BOOK 2

Sleep hadn’t come as easily for him, but rage had. He’d spent most of those years filled with it, promising vengeance on the man he felt had destroyed his mother’s happiness.

Mitch had vowed this, even as he continued to blame himself for what had happened to his happy little family. He knew damn well it would have killed his mother to know how much he believed the fault to be his. That he believed his father had left because of him.

But by then she’d sunk so far into her own loneliness and depression, she didn’t, or couldn’t notice.

Mitch had stayed angry and filled with the need for revenge for as long as he could, but the anger had eventually succumbed to sheer aloneness. He tried, desperately, to get his mother to crack the shell she’d put up around herself, to no avail.

In the end he’d been left to fend for himself, but he’d learned quickly enough. He’d gotten good at being alone, had even liked it.

Until Jussie had come into his life; sweet, caring, beautiful Jussie.

She’d reope