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“You don’t tell me very much,” he answered. “I know that you lived with your grandma and your aunt because something happened to your parents, but I don’t know what it was. You got bitten by a dog but you won’t say how it happened. You went to California and got robbed, but I don’t know what else happened there. How did you end up with that asshole Damian? And now I know that you were using an alias. That’s about it.”

It seemed like enough. More than enough. We got into his car and I backed out of the spot before I spoke again. “I didn’t think that old stuff like that mattered.” And often, it was easier to go along with things—to lie. “What else do you want to know?”

“What’s important?” he asked.

I had to think for minute. “I’m really Rainey, that’s true. When I moved into Damian’s house, Millie said that my name was depressing and that Roxy was sexier. I had already picked a new last name because I saw the word ‘Desjardins’ on a sign and I liked it better. So then, I was Roxy Desjardins. When I met you, I switched to Rainey again. I don’t think it’s depressing but I do think it’s dumb when my last name is Stormer. That’s real, too. I don’t have a middle name.”

“Mine is Johnny. That could possibly be the name of my father, but most likely it’s because my mom liked that kind of whisky. Who were your parents?”

“For a long time, I didn’t know who either of them were,” I said. “I lived with foster families when I was a baby but I don’t remember that. Then I got adopted, but it didn’t work.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“The dad went to prison and the family fell apart. There were six of us, two bio kids and four that had come out of the system. The mom was trying to sign us all away and it was a whole thing, but then she OD’d so it was over,” I told him.

“Hell. How old were you?” Callum asked, and I answered that I had been twelve when I’d left that house for the last time. “If you went to them as a baby, you spent a long time with that family. You lost your siblings and parents.”

I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t like that. I was glad to go. When I did, I got a new identity, my third one and I was only twelve,” I said. “They had called me Frances and I used their last name, but they hadn’t officially changed it and I didn’t want any of that anymore. I looked at my original birth certificate and saw that at first, I had been Rainey. I picked the last name Lovergirl to go with it. At the time, I thought it was really cute.”

“Rainey Lovergirl. I’m not sure.” But for the first time, he was smiling slightly.

“I know, but I was twelve,” I reminded him. “And that didn’t last long.”

“If you have your birth certificate, at least you know who your real mother is,” he said.

“Not at first, because she had lied on it.” That was fraud, but she had avoided getting in trouble for that just like she had for everything else. “The truth came out, eventually, and because of that, I was able to move in with my grandmother. Grandma hadn’t known about me for a long time, not until years after I was born and by then, I had been adopted and she was having her own problems. But they must have contacted her when I needed a new placement as like, a reunification thing. Also, I’m sure it was easier to give me to a family member rather than having the state of Washington keep paying for me,” I reasoned. “I went to live with her and Aunt Simone and I was Rainey Stormer, like I had been back at the beginning.”

“So, it’s Rainey for real,” he said, and I nodded.

“I’m not very attached to Desjardins, either. I had to put Stormer on my résumé—Heidi told me not to use an alias.” I took a breath. “Is that it? Is that all you need to know?”

“I’m not going to interrogate you,” he answered. “I’m also not going to beg you to tell me stuff. If you don’t want to, you don’t.”

But I could see that if I didn’t, it would turn into a problem. He wasn’t saying so but I had spent a lot of time studying him—not because I was afraid of him, but because I wanted to make him the happiest person possible. And it was frustrating that I wasn’t sure what to do about this, because it had literally been my job to make a man happy for three, almost four years. I had done ok with Damian…

Or maybe not, since he’d left me and never looked back.

“Just tell me what you want to hear,” I said and Callum turned to look at me. “No, I didn’t mean that I would lie. If you could let me know the kind of stuff you’re after…for example, what’s my favorite snack food? Pretzels, but I pick off the salt because it makes my lips dry. Or, what’s my favorite season? Fall, and I missed it so much in Los Angeles because it flips from summer to winter with nothing in between. I really don’t like to dance but I had to do it all the time in clubs, so I’m not bad. I just don’t like it. I wish that I had taken more stuff out of my grandma’s house when I left and I wish that I still had it all and it hadn’t been stolen. I wish that I hadn’t gone on the press tour with Damian. I couldn’t stand him and I’ll never go back. I don’t want him to touch me, not ever again—”

I stopped abruptly and it was quiet in the car.

“I’m a spring guy, myself,” he said. He sounded calm. “I like watching the buds open up. And you know how I feel about tortilla chips.”

I did. He loved them and now that we had a real kitchen with storage, we had a whole shelf filled with bags.

“I’m not asking you to share your worst stories. Just tell me the truth,” he continued. “Ok?”

“Ok.”

He took one of my hands off the steering wheel and turned it over. “You’re all better.”

He must have meant my palm, where I had fallen and scraped it up when the dog had leaped on me outside of our condo. That was totally healed and I also felt a little better after telling him some of the things I’d been keeping back, like admitting to my real age and my real, dumb name. He hadn’t seemed angry about those lies but he’d been disappointed. And now, he was holding my hand.

I decided to keep going. “Sage DM’d me today. She was the other woman in Damian’s entourage, the one I thought was a friend. Kind of.”

“What did she want?”

“It seemed like she was just saying hello but I didn’t like how she found me. She sent it your account.”