When I get to the bedroom, I spot the backpack he took with him on his latest trip dropped on the floor. He must’ve dumped it there as soon as he saw I wasn’t in here. Maybe he spotted me standing at the pond through the bay window and came outside, looking for me.

I can imagine the way he would’ve carried me in here and thrown me on the bed to punish me for making him miss me so much—if not for the conversation by the pond.

But that evening, I put on the pajamas I only wear when he’s not home, and I know I’m going to bed alone.

Eventually, he comes back into the house. I can hear him moving around downstairs. And I lie there waiting, wondering how this will work when he comes up here.

Will he take me roughly? Hold me down? Make me submit to him all over again just for having that difficult conversation with him?

And how will I react? Will I say Delaware? Will I kick him out? Put us right back where we were before he gave me this dream house and a Netflix Christmas romance filled with dark, twisted sex?

I don’t find out. He never comes upstairs, and I fall asleep by myself.

But when I wake up the next morning, I find him sitting on the side of the bed.

He’s still wearing the same clothes from last night—his motorcycle jacket with a heavy flannel instead of a T-shirt underneath now that the weather’s getting colder.

He also wears a ravaged expression, and the dark circles under his eyes tell me he’s been up all night. His hair has faded from rust to brown over the fall, and it hangs messy and lusterless in his face. The morning sun shines down on him, but he still looks like a dark night.

“Waylon?” I say, sitting up on one elbow.

As upset as I was yesterday, worry for him makes me ask, “Are you alright?”

“No,” he answers.

Then he rubs a hand over his face and asks, “Want to come to my cousin Colin’s annual Thanksgiving party with me?”

CHAPTER 18

So, if you’re wondering what a test from a crazy motorcycle club president with huge trust issues looks like, the answer is a Craftsman-style mansion in Grove Lake, a gated community outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

Waylon strides into Colin Fairgood’s place in his Reapers jacket, button-up, and a pair of boot-cut trousers as if he has as much right to be here as anybody else. But I immediately wish I hadn’t just borrowed a dress from Maybelline for this party when she came over to do my hair.