Prologue

You can't truly know anybody. Not your friends. Not your neighbors.

Not your lovers.

Not even yourself.

I learned the last one the hard way. Harsh? Maybe. But once you truly understand how brutal the world is—how quickly the ground can be ripped out from under you—the easier it is to get from one day to the next.

You keep a tight lock on your heart.

You hold your secrets close.

And you look out at the world from behind a wall of glass bricks, so thick it's almost shatterproof.

Almost.

That's the tricky word. The hard lesson that nearly broke me.

Because despite everything I thought I knew—despite every rule I'd set for myself—I let him in. I let him get close. A man whose hands have caressed me. A man I fear I don't know at all. Who may have betrayed me in the most brutal of ways.

He is a mystery, and yet I let him hold my heart in his hands.

Now, I am fully at his mercy. And all I can do is hope that he is truly the man of my dreams… and not the tormentor who still hides in my nightmares.