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.
Genre: Romance
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.
Genre: Romance
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