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demons running rampant in my dreams.”
     
    Tears are cascading down my cheeks, and Lyric’s eyes are wet too, but I still don’t stop.
    “While I was struggling with panic attacks every day, you were shooting pool and drinking beer with the man who caused them. I was constantly looking over my shoulder so scared that one day he would come back and finish the job that I thought I would go insane with it.”
     
    “Jesus. Fucking hell, baby. I’m so sorry. So goddamn sorry,” Lyric rasps hoarsely. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have fucking killed him for touching you, for even thinking about it.”
     
    “Because he said he would kill you,” I scream, backing myself into the far corner of the room.
     
    “What?” Lyric breathes.
     
    “I trusted you to protect me,” I sob. “I thought I was safe, that if I had you in my life nothing would ever hurt me, but I was wrong. So, so wrong.”
     
    “Baby…” Lyric groans, approaching me cautiously like I’m a wild, injured animal. And I suppose to some degree I am. At least, I feel like one. Terrified, confused, and ready to run at a moment’s notice. Yeah, that describes how I feel perfectly.
     
    “Don’t come any closer. Just…just stay over there,” I all but plead.
     
    “No. Actually, fuck no.”
     
    “You don’t get to say no, Lyric. The damage is done, there is no salvaging this. I’m broken, Lyric. Fucking broken,” I admit without any hesitation whatsoever.
     
    “The last thing you are is broken, baby. You’re the strongest woman I know,” he contends. “We’ll get to who the motherfucker who hurt you is soon, but right now, I need you to explain what you just said.”
     
    My pulse speeds up, the adrenaline that races through my blood stream making the words tumble from my mouth effortlessly without a seconds thought.
    “I didn’t leave you because I was raped; I left because your life was in danger. It probably still is. He didn’t put an expiration date on his threat to kill you if I ever told you what he’d done. I had a choice, and I made it; stay quiet and leave town, or watch you die before he killed me too. I would never have left you if it was only my life hanging in the balance, but it wasn’t. It was yours too, and I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t live every day knowing that he could hurt you and it would be all my fault.
     
    “God, baby, no,” my husband says, caging me in with his strong arms resting on either side of my head. “None of it was your fault, then or now. Do you hear me?” He asks when my eyes drift to the floor by our feet. “None. Of. This. Is. Your. Fault.”
     
    Cupping my jaw in his work-roughened palm, Lyric tilts my head back until our gazes are locked. Time ticks by slowly as I lose myself in his cerulean blue eyes so tormented by pain and hurt, flashing every so often with fury that I don’t know how long elapses before his lips find mine.
     
    Lyric’s kiss is slow, gentle even, which is a feat in and of itself for him. Usually, they are demanding, hungry, as if he’s ravenous for me, or at least they used to be. Back when his kisses were part of my everyday life, that is.
     
    However, the memory of Lyric’s mouth on mine is nothing in comparison to the reality of it. His lips are warm and soft. Comforting at the same time as they are unnerving. I don’t want to admit it, but this is what I’ve missed about him the most. The way Lyric can break me apart and then put me back together again with one touch of his lips is his greatest superpower and my greatest weakness.
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
    ~ Lyric ~

     
    Time stands still as I explore Harleigh’s mouth. My tongue slides against hers in a sensuous dance we’ve done a million times before, but for some inexplicable reason, this feels like a first for us.
     
    I’ve been kissing this woman since the day she turned fifteen and begged me to be her first. Not just kiss, but everything. Harleigh told me she