Emery pulled back from him and took him in. His hair was disheveled and wet from sweat, his eyes bright and tinged red from unshed tears. "You wanted me to?"

He crushed his lips against hers. Their tongues tangled, getting reacquainted quickly. She tore herself away from him and gazed into his eyes.

"I'm..."

"Emma, shit...I mean, can I call you that, even..." He'd been practicing so he wouldn't slip, but one kiss and he'd messed up her name. "You're alive."

She cocked her head to the side and examined his face, unsure how to respond. He tried again.

"I love you. I don't care what your name is or that you lied about it. I understand and it means nothing to me. What happened to you, your past-I'm okay with everything. I just...fuck. I don't know how to tell you how much you mean to me."

"Tim," she whispered, regret showing on her face.

"You chose to survive, Emery," he finally said, using her real name again. "You chose a beautiful way to survive, helping kids who couldn't help themselves."

"I'm a coward. I run from everything. I-"

He took her face in his hands. "You are none of those things and I plan on showing you that every fucking day."

A tear fell from her eye and he kissed it away.

"Are you real?" Emery whispered, not wanting to break the moment with her voice.

Since she was sitting on his lap, he grinded a reminder he was real into her. "That feels pretty real, huh?" he said with a wink.

"You're crazy."

"Yeah, well, I can't tell you how many times I've thought that over the last six months."

"I wish I could've stayed and told you everything myself," she admitted, hanging her head. "I wish I wasn't a coward, but I thought it was the best for everyone."

"You thought leaving me without a word was best for me?"

She nodded.

"Why would you think that?"

"Because my life is toxic and I didn't want that for you. You're so..."

Tim waited for her to find the right word, running his hands all over her body while he did, causing tingles of heat to rise and fluster her.

"What I need," she finished. "You're so what I need. That may not make any sense, but I love you and I've never loved anyone before. I need you and I've never allowed myself to need anyone other than Rachel. Every day without you was torture. I felt lost and without a heart. I don't know what you did to me, but you have my heart. All of it. The only way my heart beats is when you are in my life." She looked up, making sure he met her gaze. "I was waiting to die, Tim. I wanted it to come soon. I urged it to come soon."

He inspected her new tattoos and shook his head.

"I missed everything about you. I missed your eyes that know what I'm thinking just by looking at me." She kissed his eyelids. "I missed your touch, especially those hands that know exactly what my body wants." She kissed the palm of both of his hands. "I missed your arrogant nature and your ability to see right through me." She straddled him and ran her hands through his hair and kissed him. Emery ran her thumb down the side of his face. "I missed you so much."

"You have no idea," he mumbled.

She inhaled deeply, looking him directly in the eyes. "So...my stepfather started raping me when I was thirteen." Her gaze never strayed from Tim's eyes; she wanted him to see her while he heard all of this. Not like last time. "He continued to rape me until I was sixteen and Rachel talked me into leaving."

Tim's hands gripped her hips tighter, but he didn't say anything.

"I was so dumb, Tim, I made so many mistakes." She closed her eyes for a second. "If I knew then...I would've told someone other than my sixteen-year-old juvenile delinquent friend. I would've saved my sister. I would've forced him out of my house."

"That's a lot to ask of a sixteen-year-old," Tim soothed.

Emery opened her eyes and sought his again. She continued her story, walking him all the way through Nashville and her escape to Savannah. Tim listened and held her.

"That day Rachel called me and told me to meet her, I knew something bad had happened, but I just had no idea what it would be..."

"Shhh, Emma, you don't have to tell me. Rachel filled me in on that part."

"No, Tim. I do have to tell you. I want to tell you everything...everything I should've told you from the beginning."

He pulled her as close to him as he could without being inside of her. Typically, she'd push back, but instead, she breathed him in. She inhaled the sweat, the grass, him. Emery let him hold her, his arms creeping up around her torso.

"Ashley was such a beautiful little girl. She had this smile that would light up an entire room." Her voice broke.

"Baby..."

"Listen, let me finish, because I'm gonna need to tell you all of this really fast, okay?"

She felt him nod his head and exhale.

"So I went to her funeral. I sat far away and watched them lower her into the ground and everything I'd been trying to accomplish by leaving and living just disappeared. I couldn't see anything but my vengeance for him and there he sat, with my fucking mother, at her graveside. Like he was fucking grieving."

She blinked and focused her gaze on Tim's chest. "I went to their house to kill him. I wanted to kill him. I was ready to kill him. Then my mom showed up and said she was the one that had been looking for me because she wanted to fix whatever had made me run. She allowed my sister to be raped too, just like me. She hadn't known until Ashley..." she swallowed, "until she read it in Ashley's note. I didn't tell her when I could have or I should have. I was young and stupid, but I look back and wonder if she would've done anything about it then. I don't know..."

"Babe, I know this is hard." He squeezed her. "You're so brave."

She took a deep breath and continued. "She took my gun and shot him and then shot herself. Then I came back here got drunk and Meme took me to Lucas's house. I thought he was dead too and it was too much. And then I attacked his mother. God, how could I even live with myself after all that? I felt like poison and it would be best for everyone if I just left."

Tim pulled her tighter, if that was possible.

"My sister killed herself because he raped her. He raped her because I left. So basically I killed her," she rationalized, "and I'm going to have to live with that."

"You know that isn't true," Tim whispered.

"It's how I feel, though. It's my truth and that's all that matters." Emery saw acceptance and what she knew was love burning in his eyes. "What I've been really confused about is Lucas..."

"The black bag you saw was a dog Lucas had brought home. The boyfriend shot the dog in front of Lucas and then beat the shit out of him in front of his very drunk mother."

"Oh God," she whispered.

"He's fine. He was a little confused because you disappeared, but he's doing okay. I know he'll be excited to see you." Tim swiped a stray hair from her face and kissed her gently, parting her lips with his tongue.

Emery froze mid-kiss. "I came here like you don't have a life, like you haven't..." She'd come there hoping there wasn't another girl that had taken her place. She came willing him to have waited for her return.

He lifted her up and started carrying her to his room in the back of the house. "We'll chat later. Right now, I want you naked."

"Wait, is anyone here?"

Tim set her on her feet in the middle of a bedroom and smiled. "No. I'm getting everything ready for them, though. I still have to get all the licenses and approval. We're working on it." He smiled again, with a dimple, and his eyes sparkled. He stepped closer to her.

He'd done all of this for her and she'd left him.

"Tim..." She stepped back, closer to the bed.

"Yes?" He kissed her lips gently.

"I'm sorry."

He kissed her forehead. "I know."

"I mean for everything, but especially for how I left things with us."

"Shh. I don't want to talk about that right now." He put both thumbs on her jaw and made soothing circles. "I'd like to test out the bed in this place."

Relief washed over her and a giggle bubbled out of her mouth as he dragged his lips over her neck and pulled on her ear. He picked her up and threw her unceremoniously on the king-sized bed.

"I'm not sure what I want to do first." Tim tapped his temple like he was thinking about it. "I think I need a taste."

In a second, he was pulling her shoes off and ripping her shorts down her legs. Heaven. This is what heaven must feel like.

"I love you," she whispered.

"You have six months to make up for, so you may not be able to walk for a few weeks," he warned.

She threw her head back at the first lick and felt everything as she lay back on the bed.

"You feel like home," Tim mumbled. "I can't wait..."

Then he was hovering over her and kissing her. As soon as they were joined, she sighed. "Oh, this is home."

EPILOGUE.

Ten Years Later.

She hurried through the lobby into the auditorium and scanned the crowd. She saw her crew sitting several rows over. Tim and the three foster kids they were caring for were there, along with the two kids they'd had together, Noah and Ashley. They were sitting chatting and laughing with each other. Her heart sang with joy every time she looked at Tim and all of their kids.

"Please take your seats," the voice boomed from the stage.

She trotted over to the empty seat in between Tim and Noah, their youngest son. Tim leaned into her. "You look amazing," he whispered.

She blushed.

His lips grazed her ear. "It turns me on that you still blush when I compliment you."

She laughed and pushed him away from her. "Shh. They're starting."

"Hey, bud." She pulled Noah on her lap and kissed the back of his head. He had a head of blond curls that reminded her of Ashley's hair when she was little. He was a little disaster; he broke every toy and made everyone who met him love him through sheer brute force.

When she'd come back to Savannah, she learned that Tim was in the process of opening a home for foster children in the name of The Ashley Shaw Foundation. He had an in with the county because of his family and within six months of her returning to Savannah, they had three kids, all boys, including Lucas. Over the years they'd had many other children pass through their home and their hearts, but Lucas, Noah and Ashley were her heart. Emma tried very hard to make a positive impact on every kid who came to their home; she wasn't always successful and it was always tough to pierce through the armor some of the kids were adorned with, but she tried.

The emcee started calling names for the graduation ceremony. She shushed everyone and happy tears filled her eyes. Hope percolated beneath her skin every day, but especially today.

"Lucas Flemming," boomed from the speakers and she and Tim both stood up and clapped. Lucas was graduating, and even though he was twenty-one and heading to college, it was the greatest day of her life.

When she returned from Key West, she'd changed her name to Emma Shaw. She put the name Emery to rest along with her sister and mother, but kept Shaw in honor of her father. She went back to Emma because that's who she'd become, who she wanted to be, and who she was with Tim. Tim proposed immediately, which scared the shit out of Emma, but his grandparents were over the moon. They got married two years later and adopted Lucas permanently shortly after. He'd been the light that helped her accept that she could be okay, that she could come back to Tim. Lucas had been the glue that had kept her and Tim from tearing each other apart during tough times, because it wasn't all smooth sailing with them. They loved each other fiercely and fought the same way.

She heard a bit of a commotion to her left and when she looked she saw her amazing sister-that's how she thought of Rachel-waltz down the aisle with Derrick to find the seats they saved for them. Both in their thirties now, they still looked like they'd just stepped out of a magazine. Derrick was wearing black pants and a blue button down shirt, the cuffs turned up. Rachel's raven hair was long again after chopping it all off a few years ago and it hung past her shoulder blades. Her big brown eyes found Emery's and she smiled, her lips painted the perfect shade of red for her skin tone.

They'd made it too and were crazy happy, which no one would've guessed except for Emma. She'd seen the way they looked at each other when they thought no one was looking. Derrick had been there for Emery as much as Rachel for years and he was a good man, just in a bad family. Rachel was a celebrity of sorts in the event planning industry in Atlanta and it helped that her cousin's friend, a former NFL star, used her for all his events.

Emma's life had turned out unexpectedly fantastic. Every day she couldn't help but feel like the bottom was going to fall out from under her, but so far it hadn't. Her counselor, who she'd had for the past ten years, had really helped her to see that sometimes good things do happen and that she deserved happiness. She now understood that her decisions all those years ago had been a product of terror, abuse, and youth, and Emma couldn't continue to blame herself for the decisions she'd made at sixteen.

Emma knew that if the bottom would fall out from under her, she had Tim and he would hold on to her and not let her fall. Emma appreciated each and every day she had with Tim and their crew. She knew life had the ability to crush them and she'd thought she'd been crushed enough for one lifetime.

She squeezed Tim's hand and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, but he turned his face so that her lips landed on his. Then he laughed like a twelve-year-old. Emma couldn't help but smile at him.

Emma had moments when she let herself sink into the reality of the death of her entire family. Ashley's death brought out her demons. When those moments rose from the recesses of her mind, she'd drive out to Tim's land in South Carolina, the place where he'd taken her so long ago, sit in the back of the pickup truck, and write. She wrote everything she felt and let it pour out of her onto the pages, emptying her mind of the demons and voices that she'd made comfortable in her mind so long ago. Her mother and her stepfather's names frequently appeared on the pages, but after she released them, she let the thoughts fly up into the air and disappear.

Hope is a funny thing, because the feeling is unmatched, like nothing else, but when it's dashed, it leaves you empty. When the world crushed the hope she had now, the promise of tomorrow whispered "try again" in her ear. Tim was her reward for having hope, for not allowing herself to give up in Key West.

Rachel knew all her secrets, all her demons, and had fought like hell to keep Emma around. The click that sounded so long ago when they'd been arrested was for life; they belonged together like chocolate and peanut butter. It's true what they say, sometimes the monsters win, but she'd battled hers and she'd survived.

Her life would have ended if she stayed in Key West, she knew that. She knew everyone had their own battles, but hers were no longer invited into her brain. She'd looked her demons in the eye and faced every fear she'd ever had and she did it for her sister, Lucas, Tim, and Rachel. She'd done it because she owed Noah for peeling away her walls with the razorblade that was his kisses, confidence, and love.

The topics in this book are heavy and serious. Know that if you need help, there are people who love you and care for your well-being. If you need help immediately, the numbers below can assist you.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

1-800-273-8255.

RAINN.

Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network.

800-656-HOPE.