Lucy shakes her head. “That man wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’ve known him for a lot of years, Aspen. He only hurts himself.”

Sawyer walks into the kitchen and eyes the bottles of wine Lucy’s holding.

“Lucy offered us a drink and her back porch so you can get whatever this is off your chest.”

“It’s time,” Lucy tells him. “It’s long overdue and you know it.”

He nods his head silently, grabs the bottle of red wine from her and then we head out back.

Lucy hands me the glasses and shuts the door behind us, smiling at Sawyer in encouragement before she walks away. I’m so confused I can’t think straight. Is Lucy his mother and Daniel his brother? I know it couldn’t be so, unless he’s been lying to me all this time. And the butterfly thing – surely he didn’t make that up.

We sit down on the porch swing and the wood creaks as if it hasn’t been sat on in a while. Sawyer opens the screw-top wine and pours us each a hefty glass. Then he proceeds to drink half of his in silence.

It’s killing me knowing he’s got something weighing on him like this. I can tell he wants to talk. He probably even needs to talk. My guess is that nobody knows his secret outside of the people in this house.

“My dad loved my mom as much as I’d ever seen a man love a woman,” he says.

I nod my head, thinking the exact same thing about my parents.

“Then again, I was ten,” he says. “I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know that all men didn’t hit their wives.”

My heart falls into the pit of my stomach when I realize what he’s telling me. “Oh, Sawyer.” I look back into the house to see Lucy busying herself in the kitchen. “Is that your mom? Did she have to run away and change her identity?”

I try to grab his hand, but he pulls away.

He laughs sadly. “No. Lucy’s not my mother. I told you my mother is dead.”

“But then who is she? Who’s Danny?”

He takes another long swig of wine. “It got worse over the years, my dad hitting my mom. She always defended him. She told me he loved her so much he couldn’t help it. She said everything he did was to keep her safe. She said she loved him, too. I couldn’t understand why. When she turned up with fresh bruises and a smile on her face, I was so confused. Did she like what he was doing to her?”

“Sawyer – what does this have to do with Danny?”

“You need to let me finish, Aspen. Please. I’ve never told this to anyone and it’s hard for me. You have to let me do it my way.”

I nod my head. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

I’ve never seen so much pain on a person’s face. This man – this big, strong athlete – is letting everything out. He’s finally opening up to me. This could be the turning point for us. The moment he realizes his feelings for me are stronger than his past.

“My father killed my mother,” he says.

I look over at him in horror, tears welling in my eyes. I grab his hand. This time he lets me. I have a million questions, but I don’t ask any of them. Like he said, he needs to do this his way.

“Her official cause of death was multiple major organ damage from an accidental fall. I never even saw her death certificate until I found it after my dad drank himself to death a few years ago. I always wondered what they listed as her cause of her death. It should have been ‘being pushed down the stairs by her son-of-a-bitch husband.’ But there was never a mention of any abuse in her medical records. They hid it well. She hid it well.”

He puts down his glass and touches his rib cage where his tattoo is. “I should have known she was miserable. How could any person endure what she did and not be? But I guess she was afraid of what would happen to me if she tried to leave him. We were poor. She would have had no way to hire an attorney. I guess she thought that if my dad was hitting her, he wouldn’t have to hit me. And she was right, because after she died, I became his punching bag.”

My hand goes to cover my mouth. “Oh, Sawyer,” I cry.

He shakes his head. “Don’t feel too sorry for me. It didn’t last long. I was fast and could usually outrun him. I’d hide somewhere in the neighborhood and wait to go home until he left for work. By the time I was thirteen, I was almost as big as he was. He’d try to hit me, but I wouldn’t let him. By the time I was fifteen, I got the courage to hit back.”

“You were fast even then,” I say, with an elbow to his rib in an attempt to lighten the mood.

He laughs a painful laugh. “Hell, he’s probably the reason I’m such a good sprinter. But never in a million years would I admit he has anything to do with my success in baseball.”

I zip my lips. “Your secret is safe with me.”

He appraises me silently. “Are all my secrets safe with you?”

“Yes.” I nod reassuringly. “They are.”

He studies me, gauging the truth to my words.

“I promise,” I say, squeezing his hand in encouragement.

He draws in a deep breath. Then he blows it out. Then he takes another drink. Then he looks anywhere but at me. “I’m the reason Danny is the way he is.”

I narrow my eyebrows in confusion. “I … I don’t understand.”

He still won’t look at me as he continues to explain. “Being around my dad, fighting was all I knew. I got suspended three times for fighting in middle school. And in high school, it happened so often, they threatened to kick me off the baseball team. Anyone else would have been. But I was their star player and the coach was always able to convince them to give me another chance.

“Danny wasn’t always the way he is now. He was a baseball player, too. A teammate of mine.”

He glances at me briefly to see how shocked I am. I’m stunned. Danny doesn’t seem like he could have ever played organized sports.

“We were hanging out at a place on the coast called Silver Sands. There was a boardwalk there that ran from the beach to the state park. It was a drinking place for local high school students, but it was new enough that the cops hadn’t caught on yet.

“Danny and I, we …” He looks back into the house, choking on his words. “We had a disagreement about what happened in the game we had played earlier that night. He played second base and I played short. We lost the game because a hit made it past both of us, going right between where we were standing. Each of us claimed it was the other’s ball.

“Danny and I weren’t such great friends to begin with. We were always butting heads over something. But we hung out with a lot of the same people and always ended up at the same place somehow. And once we started drinking that night, our argument got worse. And in true Sawyer Mills fashion, we got into a fight.”

His eyes close. He pulls his hand away from mine. “We got into a fight and that’s why he is the way he is.”

My heart sinks for him. For Lucy. For Danny. I don’t even know what to say.

“And to make matters even worse, he was right all along. It was my fucking ball.”

I can’t imagine what he must be going through carrying that burden all this time. But I still don’t understand what that has to do with me and why he can’t have a relationship.

“Can I talk now?” I ask.

He nods.

“I know you must feel incredibly guilty over that. And I realize that maybe you think you should have done something to save your mom, too, even though you were only ten and you couldn’t have. But, Sawyer, what does that have to do with us? I know it’s an incredibly selfish question considering what you just told me, but I need to know.”

He gets up off the swing and paces around the porch. “What does it have to do with us? It has everything to do with us. I hit people, Aspen. It’s what I do. It’s how I grew up. It’s all I know. I’ve told you since day one that I’d hurt you. And now you know why.” He motions to the house. “If that isn’t evidence enough for you, I don’t know what is.”

“Do you love me?” I ask.

He stops walking and stares at me.

“Do you love me, Sawyer?” I ask again.

“That’s irrelevant,” he says.

“Irrelevant? It’s the most relevant thing there is. You do. I can tell you do. You were even going to say it earlier. It’s why you ran away. You love me, Sawyer. You won’t hit me.”

“Ha!” he belts out, with a painful laugh. “Were you not listening to me? My dad loved my mom, Aspen. He loved her to death.”

“But you’re not him.”

“I’d hurt you,” he says. “Not a lot at first. Maybe just a strong hold on your elbow as I drag you behind me, or a swift push to get you to go where I want you to go. But eventually, those holds and pushes would turn into more. They would turn into slaps, and then punches, and then” —his voice breaks— “pushes down a flight of stairs.”

“That won’t happen,” I say. “I won’t let it.”

“Neither will I,” he says, with distant eyes.

My heart starts to break for the umpteenth time.

“I already hurt you once,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“The elbow to your face that night on the couch.”

“That wasn’t you hurting me, Sawyer. That was an accident.”

“See – that’s what they all say. Is that what you’ll tell the doctor when I take my fist to your face?”

I shake my head at him in confusion. I’ve known this man for four months and I’ve never seen him raise a hand to anyone. I’ve seen him get mad, infuriated even, but never once has he hit anything but a wooden door. And I’ve done hours of research on him. Never was there a mention of a violent past. Surely if he still got into fights, it would hit the news.

“So you’d rather throw this all away than take a chance on us?”

He nods. “If it keeps you safe. Yes.”