“His name was Yusuf and he reminded me a lot of Dad. He was younger, but it was easy to see he’d do anything for his family, to get them to safety, even if it meant being away from them for two years. He took up with me right off the bat. He spoke pretty good English and Russian, so he taught me quite a bit of both his native Arabic and some Russian while he was with us.” Nash smiles as he remembers and talks of this Yusuf. “We played cards a lot at night. He had the shittiest poker face in the world.” His lips curve up into the closest thing I’ve seen to a genuinely tender smile. But then it’s gone. “Anyway, on one of our runs to Bajuni, the island where we made port when we had an . . . exchange, I caught him sneaking into one of the smaller boats one night. At first, he didn’t want to tell me what he was doing, but when I threatened to sound the alarm, he changed his mind.

“See, when Yusuf agreed to help the Russians, Alexandroff, our . . . captain, had promised him he could send money to his wife and see her occasionally when we were back in the area. Only they never allowed it. So he was sneaking off to see her, to take her some money so she and his daughter wouldn’t starve. I wouldn’t let him go without me, of course, so we paddled across to the Somali coast and put in at a little bay to travel to his village of Beernassi. We only got to spend a couple of hours there, but I got to meet his wife and his little girl. They got up like it wasn’t the middle of the night. His wife, Sharifa, made us something to eat, and his daughter wouldn’t let us out of her sight.” His smile is sad as he speaks of her. “Her name was Jamilla. It means ‘beautiful.’ And she was.”

He gets quiet again, so I prompt him, wanting to hear more of his story. “What happened next?”

Nash looks up at me. His eyes have gone cold, his voice even colder. “Alexandroff found us. He walked right in, put a gun to Yusuf’s head, and pulled the trigger. Killed him right in front of his family. Two of his men, two guys I hated from the second I got on board, held me, made me watch, and then beat me in the head with the butts of their guns until I passed out. I woke up on the ship two days later, stuck to my pillow in a pool of my own blood. I was gagged and tied to the bed.”

I’m speechless. And I’m heartbroken. I ache for what Nash must have felt, what he still must feel. And this was one of his happy memories, for God’s sake! My throat is thick with emotion and my eyes burn with unshed tears.

“Oh God, Nash. I’m so sorry.”

Why did you have to know, Marissa? Why? Why put him through this?

“Nothing good happened on that boat. Nothing. Ever. I learned a hard lesson that night. One I’ve never forgotten.”

I’m almost afraid to ask. “What’s that?”

“I learned to hate. To really hate.”

“I understand it, and I’m sure it’s natural to feel that way—for a while. But it’s not healthy to hang on to an emotion like that for long.”

“It is when the alternative is even more self-destructive. Then it’s healthy. It’s healthy to hang on to hate when letting it go could kill you.”

For one fraction of a second, the perpetually angry mask Nash wears lifts and I see the wounds behind the tough scar tissue. I see a small glimpse of the person he used to be, maybe could be again.

Without thinking, I reach up to touch his cheek with the tips of my fingers. “Maybe one day you can find something other than anger and hatred to live for,” I say softly, almost absently.

As if my touch woke him from a stupor, as if he knows he’s letting me in deeper than he’d like, Nash looks away. He reaches for his vodka, takes a long, slow sip, then sets the glass gently back onto the table. When his eyes return to mine, they’re curiously blank. There’s no hurt, no anger, no . . . nothing in them. Just a wall, an impenetrable barrier that’s been years in the making.

“You got your warm, fuzzy story. My turn. Tell me about Saturday night.”

My stomach curls up into a tight ball and my pulse picks up speed as I remember what happened after I parked the car. I was preoccupied, stewing about the breakup with “Nash.” Of course, I had no idea who I’d been dating. Or who was breaking up with me. That still blows my mind. And infuriates me sometimes. It makes me feel like an idiot if I think about it too long.

I push those thoughts aside and let my mind go forward, through the chain of events that still terrify me when I let them out of the lockbox where I’ve been keeping them.

“My mind was on the breakup. At first, it was a pretty big smack to the ego. All Na—Cash told me was that he was interested in someone else and that it wasn’t fair to keep seeing me. He was very vague and secretive about it, and he refused to answer any of my questions. So, I was preoccupied and wasn’t really paying attention to much of anything else when I unlocked the door.

“I set my purse on the table and went back to my bedroom to change clothes and then have a glass of wine. After I put on my pajamas, I realized I’d left my phone in the car, so I went back out to get it. It was when I came back in that I sort of snapped out of it and realized that the television was on and turned up really loud. I thought that was odd because Olivia had obviously worked a shift. I mean, she was at Dual closing up when I was there. And she never leaves the television on. She’s much too responsible to do something like that.

“Anyway, I was standing there in front of the door, wondering over that, when I saw him move toward the living room. It was like he stepped out of the shadows and was just . . . there. A silhouette. A black presence against the white, flickering light of the television. I knew instinctively that it belonged to no one who was familiar to me.

“All this happened in probably twenty or thirty seconds. It’s like he appeared right as my brain was starting to work, but that delay . . . that short delay was enough. It cost me what little advantage I might’ve had. Could’ve cost me my life, I guess.

“Just as it was all coming together in my mind, that there was a strange man in my living room in the middle of the night, I opened my mouth to scream. That’s when he lunged at me. I tried to dodge him. And I almost did. It was just his arm that caught me. Knocked me back into the table where I’d put my purse. I remember hearing the crashing of the lamp when it hit the floor. He knocked me off balance and I hit the wall and then stumbled into the living room, still trying to stay out of his reach. I couldn’t think of anything more than the need to get away from him, to make sure he didn’t catch me. He grabbed my leg and I fell. I kicked at him so he couldn’t get my ankle, but he yanked me back toward him and straddled my legs. I was on my belly, so it was hard to do much of anything. I did manage to dig my keys into the back of his hand when he pulled my head back by my hair. I was still holding them from going outside to get my phone. But then he put something over my mouth and I could barely breathe. I remember smelling something harsh, like a chemical, and then there was nothing. Until I woke up wherever they kept me, blindfolded, bound, and gagged.

“I’ve never been more scared in all my life. They must’ve had me in a basement somewhere,” I tell Nash, my mind going back to the horrifying sensations—smells, sounds, the feel of cool, smooth stone beneath my cheek and hip. I feel small and alone and still afraid when I remember it. “The floor felt like the coldest concrete in the world. And it smelled like must and something metallic, something coppery. Like blood. And when it was quiet, I could hear water dripping. And someone breathing.” I stop and look up at Nash, who’s watching me intently. “I still don’t know who was down there with me. Or what happened to them. Eventually the breathing just . . . stopped.”

Another shiver runs through my body like aftershocks of an earthquake. During the hours I was curled up on that floor, I imagined that the person lying near me was another woman, scared and alone. Unable to move or see or speak, like me. Only she was wounded. Badly wounded. Maybe beaten unconscious. She never made any sounds; her breathing never changed when I moaned and struggled to talk to her behind my gag. Until her breathing stopped, until it ceased to sweep through the quiet of the room. After that, the silence was deafening.

I lay on my side, my arm, shoulder, hip, and thigh having long since gone numb, and I cried. I cried for whoever had lain on the floor of the same room and passed away without a sound, without a loved one. Without a prayer of being discovered. Surely somewhere someone is mourning her loss, maybe even looking for her. Unless they know what she was mixed up in. And who she was mixed up with.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t even a woman. Maybe it’s best that I never know.

I’m not even aware of the tears coursing down my cheeks until the feel of Nash’s fingers brings me back to the present, back to the land of the living.

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

I smile a watery smile. “I guess we’re even, then.”

He gazes down into my eyes, neither of us saying a word, his fingers still pressed to my damp cheek. The sound of the piano fades into the background, as does the world and all the pain I’ve found in it so recently.

Instantly, I’m absorbed, consumed. Just like I want to be. For whatever reason, when I’m with Nash, I’m free of my life and the worry of it. I’m free of the past and the terror of it. I’m free of everything but him. He’s overwhelming and I need to be overwhelmed. He’s uncontrollable and I need to be out of control. He’s the promise of something . . . else and I need something else.

“I think there are times in life when you need something to lose yourself in, something to take away the pain, take away the feeling of everything else. Something to numb it. Just for a while.” As quietly as the beat of my heart, Nash articulates exactly what I’ve been thinking and feeling. And then he makes me an offer I can’t refuse, one that I don’t even want to refuse. He leans in closer, his lips brushing the shell of my ear as he speaks. “I can be that for you. We can be that for each other.” Chills race down my arm.

Nash’s hand moves into the hair at the nape of my neck. He cups the back of my head and angles his face until he can draw the lobe of my ear into his mouth. I feel the brush of his hot tongue and my eyes drift closed. “I could make you forget everything else. I can make sure that you feel nothing but pleasure, that you can’t think past what I’m doing to your body, what I’m making you feel. With my hands,” he says, pulling his fingers from my hair and trailing them down my arm to my hip. “With my lips,” he continues, moving his mouth across my cheek. “With my tongue,” he whispers as he spreads wet heat across my bottom lip with the tip of the very tongue of which he speaks. “And I promise, you’ll love every second of it.” As if to punctuate his statement, he bites down ever so lightly, sinking his teeth into my flesh.

My breath catches in my throat just as his mouth fully covers mine. I part my lips, eager to taste him, to feel a part of him inside me.

The lingering hint of mint is mixed with the vodka on his tongue. He tastes like a cocktail. And he’s every bit as intoxicating as the alcohol he’s drinking.

With a will of its own, my hand moves up to the back of Nash’s neck, my fingers threading into the silky strands of his loose hair. He tilts his head and deepens the kiss. He teases my tongue with his own, drawing it out until he can suck it into his mouth to tangle with his own.

Beneath the table, I feel his palm move from my hip to my thigh, then inward until skin meets skin. The dramatic slit of my dress allows him nearly full access to me. And I want him to take it. I part my legs the tiniest bit, an invitation. I don’t care that we’re in public. I don’t care that my father would disown me for the scandal. I don’t care about anything but this man and what he makes me feel. I only want him to touch me. I need him to touch me. And for this moment, the crowded piano bar is nothing more than a backdrop for the electricity that sings between us.

His hand moves to within inches of the apex of my thighs and stops. It’s perfectly still but for the movement of his thumb. It makes an arc over the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. Back and forth, so close to where I want most to feel it.

I’m panting into his mouth when Nash’s lips disappear. I open my eyes, confused. His face is a mere inch away, his eyes burning holes into mine. They’re on fire and I feel the heat all the way to my core. “I bet your panties are wet right now,” he murmurs, his hand inching up a fraction, then stopping again. My heart is racing and I wiggle a little in my seat. An impossible ache radiates from between my legs. “And I bet your ni**les are hard,” he says quietly, leaning forward to nuzzle my neck. “Hard and throbbing, Begging, like the rest of your body. To be licked. And sucked. And fuc—” he groans, catching himself.

And he’s right. It does. My whole being wants it. I feel like nothing will be right with the world until I’m filled with Nash, until my body is stretched tight around his, pinned beneath his weight.

With his scent all around me, his firm length pressed warmly to mine, his breath fanning my skin, his hands tormenting me, something begins to niggle at the back of my mind. Something seems so . . . familiar.

The house lights come on and applause breaks out all around us. With a frustrated sigh, Nash leans back, removing his hand from my leg, removing his heat from me. The performance was so amazing, the crowd is on their feet. A standing ovation. I think to myself that I had a private performance that was definitely worthy of such praise.

And I can only imagine how much better it gets.

The lowest part of my belly squeezes at the thought of what might be to come, what I feel is inevitable between us. What I want to be inevitable between us.