Twisted Up in Him

Lilah

I'd been hurt enough times to know better than to believe in love.
Sweet I love you's always rotted into something sour, something spiteful-until I was discarded like I'd never mattered at all.

I kept my world dark on purpose. The only shining light in it was my daughter, my reason for breathing, my reason for surviving.

Everything else? I kept at arm's length.

Then he waltzed into my home and twisted me up. He took up space in my life and fixed things he didn't break-things I never wanted him to touch.

With every repair, I saw the truth more clearly. I wasn't just guarded. I was damaged.

And the cruelest part?

I was the one thing that Xander couldn't fix.

Xander

I learned control the hard way-it was beaten out of me, stripped from me, and used against me when I was captured in the war.

I took it back and claimed it as my own.

I came home to freedom, but found I'd lost everything that mattered. My wife-consumed by grief-had taken her own life. The guilt of her pain and the nightmares of my time in captivity never loosened their grip.

I drank to numb the pain. And learned to survive sobriety one brutal day at a time.

Then I met her.

Lilah didn't fear my darkness-she recognized it and embraced it. And for the first time since I lost my wife, since I lost myself, I felt alive again.

After everything I endured, I didn't want something gentle-I just needed someone to stand in the wreckage and not run away.