He stared at her.

“You are not what you did to Rosalie,” she told him. “And I’m not makeup, hair and costume for the porn industry. But we are.”

After she said that, she paused.

Beck remained silent.

She kept going.

“You . . . well, I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who would get me.”

“What would I get?” he asked.

“I don’t want to be in the porn industry,” she whispered. “I wanna be a stylist.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So how’d you get there?”

She shook her head but said, “My mom kicked me out when I was seventeen.”

Jesus.

“She . . . I did bad,” she went on.

Beck did not have a good feeling about those words and how she put them together.

“What’d you do that was bad?” he asked, with those words and how she put them together, taking his tone to gentle.

“I, well, I had a boyfriend and I wasn’t allowed.”

Yeah.

This was not good.

“You weren’t allowed to have a boyfriend at seventeen?”

She shook her head. “Mom was kind of religious.”

The panties. The shyness. The prissiness. The inability to come right out with the word “cock.”

“God communicated through her . . . and her, well . . . wooden spoon,” she shared carefully, watching him just as carefully.

But not careful enough.

Beck grew solid and it felt like something was burning in his throat.

“What?” he asked low.

“If I did wrong . . . if I, you know, didn’t fill the dishwasher right, or something like that, God wanted children to mind. He wanted them to listen. So I’d fill it right with her hitting me with her wooden spoon.”

Beck lay on top of her, Janna wrapped around, his dick having slid out, his cock resting against her through his cum and her juices, and he breathed very, very deep.

“When she found me with my boyfriend, it didn’t go well,” she whispered.

His words were guttural. “She beat you?”

She nodded, and it didn’t register she was holding Beck tighter than she had been.

He just knew something was holding him together because he managed to hold his shit.

“And she threw me out, just . . . after.”

“At seventeen.”

“At seventeen,” she confirmed.

His Janna, alone, at seventeen.

“What’d you do?”

“Anything. Hostessing at a restaurant. I got a paper route. So their parents wouldn’t turn me into Social Services or something, my friends would sneak me in their bedrooms and I’d sleep on their floors, get up early to steal a shower and get out.” She slid her hand to his neck and said quietly, “I managed to finish school. Save some money. Get into a studio apartment. It wasn’t a nice one, but it was mine and I could take showers as long as I wanted. It was hard and it wasn’t fun, but I like to think about it, making my own way, you know, since she never let me come back, though I tried. My dad was scared of her too, so he wouldn’t go against her. So I like to think about it because in the end, regardless of her, I made it, Beck.”

He thought of her gray couches and silver sponge things.

Thrown out at seventeen.

And now she was twenty-seven.

Yeah, she made it.

“But I don’t have my cosmetology license,” she admitted. “It’s phony. No way I could pay to go to school. I just wanted to do what I do. I’d always been good at hair and makeup, even though in the beginning I had to do it in the girls’ bathroom at school, hide it from Mom. So I was able to fake it. And I make good money with what I’m doing. I’ve never made this kind of money. And it was experience. Experience in what I really wanna do. So I lied to get my job. They didn’t look too close and I’m not stupid. I know that other director, Rodrigo, wanted me around because he thought he could groom me for, uh . . . other things. But I used that to my advantage. And thank God, Re . . . I mean, Tally came. It’s better on her sets.”

Beck rolled so he was on his back and she was on him.

And for a second, when her hair fell down around them, closing them both in, he felt nothing.

Nothing but her soft body on his, her face in his, her searching eyes, the smell of her perfume and their fucking, the feel of them gliding out of her onto him, the realness of her in his arms.

Then suddenly he felt like he could do anything. Like he had power he did not have. Strength that was not his. Wisdom he hadn’t learned.

But then she lifted a hand and caught back her hair and all that was gone.

He moved his gaze beyond her to stare at the ceiling.

“Beck,” she whispered, stroking his neck.

“My brother died in Afghanistan.”

The hair came back down as both her hands came to cup his face and all he felt came slamming right back.

He looked at her.

And when he did he knew he could do this.

Because he could see her pain.

She’d known for a second about a dead man she’d never meet, and she looked like she’d had years for that pain to etch in deep.

For him.

All of that, for him.

“Honey,” she whispered.

“I never told anyone that.”

“Beck, oh honey, oh baby,” she crooned, pressing into him.

“I got issues with my mom,” he told her.

“I know all about that.”

“She didn’t beat me. She just thought I was a piece of shit.”

Tears filled her eyes.

She closed them, and one fell and hit his jaw while she moved in, touching her lips to his.

God.

Christ.

Fuck.

She moved away but not far.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “And you’re not a piece of crap. She was very wrong.”

His girl.

She couldn’t even say “shit.”

How’d he earn this beauty?

“I don’t sleep, what I did to Rosalie.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“My brother knew, I’d be dead to him.”

She moved her thumbs across his cheeks, staring in his eyes, getting hold on the wet in hers so she could be there for him.

So she could be there for him.

No one had ever been there for him.

No one, but his brother.

“He’s lookin’ down on me, baby, and he’s seein’ the piece of shit my mom knew me to be.”

“No, he’s not,” she said intensely. “He’s seeing his brother lost his way, made mistakes, but is getting back on track.”

“I was a follower.”

“That happens when you’re lost, you don’t know which way to go, and you think you found someone you can depend on to show you the way.”

“You make it sound like it’s not on me, when it’s all on me,” he pointed out.

“It is. And it’s terrible what you did, Beck. Awful.”

He stared up at her, feeling that burn inside again, but it was bigger, threatening to consume him.

“And your penance is that you’ll never forgive yourself,” she continued. “You’ll never forget what you did. You’ll have to live with it forever. But you still have to move on. Use that to become a better person. Find ways to right that wrong even if it can’t ever be righted. Just do good.” She pressed into him. “And I believe you have that in you.”

Turning his eyes to the ceiling, he drew breath in through his nose, a lot of it, so much, Janna raised up on his chest as he did it.

“You need to apologize to her, honey,” she advised.

“I already did.”

“You did?”

He looked at her again. “Yeah.”

“Then that’s all you can do. I don’t think it’d be good you push that. Or at least not for her.”

Yeah.

The best thing he could do for Rosie was disappear from her life.

But right then, with Janna . . . this was happening.

They were doing this, whatever this became and however long it lasted.

She had to have it all.