line of muscle that coated his stomach.

His skin contracted beneath her lips, his intake of breath growing sharper when she completed her journey, kissing a path to her ultimate destination. A hard moan escaped him as she took him into her mouth, the hard length of his cock ready and eager for all she could give.

Daphne reveled in the opportunity to share such pleasure and give to him freely with all the love in her heart, the intimacy of the moment all the more powerful for what they'd shared the night before.

He hadn't sent her away. Instead, he'd told her of his experiences. What had changed him. What he'd endured. And what had brought him to his new life with Louisa and Nick and Fender.

Filled with love, she pushed all of it into her actions, eager to give Landon pleasure. Even more eager to find another aspect of one another in their joining.

They'd already shared the emotional.

In the physical she could tell him-no, could show him-all she felt.