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“Sure,” I said, forking another bite of chocolate cake.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” my mother asked. She reached out a hand like she was going to feel my head for fever but then, perhaps recalling that I was twenty-two and not five, withdrew.

“I’m fine, Mom. It’s just been a long day.”

“Get some sleep then,” she said and retreated.

For a little while I sat there alone, listening to the sounds from the next room. There was a show on about rehabbing vintage motorcycles. My father’s voice murmured something and my mother laughed. They were nice sounds to hear, reminding me that I had grown up in a happy, sheltered home. But before this home existed other things had to happen first.

My mother had endured her own high school horror story when a boy she liked took her virginity on a dare and the whole town found out. The boy had grown up to be my father.

My parents were honest about their story so I knew about it. Not every single detail. There were things I would never know and that was fine. But I knew that Cord Gentry had suffered a tough journey in order to become the man who would someday be worthy of the girl he’d once wronged. There was a time when an outcome like that wouldn’t have seemed improbable to me. I wouldn’t have thought there was anything unusual about a callous small town jerk with a sketchy past making amends and turning his life around.

However, I was no longer an idealistic little girl. And I no longer trusted that the world was full of men like Cord Gentry.

I didn’t trust that idea at all.

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