SARAFINA’S HAND CLOSED OVER HIS SHOULDER. “I’M sorry, Theo. You don’t have to talk about it.”

He turned to her. “No, it’s okay. It’s just that while I don’t feel responsible for Ingrid’s death, I do feel responsible for Colleen’s.”

“Sometimes talking helps.”

He snorted. “I like pretending it never happened. That helps me.”

“Yes, but it never makes it go away.”

“Nothing makes it go away, Sarafina. You just have to learn to live with it.”

He studied her eyes for a moment. They were such a clear, pretty shade of blue. He reached out and smoothed his thumb against her cheek and she turned her face to his calloused palm and laid a kiss there.

When she did that, look up at him with all that emotion in her eyes, Theo could deny her nothing. He would do anything for her.

“Colleen was my girlfriend when I was a teenager.”

Understanding swept over her features. “She was your high school sweetheart and when you—”

He shook his head. “Not high school. My life at home was unstable. I never made it through high school.”

“Okay, I didn’t know. But she was involved when the Duskoff kidnapped you somehow, wasn’t she?”

“Colleen was my first love, my only love.” He didn’t elaborate on the fact that he thought he might be falling in love with Sarafina. It was too soon for that and the circumstances didn’t need to be any heavier than they were. “She kept me sane when my father was beating my mother up.” Anger arced through him as memory flooded his mind. His voice was hard when he spoke next. “Eventually, I beat him up.”

“I’m sorry, Theo.”

“It’s over now. My mom took off, and I haven’t heard from her since. My father’s gone, too. Colleen was the one solid person I had to hang on to. Strangely enough, she was also a fire witch. Anyway, she was with me when they kidnapped me, so she was caught up in it.”

Theo closed his mouth and went silent, fighting the unwelcome recollection. Images of Colleen under the brutal hands of the Duskoff, tied up and given to Reece, the bastard who’d cut him.

Reece had done much, much worse to Colleen.

Theo shut his eyes as if he could make the memories disappear. “You don’t want to know what they did to her. I’ve spent close to twenty years trying to forget. She didn’t deserve any of it and I was the one who caused it all.” He shook his head. “She tried to fight them.”

Sarafina didn’t say anything for a long moment. “She sounds like a hell of a girl.”

He pressed the heel of his palm into his eye socket, but that didn’t make the mental pictures go away. “She was.”