“No, what you saw was me being a guy. I didn’t think you felt more than friendship for me, so when Delany came on to me, I took the chance. I don’t love her. She loves herself enough. She was just a distraction.”

“What?” I repeated. “You . . . you touched her breasts and her thigh. I saw your tongue in her mouth.”

River winced as if that pained him. “I hate that you saw that. But I’ll never do it again. I swear to God. If you love me, Addy, then I’m yours. I’ve been yours for years.”

Captain

She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and without those large frames covering her face, I could see her eyes clearly. Eyes that had haunted me for years. She had changed her hair color, but that was Addy’s face. Just the grown-up version. How had I missed it?

Because I hadn’t believed she was alive. I’d never looked at her hoping to see Addy.

“Addy,” I said, simply needing her to assure me that I wasn’t hallucinating and this was real. She was real.

She stepped back from the door so I could come inside. “River,” she replied simply, and that was the only answer I needed.

All the questions I’d had on my way over here, when I was still afraid to believe that Rose was Addy, vanished. I couldn’t form words. The best thing I could manage was “How?”

Addy closed the door once I was inside and turned to look at me. “How what? How did I find you?”

Find me? She’d been looking for me? It had been ten years. I shook my head. Yes, I wanted that answer, too, but first . . . “How are you alive?”

She frowned and studied me a moment, as if my question made no sense.

Did she not think that would be the first thing I’d want to know? Fuck, I’d thought she was dead for ten years of hell. If I’d had any idea she was alive, I’d have come after her. Found her. I had that kind of power with DeCarlo. Finding her would have been easy, but I’d seen what my mother had done to her.

“I don’t understand the question. I left without a word because I was protecting you from your mother. From me and the fate you’d be handed if I stayed. I saved us both, really. Why would you think I was dead?”

“Why would you leave? You knew you didn’t have to save me. I kept you safe, Addy, not the other way around. And I thought you were dead because my mother came home with a gun in her hands and blood on her clothes. She admitted to killing you and throwing your body into a lake, but she wouldn’t disclose the exact location. You never came home. I hoped she was lying, but you never came back. You never contacted me. I went to the police, and Mom was arrested and sent to a mental hospital, where she eventually took her own life. Fuck, Addy, I had every damn body of water in a hundred-mile radius dragged as soon as I had the money and power to do it. I wanted you properly buried.” My heart was pounding in my chest as I let the memories and the pain wash over me. But seeing her standing here was almost too much.

“The blood was mine,” she said quietly. But I knew that already. The cops had confirmed it. “She checked me out of school that day. I had asked the office to please call you to the office, but she’d been on her best behavior and explained that she didn’t want you disturbed because of my doctor’s appointment. So I went, although I knew there was no doctor’s appointment.

“She took me out of town and parked at the back of a parking lot at a bus station. Then she asked me how many times we’d had sex. I didn’t want to tell her. That crazy look was in her eyes, and I knew if I told her, she’d lose it. So I said once. She hit me across the face and busted my lip. Then she asked me again, and I told her three times. She hit me again. Then she asked me again. This went on five times, even though my answer stayed the same. I was bleeding badly by this time, and she shoved money at me and told me to get on a bus and leave and never come back. That I could be pregnant with your brat, and I wasn’t going to taint her name and yours.

“She said what we had done was dirty, and she wouldn’t have it. If I didn’t leave, she’d send me back into the system, and if I was pregnant, they’d take my baby away from me. My period was late. I hadn’t told you because I wasn’t sure if it was a concern yet, but hearing her tell me I’d end up losing not only you but our baby was enough to terrify me.

“I took the money and had started to get out of the car when she grabbed my arm and twisted it until I cried out. Then she said if I ever tried to contact you, she’d kill us both. I believed her. But when I could afford to check into things a couple of years later, I found out she was in a mental hospital. I just couldn’t find River Kipling anywhere. I never stopped looking, though.”

Fuck. I sat there listening to Addy’s words and not once questioning them. My mother had been insane, but I never once thought she had let Addy go. That she’d scared her and sent her running. I always thought her insanity had taken Addy’s life.

“You were just sixteen,” I whispered, afraid to hear how she’d survived and if Franny . . . if Franny was mine.

Addy nodded, but her face stayed tense. “It wasn’t easy. I was in a homeless shelter, getting a free meal, when the smell of turnip greens made me sick. The minister’s wife who had been helping to serve food immediately came to my side and helped me get cleaned up. Deborah Posey was my savior. She found out I was sixteen and alone and took me into her home. She bought me the pregnancy test that confirmed I was pregnant. I wanted to call you then, but the fear of losing you and the baby . . . I couldn’t do that to either of you.