“Nate,” she whimpers.

“I know, Ember, but I need to explain myself and I need you to be honest with not only me but yourself after I do. Got it?”

She relaxes her body but only marginally.

“For months and fucking months, I’ve woken up from the same dream. I’m with a soft and willing woman hot for me against a wall. My eyes never open in the dream, but even then, your face and scent filled my senses. I had never pictured anyone but you. I would wake up with the scent of lemon and wildflowers so strong in my nose that I was convinced it was real, but it always ended the same. Me opening my mouth and asking that woman’s name.”

With every word that leaves my lips, I watch as she struggles, and loses, the fight to control her emotions. When the first tear slips over her lids, I want to kick my own ass. Hell, by the time the second one spills over, I was ready to call her dad myself and tell him I was ready to take what he had to give me.

“When you,” she starts but has to pause when a giant hiccupping breath steals her words. “You didn’t even see me, Nate.”

“Baby, I was so drunk, I didn’t even see me. Even in that damn dream, I’m aware of how drunk I am.”

“When you pulled my arm as I was coming back from the restroom, I was startled at first because I didn’t know who it was. It was so dark on that side of the house, but the shadows you pulled me into made it almost impossible to see. But then you grumbled something about not being able to wait any longer. I thought you knew, Nate. You said you couldn’t wait to have me, and I thought you knew!” she screams and drops her head down on my shoulder. She turns, resting her forehead against my neck before she continues to speak. “The second you said those words and pushed me up against the wall, I didn’t even care that I was about to have sex for the first time with my family and closest friends around me in the middle of the shadows. None of that mattered because it was you, and I knew that I would be safe. Then …” She sucks in a stuttered breath. “Then in the same second I thought I would die of happiness, you pushing your thickness inside me just a bit—a place no man had ever been—you asked me who I was. There I was experiencing the best moment of my life with the man I had loved forever, and he didn’t even know who he was about to fuck. That. Killed. Me.”

“God, baby.” I exhale through the pain her words inflict on me.

“Then after I pushed you away, you just fell to the ground like nothing had happened. I can’t tell you what you did after that because I was too busy running away as fast as I could. Which, awkwardly for me, just happened to put me on a collision course with my own father. It was the worst moment of my life, Nate.”

Her breathing continues to come in choppy gasps as I hold her tightly to me with my arms wrapped around her back. I never would have believed that damn dream was just a drunken memory. Had I known, fuck, I would never have let this much time go—the hurt fester—without making it right. Now, I’m not even sure how to fix this.

“I understand now,” she says with a hitch to her breath. “It doesn’t take away all of the pain it caused, but it goes a long way in dulling it.”

“I’m so sorry,” I lament. “It sounds like a weak thing to say, I know that, but fuck, I am … so sorry.”

She pushes off my chest and lifts herself until her face is level with mine. You would never know she had even shed one tear. Most chicks I know turn a hundred different shades of swollen red when they’re crying but not Ember. Her face is just slightly flushed, but other than her wet eyelashes, you would never know.

“I’m terrified, Nate, honestly terrified. If what you say is true and looking back on painful memories only makes that hurt grow, then I need to get over it. But I don’t know how. In my head, I’m convinced that you’re just going to drop me if I blink too long. My heart, though, is telling me to wrap myself around you and never let go. I feel like I’m being torn in two different directions.”