"Yeah, just thinking."
His arm tightened against her side. "Tell me. I want to know the things you worry about. I can't give you the perfect world you deserve if I don't know what's bothering you."
She snuggled closer. "I don't know. It's just that there are times when I feel like I can talk to you about anything. But then, other times I feel this wall. Like if I look around the wrong corner, I'll see something that ruins everything."
Trent propped himself up on one arm and stared down at her. "Ask me anything you want."
Mara considered it, watching the play of emotions across his face. All she wanted was to know him. More than anything. But it seemed that as soon as she peeled back one layer, infinite more were revealed. But perhaps that was just part of the process. Peeling back the layers until she finally knew all there was to know about him. If that was true, then all she could do to hasten the process was keep digging.
"I can ask you anything?" She watched his face carefully, searching for signs that he really didn't want to talk. But he just regarded her with the same calm, patient expression so she decided to peel back another layer.
"Who was Tia?"
* * * * *
“TIA PILAR DELGADO was never supposed to be my girlfriend."
Mara shifted against his side, settling her head right over his chest. In that moment, in the warm cocoon that surrounded them, he knew it was finally time to tell her about his past.
"She actually had a crush on my brother, James," he continued.
Mara lifted her head. "If she was interested in your brother, then why …" Her tousled hair fell over her shoulders in wild disarray. The makeup she'd worn earlier had rubbed off so her face was almost bare. It was difficult to think of a time when she was more beautiful than when she was like this. Naked and open to him.
And all his.
"Tia was a year below me. James had already turned eighteen by then and her parents were very strict. If they had known that their fifteen-year-old daughter was chasing after an eighteen-year-old senior, they would have freaked out. So she used to tell her parents that she was hanging out with me and Avery."
Mara didn't move but in the silence, Trent could almost hear the thoughts spinning through her mind. It had all happened so long ago but sometimes, especially being back in New York, he would see or hear something that brought it all back. Suddenly it was like he was sixteen again, awash with the wonder and discovery of first love and the pain and heartache of first rejection.
"Anyway, she was always at our house and eventually told her parents that we were dating. They weren't happy about it but at least she was spending time with a family they respected. Not that my parents were home to provide supervision." He laughed softly. "My parents never cared what we were doing and they were in Europe half the time anyway. We ran completely wild that year."
He stopped, trying to fight the hold of the past. Just talking about it made it all real again, sucking him back into the same twisted emotions he'd experienced the first time.
"Then what happened?" Mara asked.
"We fell in love," he whispered.
Suddenly the room was too hot, the air too close and the bed sheets tangled around his legs too confining. He had to get up. When he moved to sit up, Mara leaned back and dragged the sheet up to cover her naked chest.
"You don't have to talk about it." Her eyes were soft, understanding. "I'm honored that you've shared this much. I know this is painful for you."
And just like that, the darkness around his heart lifted. No matter how hard or how painful it was to relive the past, he could do it for her. Because he had her love tethered around him to keep him on solid ground.
"No, it's okay. I want to tell you."
She smiled at him, the sweet smile that had always made him feel like he'd found home. It gave him the impetus he needed to think back to what had happened next without fear. The past couldn't hurt him now.
"After spending so much time together, we'd talked about everything. She knew about my troubles with my father and how much I wanted to break away from this life. I was determined to move away after school and do something, anything on my own. She felt the same way. Her parents were very religious and had their own ideas about what her future would look like. She didn't want to follow a preapproved plan. Tia wanted to follow her heart and her passion, which was painting. But that wasn't something her parents would have supported. We used to talk about running away together."
"Did you?"
"No. We never got that chance. By this time, I was a senior and we'd been hanging out so long that most people had long accepted us as a couple be
fore we actually were. But we hadn't done anything more than kiss. She wanted to wait. And I wanted her to be happy. But then suddenly, the day after prom, she decided that she wanted me to be her first."
When he stopped talking, Mara scooted across the sheets until she was sitting right behind him. She wrapped her legs around him and rested her head against his shoulder.
"Did you kill her, Trent? Is that the secret? Was it some kind of accident?"