Protect her.
Worst was the way my body reacted.
The girl had always been so far out of my league it wasn’t funny.
Better than me in every way.
Grace.
Beauty.
My guts clenched.
None of those things meant what I’d felt for her hadn’t been real.
It’d just been stupid.
Just like right then.
Because a streak of possessiveness flew through my veins like a goddamned drug.
Energy crashed through the air.
A torrent of emotion.
Resonating.
Pulsating.
An echo of the past.
Chocolate hair fell down her back in silky waves, and I swore to God, I could feel the warmth radiating from her spirit, all this devastating goodness paired with a body that was meant for sin. All long legs and tempting curves.
My sin.
Taking her was exactly what that had been.
Since the first time I’d seen her, this girl had held the power to drop me straight to my knees.
So stunning that I went stupid.
Time hadn’t had the power to alter that.
Because there was no stopping the lust that curled my guts with a need so intense I felt lightheaded.
Or maybe it was just the guilt that clotted the blood flow to my brain.
Sorrow clung to her like a disease.
I was responsible for that.
God. I was a bastard.
But I’d be a monster if I turned a blind eye. If I stayed in my cushy office back in Atlanta and pretended like none of this was going down.
I sucked down a breath and tried to steel my nerves.
I had a purpose.
A reason.
I just needed a motherfucking plan.
Three
Faith
I felt it.
Someone watching me from behind.
I should have been terrified of it after what had happened last night. I guessed in some way I was, but not in the way anyone might think.
I could feel it blazing from across the street. As if his stare was its own entity.
I should have known better than to look that way. But there was nothing I could have done, nothing that would have stopped me from shifting my gaze that direction.
Maybe I already knew what I would discover.
Knew who would be standing there like an apparition.
My mouth dropped open on a shocked gasp, the humid air gone, nothing but this blistering heat in its place.
My knees wobbled, and my hand shot out to the station wall to keep myself from falling.
My best friend Courtney was right there, always holding me up the way she did. She surged around to the front of me, brushing the hair back from my face.
“Are you okay? I know this is insane . . . crazy . . . what happened last night. But I promise you that no one is gonna let anything happen to you or Bailey. Do you understand?”
Of course, she’d mistaken my shock for fear, the dread coming off me in waves enough to pull me under.
And still, I couldn’t find any words to correct her. I could only stare, the entirety of my attention locked on the man who stood directly across the street.
Energy crashed, like lashes of the sun.
Searing as the strikes hit my skin.
I swore that just his presence in this town had to have sucked every molecule from the atmosphere.
It left my lungs empty and starvin’ for oxygen.
My chest stretched tight in pain.
This couldn’t be happening.
How could he show up here? After all this time? After everything?
Courtney frantically searched my face before she finally realized my attention was pinned in horror on something across the street.
She looked over her shoulder. Shock hit her, too.
Anger rushed through her being, and she clamped down her hold on my arm. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
My insides curled and clenched in the most intense kind of pain.
Old, old love that shouldn’t still exist.
All the hurt that went with it.
Every scar I’d prayed and prayed would heal.
I wasn’t sure I could take any more.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Courtney seethed.
Her green eyes darted back to me where I was pressed against the station wall, praying the bricks might swallow me up and let me disappear.
Sympathy was written over every inch of her face.
I hated that every time she turned around she was having to feel sorry for me.
“Stay right here, Faith. I’m going to take care of this.”
I swallowed around the bile that’d lifted in my throat, and I buried the sting of old wounds that had been ripped wide open.
Raw and fresh and aching.
I refused to feel this way. Trapped by the simple fact he was there.
He didn’t deserve it, and he was the last person I should be concerned about. The last person who deserved any of my thoughts or worries or questions.
I had real issues I had to deal with.
Disturbing, daunting issues.
Enough grief to keep me up for a thousand nights.
I grabbed Courtney’s arm right before she went storming across the road. “Please. Don’t. Just let it be.”
She looked back at me, her stylish brown ponytail that was set high on her head swishing around her pretty face. “I’m not gonna stand here and pretend as if that asshole didn’t show his face in this town. After all this time? After what happened? He has more nerve than anyone I know.”
She exhaled a sound of fury and her own hurt and grief—grief for me—and glared back at Jace.
Jace Jacobs.
The man took a step out of the shadows where he’d hidden along the wall on the other side of the street.
Right into the sun.
Oh God.
I wished he’d have remained concealed. Stayed just wisps and vapor that didn’t really exist. Wished with all my might that he wasn’t looking at me like that.
As if he knew me.
Remembered me.
It didn’t matter that he was at least a hundred feet away.
It felt as if he were standing right in front of me.
The rags he’d worn had been traded for a fitted, expensive suit. His once scruffy hair was short, styled in a sophisticated way around his unforgettable face, his beard short and trimmed and accentuating his strong jaw.
A shiver raced my spine and left a sticky, sick feeling that pooled in my gut.
A flash of that old, old love that I no longer could feel ricocheted in the depths of me. Through those dark, empty, vacant places.
It was a love I’d waited on for what had felt like forever before I’d given up and convinced myself that I had to move on before I lost myself totally.
Wholly.
I refused to call it settling.
I’d been happy. Content with a warm, comfortable love.
And there stood Jace, making me uncomfortable in his intense, potent way.
More gorgeous than he’d been. Taller and wider and older, and all of those things only made him that much more appealing.
Those eyes were fixated on me.
The color of a brand-new, shiny penny.
A coppered shimmer that ranged between red and brown and orange.
Familiar in a way I didn’t want them to be.
They watched me as if they knew me. Full of something dangerous and possessive and alive.
Soft with lies of apology.
I felt pinned beneath them.
Trapped.
Courtney clenched her jaw. “What an asshole. Someone needs to put him in his place. And his place isn’t here.”
I tore myself from his gaze and looked at her. “It doesn’t matter, Court. Let’s just go. The only thing I want is to pick up my daughter and go home. I’m exhausted, and I just want to hold her, know she’s okay.”
I’d dropped her at my parents’ house, the only place I felt secure enough to leave her before I’d come to the station.
They’d argued, wanted to be here for me.
I’d told them that the best thing they could do for me was watch my child, ensure she was safe, make her feel as if it were just any other day.
“Okay,” Courtney relented. “Let’s go get that sweet girl of yours and get you home.”
She took me by the inside of my elbow and tucked me to her side, as if she could guard me from any bad things coming my way.
I could feel them all around me.
Getting closer.
Growing stronger.
Eyes watching.
Energy pulsing.