“I called in help. An old friend who can do anything. Erik and his team spent almost two days here cleaning the tapes up for me.”

“Erik?’ he asks, with more than a hint of jealousy in his voice.

I reach over to rub his leg.

“Don’t even go there,” I say. “You never have to worry about me even looking at another man. Not going to happen. You’ll always be more than enough man for me.”

“Is he the older man you were involved with when you were caught hacking?”

“You know about that?” I ask in surprise. “How long have you known? How did you find out?”

Sam doesn’t answer.

“You’d better tell me,” I say.

He takes my hand in his and grips it tight. “We’ve known since the beginning. One of Flint’s contacts alerted us about the ATF investigation the day after we met on the mountain.”

My heart starts pounding and blood rushes to my face.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

Insecurity and doubt starts creeping into my mind. I thought Sam found out about me when he broke into my apartment. He’s known this entire time? My mind starts going back over every minute we spent together. I’m afraid again.

I try to pull my hand away. Sam holds it tighter.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he says. “I won’t let you pull away from me now.”

“What was your plan if you knew who I was?”

He still can’t look me in the eye.

“To let you get close to me and feed you false information. We were trying to minimize the damage you might do.”

“So all the time we spent together was fake?” I ask.

I’m inexplicably about to cry again. Why am I always crying now? I never cry.

He brushes my hair back from my face and tucks it behind my ear.

“You tell me, sweetheart,” he says. “Did it feel fake to you? Because it sure as hell never felt that way to me. Nothing ever felt as real to me as what we have.”

Reaching over, he grabs me and slides me over into his lap. Wrapping his big arms around me, he cradles me like a tiny child.

“Come here where I can hold you,” he says. “I can tell that you’re freaking out. You’re afraid that I played you. That I don’t love you and that the bottom is going to fall out any second.”

I nod and bury my face into his warm neck. That’s exactly how I feel.

“I know because I’ve felt that way for weeks,” he says. “I didn’t mean to fall for you. I certainly didn’t want to. I’ve always been a player, you probably know that. And I was absolutely sure that I could handle you. Whatever it took to keep my family and the MC safe.”