She gave him a sharp scowl before moving past him to leave.

“You Harper women are no joke.”

“No, we sure aren’t,” Dennie called over her shoulder as she retreated down the hall. “See you don’t forget that, Jamie.”

He nodded, understanding the unspoken warning to take care of Summer Grace—not that he intended to do anything else.

He stepped farther into the room. “Sweetheart, I know you’re awake and know I’m here. Turn over and talk to me.”

“Don’t you dare try to pull your Dom stuff on me right now, Jamie,” she muttered from under the heavy patchwork quilt that covered her from head to toe.

He moved closer and set the tea mug down on the small night table. “Damn it, Summer Grace.” He paused, making an effort to keep his voice low. “This has nothing to do with kink. There are no roles right now. This is just you and me, and I love you. Let me help.”

She rolled over and pulled the quilt off her face to glare at him, but in moments her face crumbled and, his heart twisting, he rushed to take her in his arms, a little surprised when she let him. She was crying, long, wrenching sobs, and he held her tighter—held her as tight as he could. It was a long while before she pushed away.

“Okay. I need to stop.” She hiccupped, wiped at her face with her sleeves, then with her hands. “I can’t do this, Jamie.”

“Can’t do what?”

She waved her hands. “This! All of this. Me falling apart and you coming to my rescue like I’m some broken doll. I hate this. I hate that you’re seeing this. I hate that you’re here now because it drives home even more that you won’t always be.”

“What? What do you mean?”

She pushed her tangled hair from her face and looked at him directly for the first time that day. Her voice was harder than he’d ever heard it. “Jamie. You left me, too, you know. Left me all alone when I lost Brandon, and then my family fell apart. You were gone. Gone. I chose to overlook that somehow, because I was too used to being enamored of you. But I see it now. I remember. So much for you being obsessed with carrying out Brandon’s dying wish.”

He felt like he’d been slammed in the chest with a sledgehammer. “Fuck, Summer Grace,” he said quietly. “Really? That was years ago. I was a sad, fucked-up kid myself. And now . . . now you’re going to hold that against me? To let it make up how you see me? I thought things were so amazing between us lately.” Anger was welling up in his chest, making his pulse throb hot in his veins, making his head ache. “You said you trusted me—how many times did you tell me that? But how much trust do you really have in me?”

“As much as I’m capable of, given that I lose everyone. Everything.”

He shook his head, his fists clenching at his sides. But when the tears slid down her cheeks unchecked, the anger drained away. This was the woman he loved. The woman whose entire history he knew—a history he shared. His shoulders fell as he swept her into his embrace. She fought him, squirming and pounding on his shoulders, his back, but he let it happen. He held her safe until she calmed down. There was more crying, but he knew she needed it. Finally he pulled back and helped her wipe her face with the soggy edge of the sheet.

“Baby. You’ve held so much in all this time. I know it’s because you’ve had to,” he told her. “And I know I could have been there for you, that I could have helped you get through it all. I thought I was the broken one—so damn broken I wasn’t good enough for you. And ultimately I held back with you because of that stupid crap in my head about being a death magnet—”

“Maybe I’m the death magnet, Jamie. First Brandon. Now Madame.”

“She was a cat. And she was old. And two losses in a lifetime don’t make you a death magnet.”

Summer Grace shook her head. “And three make you one? But Brandon . . . Jamie, I have to tell you . . .” She stopped, visibly swallowed a sob, but it was still in her voice when she continued. “We had a fight that morning. I was so selfish. So immature. I was totally in the wrong, and I was such a bitch to him when he was only looking out for me. That was the last conversation we had. And maybe if he wasn’t so pissed at me, so annoyed with me, or fuck, hurt by me, he would have seen that car coming.” She shook her head again, her gaze on her hands twisting the edge of the quilt. “It really wasn’t you who had some fault in Brandon dying. It was me.”

His heart broke a little at her words. At her self-condemnation. He knew that feeling too well.

“No, sweetheart. No, it wasn’t either of us. Just hearing you say that out loud makes me see it wasn’t me or you or anything else, and how mistaken I’ve been all this time in thinking it could have been my fault—Brandon or Ian or Traci losing the baby. It’s just the way the fucked-up world happens sometimes. But, Summer Grace . . .” He reached out and stroked her cheek and she looked up at him. He saw the remnants of tears glistening on the tips of her long lashes. “Sweetheart. I am so damn sorry. I should never have left you alone to deal with the whole mess. Maybe if I’d been there for you, if I hadn’t been so damn . . . afraid of myself, and what I thought I was, I would have been able to protect you from some of it—the pain and the loneliness and that sense of being lost. From all the times your life broke, then broke again. And I am more sorry than I can say that some of the times things broke it was because of me. But I let you down because I was too wrapped up in my own shit. And that wasn’t just when we were younger. It was right up until I saw you at The Bastille the first time. Not because you were there, or playing with someone else. But because it made me see myself through your eyes, and I wasn’t too happy with what I saw. I was the guy who disappointed you, who let you down. But when I saw you that night, I was also the guy who was done doing that.”

She was blinking fast, but not so fast that he didn’t see another tear escaping from her eye.

He wiped it with his thumb. “Don’t cry anymore. Come on, sweetheart. I’m trying to apologize.”

“I know you are. Just give me a minute to pull myself together and absorb everything.”

“Jesus on a cracker, you two.” Dennie stepped into the room.

“I thought you went with Annalee to her dinner,” Jamie said.

“Oh, we’ve been hanging out until we were sure Summer was okay. And I see she is. So now we’re really leaving—and leaving you two to work it out. But first I want to say this: I have never seen two people more in love. I’d kill to have what you have. Don’t fuck it up, okay?”

“I love you, Den,” Summer Grace said.

“I know you do, honeypie.” She turned and left the room, and they both held their breath until they heard the front door slam shut and the distant rumble of Annalee’s Cadillac.

Jamie stroked her hair, her cheek. He wanted to kiss her so badly, but he sensed they had more talking to do. That she had more to say. “Okay. Talk to me, baby. What do you need to tell me about what’s happened?”

She shrugged, but he could see she was turning ideas over in her mind. She bit her lip, opened her mouth to speak, then paused for several moments. Finally she started.

“When Brandon died it was . . . like the end of the world to me. He was my big brother. I worshipped him. My entire world revolved around him, maybe even my crush on you in the beginning.”

“What did Brandon have to do with a teenage girl’s crush on me?”

“You were the sun Brandon revolved around, Jamie, just like I revolved around him.”

He shook his head, ran a hand over his stubbled scalp. “No. There’s never been anything remotely sunshiny about me. Brandon was the one with the sunshine. Our whole group revolved around him. That’s why it hit everyone so hard when we lost him.”

She reached out and took his hand. “But not like it hit us—you and me. They were all hurt by it. We were both . . . destroyed by it.”