“As soon as I got out—”

“Out of where?” She propped herself on an elbow. Her gaze fell on the tattoo on his bicep. It was of a pirate.

He rolled away.

She placed a hand on his back.

He shook his head. His hair brushed his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Look, I was in trouble with the law when I was a teen. Hacking stuff.”

“You were arrested?”

“I went to juvie.”

“For what?”

“Like I said, hacking stuff.” His mouth twisted. “The feds didn’t like that I was smarter than them.”

“But what did you do?”

He jumped off Leah’s bed and turned to face her. “It’s in the past. I don’t want to talk about it.” He flicked a strand of hair from his face. “But after I got out, I grew my hair. It symbolizes my freedom, Leah.” He opened his arms, his hair spilling over his shoulders, his gaze intense. “That’s what I’m fighting for, Leah. Freedom.”

For some reason, the sight of Aiden naked and fiery should have inspired Leah’s own fervor, but instead, his passion rang false to her.

She didn’t know why.

She blamed it on her mother’s words.

But now she wondered if it was her own gut instinct that had warned her that Aiden wasn’t who he seemed. For the lover who had wooed her with compliments and caresses was not the same as the man who pressed a knife into her side at the Owen house—and left her to face the wrath of its occupants.

“His name is Aiden.” Her mother’s voice once again cut through the swirl of confusion in Leah’s brain.

Panic tightened Leah’s chest. She needed to think this through. And her brain was so foggy. “Mmmmom.”

Her mother reached for her hand. “We have to tell the truth, Leah.”

The truth.

That was what this whole thing last night was about: a mission to expose the truth.

She could not formulate the words to capture the intensity of the pain—or the weight of remorse. “I’m…thir…thirsty.”

Her father slipped a straw in her mouth and she welcomed the cool, clean water dribbling down her throat. If only it could cleanse her conscience.

Her parents’ faces slowly came into focus. Their expressions were identical: concern, fear, stress. These were the two people who had always protected her. And they were doing everything they could to protect her from her most grievous mistake.

She had been so unfair to them.

But she thought she was doing the right thing. She had done what she had been brought up to do: tell the truth.

God, she was so confused.

All she wanted to do was sink into the soft haze shrouding her mind and escape this mess she had created.