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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Rights Reserved

  About the Book

  To the bone...

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgements

  Tell Lili your favorite part!

  About the Author

  Also By Lili Valente

  A LOVE

  SO DEEP

  To The Bone

  Book Three

  By Lili Valente

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright A Love So Deep © 2016 Lili Valente

  Original Copyright One Perfect Love © 2014 Jessie Evans

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring bad boy alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs. Editorial services provided by Leone Editorial.

  About the Book

  Warning: Hold on tight for the red hot, adrenaline fueled conclusion to the To the Bone series.

  What we have is sacred, a bond forged by pain and pleasure, suffering and passion, and Gabe is right—nothing will tear us apart again. This is forever, for keeps, for the rest of our lives, no matter what the future holds.

  We just have to outsmart the powerful people determined to keep us apart.

  I’m prepared to fight our enemies, but I’m not prepared for him. For a monster wearing a friendly face, or the nightmare he’s determined to unleash.

  They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I say—over my dead body. They’ll have to pry forever out of my cold, clawed hands.

  A Love So Deep is the final book in the To the Bone series.

  “And softness came from the starlight

  and filled me full to the bone.”

  –W.B. Yeats

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gabe

  “Tis in my memory lock’d,

  And you yourself shall keep the key of it.”

  -Shakespeare

  Before I was diagnosed with an allegedly inoperable brain tumor and nearly died, I had no interest in the obituary page.

  I was young and immortal. I was going to live forever, go out in a blaze of glory, and I couldn’t care less how many unlucky people had the misfortune to die on a given week.

  After the surgery, I read the Giffney Gazette’s obituary page every Sunday morning, thumbing through the snapshots of lives lost as I linger over my coffee. It was only luck that kept me from gracing these pages. I feel obligated to read every entry, like I owe it to the people less fortunate than myself to read about the children and grandchildren they left behind, and the many adventures they had before they got old and set in their ways and hunkered down to waste the rest of their lives watching television.

  But until today, I haven’t known any of the recently deceased personally.

  When I read that Charles Edwin Cooney has died at age fifty-four, leaving behind five children, and one grandchild, I can’t say that I’m sad, but I feel the news. It hits me physically, tightening my throat, making my stomach clench around my second cup of coffee.

  Chuck is dead, and one more avenue to finding Caitlin is closed forever.

  Not like you’ve been looking too hard lately, anyway.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” My mother leans across the table, peering into my face, as attuned to my moods now as she has been since the moment I came out of surgery.

  I don’t remember my mother being this concerned about my emotional well-being last summer—or any of the twenty years before—but Deborah is clearly trying to make the most of our second chance. She’s determined to be the plugged-in parent she never was when I was growing up, no matter how irritating I find it, or how uncomfortable and strange this forced intimacy is for the both of us.

  “I’m fine,” I say, folding my paper in half. “Just read that Charles Cooney died.”

  I watch her face as she reacts, but her eyes are cool and unreadable, the way they always are when the Cooney name comes up in conversation. “Well, that’s sad.”

  “It is,” I say. “He was in his early fifties.”

  “That’s what hard living will do to a person,” my dad offers, not looking up from his own section of the paper, apparently unmoved by the news that my ex-girlfriend’s father is dead.

  According to my parents, they didn’t know Caitlin and I were dating last summer. I kept our relationship a secret from them, and they have no clue what happened to her, or why we ended things. They’re very convincing, but I know they’re lying. I remember sitting next to Caitlin at this very table, running my hand up and down the silky soft skin of her thigh, thinking about all the things I wanted to do to her as soon as we were free of my parents.

  But Deborah and Aaron don’t know I’m recovering my memories.

  Or that I was recovering them.

  Since the night I saw Caitlin with the bruises on her throat, I’ve done my best to let sleeping demons lie. I keep my thoughts in the present, and steer clear of places that remind me of Caitlin. I take a sleeping pill before I go to bed, and I fuck Kimmy with a certain degree of reserve, not wanting to lose control and swing too close to the edge of the chasm. I don’t want to glimpse the skeletons I sense are littering the ground on the other side. I’m afraid I’ll learn something about myself that will make the surgery, and all the days I’ve fought to recover, pointless.

  If I killed her, I don’t deserve to be alive.

  If I killed her, there is only one course of action I can take, and that would certainly be a waste, though I hear a good number of people like me do commit suicide. The post-operative fog, the feelings of alienation, and the sense that you will never be the person you were before—the person everyone in your life wants you to be so badly—is too much for a lot of people. They would rather check out, letting a bullet finish the job the tumor started.

  “You won’t go to the funeral will you?” Deborah asks, breaking into my thoughts.

  I shake my head. “Why would I?”

  Deborah looks flustered, but only for a second. By the time she speaks, her cool has returned. “Of course not.
Don’t know what I was thinking.” She smiles. “What about church? Are you joining us this morning? Might lift your spirits.”

  “My spirits are fine,” I say, forcing a smile. “And I think I’d rather worship in my own way today. I’ll probably take a ride, and meet you for lunch after.”

  My father chuckles. “I wish I could get away with worshiping in my own way.”

  “Your brand of worship involves way too much time on a fishing boat,” my mother says, taking another sip of her coffee. “You’re only home two days a week as it is. I’m not going to give up an entire day to the catfish in Lake Anderson.”

  “You could go with him,” I suggest, though it’s hard to imagine my perfectly pulled together mother baking in the sun on a fishing boat.

  Deborah raises one thin, blond brow. The dubious expression on her face makes me smile. Sometimes I like Deborah, even if she is a manipulative liar. Considering my own, checkered history, I’m not really in any position to judge.

  “Sorry, must have been the tumor hole talking.” I stand and circle the table, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “See you at noon.”

  “We’re going to Peabody’s on the square,” Deborah says, patting my arm. “The Jamisons are coming, and I’ve only got reservations for six, so don’t bring a guest.”

  I clench my jaw, biting back the smartass remark on the tip of my tongue. I know which “guest” Deborah is talking about, but there’s no point in getting into an argument about Kimmy. If Kimmy and I hadn’t run into my mother at the grocery store last week, Deborah never would have met my latest fling.

  Kimmy and I are fuck buddies, nothing more. I don’t plan on keeping in touch after I leave for school, and Kimmy doesn’t even know how long she’ll be in town. She has a six-month lease, and a job as a cocktail waitress, but no real ties to Giffney. This is just the place she ended up when her money for bus fare ran out. She has dreams of moving home to Louisiana and opening a fabric store, and I have dreams of going back to the university, picking up where I left off, and pretending this long, strange detour never happened.

  Or at least that’s one of the lies I tell myself.

  What I really want is something very different.

  What I want is for this hole inside of me to be filled up with something. Someone. I want to know Caitlin wasn’t a dream, and that I’m not a monster.

  And so, when I hear my parents’ car pull down the driveway on their way to church, I don’t go to the barn to saddle my horse. I head down to the Beamer and drive into town, across the railroad tracks, to the ranch house where Caitlin used to live.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Gabe

  I pull slowly around the cul-de-sac and park behind a silver Toyota Camry I don’t recognize from similar drive-bys. It’s an older car, but in good condition, with Florida plates and a bumper sticker that reads “Progress not Perfection.” The driver’s side door opens and a feminine foot wearing a shiny white sandal emerges.

  Not wanting to get caught spying on the Cooney house, I’m about to start the car and pull away, when the rest of the woman emerges, and the world tilts on its axis.

  I’m certain that it’s her—Caitlin Cooney, alive and well. The long blond hair is the same shade of honey and caramel, and the slim build achingly familiar. For a moment, relief floods through my body, turning my insides to liquid, but then the woman turns, and my hope goes swirling down the drain.

  The hair is the same, but this woman is taller, with an oval face instead of the heart-shaped one I was expecting. She is beautiful, but she isn’t Caitlin, and judging by the wedding ring on her finger and the baby bump beneath her flowered sundress, she’s not a candidate for my Summer of Blondes, either.

  Still, as she turns to look at the Cooney house, there is something in the slope of her nose that is so familiar I feel compelled to learn who she is.

  I pull the keys from the ignition and step out of the car. When my door slams, the woman’s head jerks in my direction, but the anxiety in her expression vanishes when our eyes meet. I may secretly be a monster, but good looks, charm, and an expensive haircut ensure I’m not the sort who frightens women when I show up behind them on the street.

  “Hi,” she says. “Are you here for the wake?”

  I shake my head. “No, but I’m a friend of the family.” I hold out my hand. “Gabe.”

  “Aoife,” she says, one hand fluttering to her chest before she takes mine and gives it a quick squeeze. “I’m the kids’ oldest sister.”

  I nod, concealing my surprise. So this is the older sister who ran off with her drug-dealer boyfriend, leaving her two-month-old baby behind. This is the woman whose disregard for her responsibilities forced Caitlin to drop out of school, lose her scholarship to an exclusive college preparatory program, and take over raising her niece and three little brothers when she was only seventeen years old.

  And now Aoife is back, pregnant again, and wearing a wedding ring…

  Getting to the bottom of the prodigal big sister’s sudden return would have been enough to convince me to stick around for a few more minutes, even if, at that moment, a van hadn’t pulled into the Cooney driveway and slammed on its brakes.

  Aoife and I both turn toward the new arrival as the driver’s door slams with a sharp whump, and a redhead, with wild curls and wilder eyes, rushes around the front of the vehicle. She makes it halfway across the patchy grass of the front yard before she staggers to a stop, her jaw dropping as she shakes her head slowly back and forth.

  The girl looks familiar, and I’m about to say hello, when she shouts—

  “Holy fucking shit!”

  Aoife jumps, startled, and I take a step in front of her, not sure what’s wrong, but certain it must have something to do with me, since this woman can’t pull her eyes away from my face. I’m assuming we must have a past—maybe I had a thing for redheads before Caitlin and I got together—when the woman lets out a hysterical burst of laughter.

  “You’re alive,” she shouts, pulling in a breath that emerges as a sob. “You’re fucking alive. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  The van’s side door slides open, and a sleepy voice from inside asks, “What’s wrong, Sherry?”

  I hear that voice, and my heart stops.

  Time slows to a crawl.

  It feels like it takes hours to turn my head, an eternity for my gaze to shift from the redhead’s face to the face of the woman emerging from the van. And then I meet her eyes—pale green eyes above a freckled nose and full lips I’ve dreamed about kissing too many times to count—and I forget how to breathe.

  It’s her, standing on the cracked driveway in wrinkled khaki shorts and a pale, yellow tee shirt. It’s Caitlin. She’s here. She’s here and real and beautiful and alive. So alive, I can smell her smoke and spice scent drifting across the yard, and swear I hear her pulse race as she meets my gaze and a hundred emotions fly across her face.

  Shock is followed closely by confusion, pain, and then a look of joy so naked it feels like an invasion of privacy to watch it light up her features. I should look away, but I can’t. I’m afraid to look away, afraid to blink, for fear that by the time I open my eyes, she will have vanished all over again.

  “Gabe?” The word bleeds hope, her voice so raw it’s painful to hear.

  Yes, I want to say. Thank God you’re okay. But I can’t seem to force my lips to move.

  “Gabe?” she repeats before I can recover the ability to speak. “Please, say something.”

  “Yes,” I say, voice breaking in the middle of the word.

  I know I should say more. I should tell her everything I’ve thought and felt and feared for the past year, but I don’t know how to start. I should go to her, pull her into my arms, and show her how fucking relieved I am to see her, but I can’t seem to take a step forward. All I can do is stand at the edge of the street, staring, feeling like my heart is splitting open and Caitlin is rushing in to banish the emptiness that’s been with me since the surgery.


  Only now, looking into her eyes, do I realize that the hole inside of me is in the exact shape of this girl, and that—even more than my lost memories—it is the loss of her that has made me feel so incomplete.

  “It’s really you,” she whispers after a long, silent moment, shaking her head back and forth like she still can’t believe it. “Oh my God. Oh…my God.”

  Her hands fly up to cover her mouth as she bursts into tears. She cries like a dam breaking, like a tidal wave rushing toward the shore. Her tears are terrifying, and some part of me realizes they’re dangerous, even before she starts gasping for breath.

  “Caitlin, are you okay?” The redhead starts toward Caitlin, but before she takes two steps, Caitlin’s eyes roll back and her knees buckle. She hits the ground with a muffled thud that is apparently what I needed to jolt my body into action.

  I lunge forward, jumping onto the sidewalk and sprinting across the grass. I kneel next to Caitlin and gather her limp body into my arms, heart slamming against my ribs as a dark voice inside my head insists I’ve killed her.

  I know it’s not true; I know she’s only fainted. I know it the way I know that fairy tales don’t come true, and a kiss never brought a beautiful girl back from the dead. But still, I’m terrified that I’ve lost her all over again, and the only thing I can think to do is kiss her, so I cradle the back of her head in my palm, and press my lips to hers.

  For a long moment, there is nothing but softness, and the faint pressure of her teeth, firm against my lips, but then her breath rushes out. Her eyelashes flutter against my cheek, and her arms twine around my neck. She pulls me close with a strength that’s surprising, and kisses me with enough passion to light a city through an endless winter.

  She kisses me, and I am the one brought back to life.

  The moment her tongue slips between my lips, I remember the way it was with us, the way she made me feel so fucking alive, vibrating at a frequency so high and sweet it can only be heard by magical creatures and people who are purely, desperately, endlessly in love.