Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(43)

The only heroic task I’d ever performed was forcing myself out of that bed. It’d felt right, being there with her. Like it was the way it was supposed to be.

Our cruise ship’s worth of baggage aside, Willow would have been the perfect woman for me.

Smart, beautiful, funny, and incredible with my daughter were the obvious things.

But she was also a soothing warmth to my cold, guilt-ridden soul.

She understood me on levels no one else could.

And most of all, I had faith that if I’d just let her in, she could teach me to forgive myself too. That could be her heroic task.

Ian wasn’t wrong about my confusion. I’d yet to be able to land on any kind of solid emotion I felt for her; that pendulum inside me swung hard and fast.

But there was one common thread that ran through all the boxes I kept this woman in.

I loved her.

I loved her as Willow, the girl from the mall.

I loved her as Hadley, the woman who’d traced her fingers over my tattoo and cried in my arms.

I loved her as Rosalee’s family—the one who’d cared enough to give up everything she had to be a part of my daughter’s life.

The mountain to any kind of future together was tall and the terrain grueling. But I wanted to try.

However, Willow wasn’t the only one who had secrets. And if there was any hope of starting over with her, of building a foundation that didn’t revolve around my father or her sister, we needed to start fresh.

But before we could be strangers, she needed to know the real Caven Lowe.





Eighteen years earlier…



“Get in the fucking car!” Trent yelled as he skidded to a stop on the gravel outside the trailer we shared with our father.

I dove through the window when I heard Malcom behind me, yelling, “You are dead! Do you fucking hear me? Dead.”

My legs were still dangling out the window as Trent peeled out.

“Jesus, Cav,” he rumbled, grabbing the back of my shirt and dragging me the rest of the way in.

My face was covered in dirt, and my ribs ached from rolling around on the floor and fighting with my father.

He’d caught me in his room. I’d needed a fucking clean undershirt to wear to work, but what I’d found was a soft spot on the linoleum in the back of his closet.

One that turned out to be a secret compartment containing a stack of Polaroids.

All pictures of dead bodies.

Watersedge was a relatively small town depending on what socioeconomic clique you ran in. Ours was the bottom of the barrel, a rather large sect, but struggling people tended to know the names of who else was struggling too.

Derrick Grath had struggled a lot before he’d been found dead on his back porch, a needle on the floor beside him.

Sara Winters was another one who’d had a rough go at things. She’d been found at the base of Manner Rock, her death ruled a suicide.

Travis Glenn was a friend of mine’s dad. He was a dick. A lot like my dad. So, whether he’d been struggling or not, no one cared. That is until he’d gotten so drunk that he’d drowned in his own damn bathtub.

Shit happened in our community. People were idiots, using the little money they did have to buy drugs or booze. I could have listed at least a dozen other people who had met their untimely demise over the last ten years.

But none of that would explain why my father had a Polaroid of each and every one of their dead bodies.

Derrick facedown on his porch.

Sara’s limbs bent at stomach-revolting angles.

Travis underwater, his dead eyes wide open.

And those were just the people or places I’d recognized in the stack of photos.

No one should have had pictures of that shit. Derrick had been found by his mother, Sara by the police, and Travis by his son.

No one should have had pictures of those people. Especially not beneath the linoleum in their closet, literal skeletons hidden from the world.

But my father did.

He was crazy, abusive, and narcissistic to the point of delusions. I was fifteen and working, saving up every penny I made at the Pizza Crust, and biding my time until I could get out on my own. Trent was going to school and only came home when he couldn’t find a girl with an apartment he could shack up with for the night. We hated our father, but I’d never thought he was capable of what I’d seen in those pictures.

However, his reaction when he’d walked into the room and seen what I was holding said otherwise.

No words were spoken before he tackled me to the floor, my side hitting his dresser on the way down. Trent was there, and he attempted to wade into the melee, but my dad shoved him out of the way as I took off toward the front of the house. He caught me as I pulled the front door open, taking me back down to the ground, half in, half out of our piece-of-shit trailer. He was a fucking rabid dog, taking every kick and punch I threw at him. He finally got his hands around my neck, trying to choke the life out of me, but through it all, I clung to those pictures.

I wasn’t going to be another photo to add to his stack.

Adrenaline had thundered inside me, and with a hard buck, I’d been able to knock him off me, just long enough to jump off the front steps and dive directly into Trent’s waiting car.

“He killed them,” I panted, throwing the pictures into his lap as he pulled onto the main road. “I know he did. Why else would he have pictures of people who supposedly committed suicide?”