In that final instant, as I had come to expect of him, because it was how Ethan needed it from me; he said my name in a desperate call to look up at him.

I lifted my eyes and found the blue of his own staring down upon me, shattering in all their fiery brilliance, with love…for me.

“I…love…you,” he said to me in a roar that could only be described as one of utter, agonized bliss.

I recognized it because it was exactly what he did to me.

Hours later, and more orgasms than I thought possible, I lay cradled in my man’s strong arms with the soft lapping of the sea on the sand, and the flickering of candles in jars lighting the night around us with a soft glow. I knew more happiness and love than I’d ever experienced in my life, and now understood how precious it was to have that love.

How could I ever live without it now? What would happen to me if I ever lost him? Could I even survive such a thing?

Ethan had changed me forever and there was no unringing of that bell. Ever.

I closed my eyes and focused on where I was in the moment. On our Italian beachside bed-of-love, with Ethan spooning behind me, his hand cradling my belly as he slept.

Holding us both against his heart, owning us, protecting us…loving us.

Such a beautiful thing…

I was almost frightened to believe it had happened to me.

Part Two

AUTUMN

Did the cold wind bite you, did you face up to the fright?

When the leaves spin from October

and whip around your tail?

Did you shake from the blast, did you shiver through the gale?

Jethro Tull ~Weathercock

CHAPTER 6

30th September

Somerset

AS the mother lay dead in the street, the boy cried over her body they’d left abandoned in the dirt. The hours dragged as slowly as the sun moved overhead. It became harder and harder for me to tune him out. The wailing just zeroed in through my ears, and straight to my motherfucking heart. That boy was me. I’d been right where he was. I couldn’t stand hearing him for another bloody second. So I swooped in to grab him. A decision I cannot take back, because what I did was his death sentence. He never had a chance. None. They used him like bait to lure me in. No take-backs for what I did…

I crashed awake gasping for breath. Like a film in super slow motion, then fast-forwarded, defying logic, but making acceptable sense to where I’d just been in my dream. One moment I was buried under with the oppressive weight of darkness and despair closing in on me, and then in a split-second, shoved to the surface to face the blinding light of freedom.

I f**king hated it.

The dreams f**ked with my head.

I was f**ked up because of them.

I was also sleeping in the same bed as my pregnant wife. This is the part I dreaded more than anything. The moment when I had to lie there suspended, too panicked to look over at her and see if she was peacefully asleep…or unpeacefully awake. Had she caught me this time? Or had I slipped through the net again?

I dared to look. Turning my eyes toward her without moving my head very much, afraid to cause any movement—which was absurd because people moved around in their sleep all the time—in hopes that she didn’t see, didn’t hear…didn’t know.

Asleep on her side facing away from me.

Blessed Jesus, thank you!

My girl slept less soundly now that she was pregnant, and I dearly wished I couldn’t say the same. Trying to rationalize the reasons for my nightmares, attempting to figure out why they’d been triggered so suddenly after being buried for years, wasn’t impossible to work out.

Brynne was the reason. Finding her, falling in love with her, had initiated every possessive instinct inside of me. She had switched me on, and that was it. I’d been driven to have her, yes, but it was Brynne loving me back, putting me in a position of being worried over for the first time, it was her offering comfort to me that made her so different.

Before Brynne, I could just bury the bad and horrible, detaching myself from what had happened to me, and not allowing myself to feel. I was disconnected, aloof, emotionless. Not now.

Now when I had a flashback, the sequences of events were even more deranged than usual. In my head, the past and present melded together in a confused clusterfuck that rattled around in my subconscious, but wasn’t anywhere close to direct reality. Shit that had happened, mixed up with what could have happened, but hadn’t. And then there was the cocksucking future… That bastard would be the death of me, I was certain.

There’s a shit-ton of crap to worry about in the future.

Falling in love with a person changes everything. You learn this, after the fact of course, because you quickly realize you didn’t really ever have anything to worry about before you had someone to lose. Once you do have them?

Newsflash, motherfucker. You can lose them. And in more ways than one, too. You have a lot of f**kin’ things to worry about. Like whether or not you’ll be able to breathe through another day if some deranged lunatic takes the only person on earth you can’t live without.

Brynne was that person for me. I needed her in order to live now.

And thankfully she was sleeping right now, undisturbed by my subconscious ravings and safe in the bed with me.

I breathed in deeply and told myself I could do this. I was getting better at separating the past from the fear of the unknown down the road in the future.

So I focused on her comforting scent and slid over to spoon up against her body, getting my face right next to her hair on the pillow, where I could breathe in the intoxicating smell of floral and citrus that belonged uniquely to her.

I rested my hand over her belly which had grown more since our honeymoon, but still didn’t look very big to me—just a curved mound where she used to be very flat. Eighteen weeks along and we now had a sweet potato according to the TheBump.com, which was bookmarked in “favourites” on all my devices. I liked knowing what to expect.

Brynne didn’t want to know the sex of our baby. And we didn’t know yet anyway because it was still too early to tell, but she amazed me with her ability to wait for something that most people would beg to find out, if the information was available. She said she wanted to be surprised. I had to respect that. Plus, if I did know, I would undoubtedly f**k up and ruin the surprise anyway, and then I’d be in massive trouble. Better if both of us were in the dark about whether we had a Thomas or a Laurel coming.

Either one would be perfect.