If it weren't for Maddie, Ryn would not have lived to see forty or Jackson Knight. Preston physically and emotionally beat her to the lowest depths of h.e.l.l, but Maddie, her little blonde with pig-tails and bright eyes, kept her breathing-brought her back to life again and again.

"Jackson? Did you hear me? Jackson?"

All eighty-eight keys stood idle. Why weren't they moving? It was a f.u.c.king piano lesson, the least she could do was pretend to play, anything to drown out the nagging doubt of Jillian's wellbeing.

"Time's up. I have to pick up my kids from school."

His eyes shifted, following the sound of the voice. The curly-haired brunette wearing a low cut mother-s.l.u.t-of-three-kids blouse that revealed every detail of her lace bra continued to move her lips. The words began to register like someone turned up the volume to a muted TV.

"Great. Practice it again this week."

"But I played it perfectly." She thrust out her chest as if she'd played the piece with her nipples and they were waiting for a reward.

Jackson grabbed the sheet music and tossed it on the floor. "Then let me hear it again."

Shock grew in her eyes as perfectly-glossed lips parted. "I can't play it by memory."

"Then it would appear you still need to practice it. Wouldn't you agree?"

She deflated. He didn't care, not that day. Luke calling, Jillian's proverbial f.u.c.k-off still on the table with a dead battery, and his inability to do anything about any of it, severed his last bit of patience. Jackson needed to rid his body of the pent-up anger and anxiety. The woman raping his piano needed to pick up her music and get the h.e.l.l out of there before he told her how he really felt about her musical talent or lack thereof.

"Fine. I'll practice it more." She gathered up her music, slipped on her gray wool coat, and snagged her purse from the table before shoving her feet into her black leather boots and letting herself out.

Jackson clenched and released his fists several times, but the tension wouldn't budge. The need for a physical release throbbed in his veins, the ticking of a bomb. He threw on jogging pants, a gray hoodie, and a beanie, then hit the snow-mottled sidewalks to run until his lungs burned equally from exertion and the frigid air. The past kept him warm as his memories ignited an anger like a dormant volcano destined to erupt, destroying everything in a hundred mile radius.

Day Jude couldn't keep his mother's dirty secret. Every day he felt a piece of his humanity being chipped away. Two days after catching her in the arms of another man, he took his sixteen-year-old girlfriend's virginity and then told her they were over. No woman would ever have the chance at his heart. If the woman he had on the highest pedestal couldn't be faithful, then no woman could. f.u.c.k them all. And that's exactly what he did.

Jessica became the exception. He would protect her, even from her own delusions of Grant and Sunny Day being the perfect couple-the shining example of happily ever after. She wanted to marry a man like their father and love him with Sunny's pa.s.sion. Sunny's f.u.c.king pa.s.sion. She had pa.s.sion, just not for their father.

Jude planned on telling Jessica, then the both of them would break the news to their father. Grant didn't share or understand Jude's interest in computers and Jude had no desire to work under the hood of a car or mess with greasy motorcycle parts, but he respected the man who worked hard for his family and risked his life to protect the lives of others. Grant Day was his father and he loved him.

"Jujube?"

Jude shook his head, staring at his computer screen. "You know I don't respond to that name."

Jessica plopped on his bed, stretching her gum out then wrapping it around her finger before sucking it back into her mouth. "You just did respond."

"Why do you call me that?"

"Because you're just like Jujubes-tough, yet sweet on the inside."

"I don't think Tessa thinks I'm sweet on the inside."

"Yeah ... I heard about that. You dated her for nine months, took her virginity, then dumped her. Was the s.e.x that bad?"

"It wasn't about the s.e.x."

"Then enlighten me. Because after nine months, I don't think the proper protocol for breaking up with a girl is to pop her cherry before shattering her heart. I think you were supposed to promise to respect her in the morning, then cuddle her afterward ... or something like that."

Jude clicked from one screen to the next, not really wanting to have that conversation. He had more important things to discuss with sister dearest.

"Yeah, well, I don't respect any woman."

"Ouch. Good thing I'm not a woman. Just a weak little daddy's girl, according to c.o.c.k-face Knox."

"You just p.i.s.s him off. That's all."

"Clearly. And why is that again? Because I work circles around everyone else, including you some days? Or is it because I've knocked him on his a.s.s more than anyone else during sparring?" She giggled. "Stupid f.u.c.ker."

"It's because you're Grant Day's daughter."

"That makes no sense."

"It does." Jude swiveled in his desk chair. "Shut my door. I have something to tell you."

"I have something to tell you first." She shut the door and lowered her voice. "I'm going to San Diego with Claire. Her cyber boyfriend wants to meet her now that she's eighteen and she wants me to go with her. She's telling her parents we're going to L.A. for a concert and that's what I'm telling Mom and Dad too."

"You're going to San Diego so Claire can have s.e.x with some stranger?"

"n.o.body said anything about having s.e.x, and he's not really a stranger. They've been dating online for over a year."

"He could be a serial killer."

"You think a serial killer is going to date a girl for a year and refuse to see her until she's eighteen, only to kill her? I think out of your two brilliantly paranoid a.s.sessments, the s.e.x scenario is more likely."

"Rape."

Jessica rolled her eyes. "She's an adult. If it's consensual, it's not rape. Besides, I'll be there. Do you really think I'm going to let anything happen to her?"

"Then why are you telling me?"

She walked behind him and hugged his neck, giving him a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek. "Because we don't have secrets. Right?"

He nodded slowly.

"Now..." she stood and played with her gum again "...what do you need to tell me?"

Twisting his lips to the side, he shrugged. "We'll talk when you get back."

"You sure? Is it about Tessa?"

Jude shook his head. "Indirectly, but it doesn't matter until you get back."

"OK. Dad expects you to track my phone, so when he asks for an update, don't f.u.c.k up and say I'm in San Diego when he's expecting me to be in L.A. Got it?"

Jude brought his middle finger to his forehead and saluted her.

"Nice. Is that what you did to Tessa after deflowering her?"

He spun around in his chair again and focused on his computer screen. Bursting her bubble would have to wait until another day.

Chapter Seventeen.

Knight Confronting Maddie's professor didn't go well. In college, parents trying to settle disputes between instructors and young adults was frowned upon. Of course he denied everything, saying Maddie came to him and asked for extra credit and he told her it was not an option for his cla.s.s. Without proof it really was Maddie's word against his. Ryn made sure to let him know that she was also going to talk to the Dean of Students just so the incident would be on record.

It was a risk, but she made sure the professor knew Maddie's father played golf with the Dean of Students. She failed to mention that her a.s.shole of an ex-husband saw nothing wrong with extra-credit b.l.o.w.j.o.bs. Instead, she hoped he would decide it to be in everyone's best interest to pa.s.s Maddie, even if she didn't earn the grade. Ryn wanted her daughter as far away from that predator as possible. Period.

Before leaving campus she tried calling Jackson several times, but it went straight to voicemail. She needed to hear his voice to calm her nerves. Instead, she held her phone up to her ear, waiting for Preston to answer his phone. There was no doubt in her mind that he would.

"Calling to apologize for your meathead boyfriend?"

"I'm calling to ask why the h.e.l.l you encouraged Maddie to give her sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a professor what he wanted. For Christ's sake, why are you even in her life? She needs a father, someone to protect her from a.s.sholes like him, not a pimp. The thing is ... I was so p.i.s.sed when she told me what you said, but I wasn't surprised. You're a monster and I should have packed up my daughter and moved halfway across the world to get us both away from you. Instead, I stayed and not only have you tainted her with your bulls.h.i.t about our failed marriage, but now you're making her think she has to spread her legs to get a college degree!"

"First of all, she's our daughter, which you seem to forget-"

"You never wanted her," Ryn said through gritted teeth.

"I never wanted you either, but you got yourself knocked up with my child so I had no choice. But don't sweat it, sweetheart, because you both have grown on me over the years and maybe it's just my age or sentimentality, but I want us to work. I want us to be a family again. Maddie needs a father ... a role model, and you need a man with more to him than just a punch card to the local gym."

"Family? Are you kidding me? We were never a family. You ignored your daughter, beat your wife, and stuck your d.i.c.k between the legs of anything that walked."

"Now, now ... it takes two to tango."

"Tango! Our marriage wasn't a dance. It was a f.u.c.king concentration camp!"

"My, your rogue lover must be influencing you with some vulgar language. I don't believe I've ever heard that word come out of your mouth before."

"f.u.c.k you! f.u.c.k your family reunion. Then f.u.c.k off, a.s.shole!" She ended the call then screamed, gripping the steering wheel as if she wanted to rip it right off the dash.

Preston Iverson was the devil. He drew the absolute worst from her. All those years later and he still tortured her with his words. She needed Jackson. After escaping an abusive husband, she'd found comfort in the arms of a murderer. What were the chances?

After ringing the doorbell several times and knocking on both the storm door and side window, Ryn sulked back to her car. She needed the security of Jackson's arms. Instead, she climbed back in her car and let the tears fall. In between sobs she laughed.

"He's just not home. Why are you crying?" she asked herself, resting her forehead on her hands gripped around the top of the steering wheel. Not once in her adult life had she allowed herself to need a man-until Jackson. After dealing with Preston, she needed Jackson so badly her chest felt painfully hollow.

Bang bang bang!

Ryn jerked her head up and there he stood in a gray hoodie and jogging pants, face flushed, rapid puffs of air condensing between his lips and her window. He frowned, brow drawn tight.

She smiled, blinking her teary eyes. He opened her door.

"What's wrong?"

Ryn leaped into his arms.

"Hey now ... what's going on?" He hugged her to him.

"You weren't home." Her words m.u.f.fled into the neck of his hoodie. "Oh G.o.d. I didn't mean it like that." She pulled back, keeping her hands cupped to the back of his head. "It's been a s.h.i.t day ... and I ... I just really needed to see you. I know that sounds crazy but-"

He kissed her. Tasted her. Claimed her in the deepest recesses of her heart, places no man had ever been before. Ryn wanted to kiss him for eternity, or at least until he filled every inch of her mind, leaving no room for the pain of her past.

"It's not crazy." The whisper of his words over her lips chased away the events of her day, at least for that moment.

He moved to shut her car door.

"Don't!" She gripped him tighter. "If you move then this moment will end."

Jackson chuckled. "And what is this moment?"

Searching his eyes, she smiled. "It's perfection."

He laughed again. "Aren't you cold?"

"Not in your arms."

"Well, I did run nearly ten miles. I feel like a furnace-a sweaty, smelly furnace. I need a shower."

She pinched her lips together, concealing her grin as she shrugged. "I like showers."

His eyes grew wide. "Do you now?"

"I do." She played with the strings to his hoodie.

"As I recall, you don't take showers with men."

"I've recently made an exception."

"Yeah?"

She nodded, biting her lip. "Younger guy. Tattoos. Geeky gla.s.ses. Fairly nice body."

Jackson puckered his lips. A stern look appraised her with an unnerving intensity. "Fairly nice?"

"Yes. He could use some fat on his body. Women like little love handles."