Page 160 of Hard Bargain

He knew exactly what that felt like.

Chapter 42

Knox

Jacob slowed the SUV as they turned onto the private road leading to the house, headlights cutting toward the iron gate. There was a car parked directly outside it. Black. Engine off.

And a man leaning against it.

For one suspended moment, Knox only stared, not understanding what he was seeing. The image refused to make sense—too impossible, the kind of thing you conjured after midnight when missing someone became unbearable and your brain offered hallucinations as mercy.

Jacob stopped the car. “Who the hell is that?”

Knox was leaning forward between the front seats, his eyes locked on the figure beyond the windshield. “It’s Dominic,” he whispered.

His voice didn’t sound like his.

Liam twisted around. “That’s him?”

Knox couldn’t answer. His pulse slammed so hard it made his head spin. He was caught on the shape of Dominic in the dark, the familiar breadth of his shoulders, the way he stood as though the night itself had bent around him.

Waiting.

He’d been waiting for him.

The realization hit with such force Knox’s throat burned. He was out of the car before he knew he’d moved, gravel crunching under his shoes.

“Knox—” Jacob started.

He looked back just long enough to say, “I’m fine. Go to the house.”

It was a lie. His heart was hammering so hard his hands felt numb.

Jacob must have read something in his face, because after a long, searching look, he drove through the opening gate and the SUV disappeared up the drive.

Then Knox was alone.

Alone with the man he’d run from.

Four weeks he’d imagined this moment in a hundred different ways. None of them had prepared him for what it actually felt like to stand in front of him again. Every instinct told him to move closer; every fear begged him to run.

Twenty feet separated them, and he was afraid to take a single step. Afraid distance hadn’t lessened this thing but driven it deeper. Afraid one touch would unravel him so completely there’d be nothing left.

The quiet stretched until he could hear the blood moving in his ears. He swallowed and forced out words. “What are you doing here?”

Dominic pushed off the car and came toward him. Each step altered something in Knox’s body. His lungs forgot rhythm. His pulse stumbled. It was humiliating—how quickly his body yielded to the mere act of Dominic approaching.

“I came for you,” Dominic said.

“Why?” The word came out trembling and he hated it.

Dominic stopped close enough for Knox to see what distance had hidden. There were shadows beneath his eyes, fatigue at the corners of his mouth, a roughness Knox had never seen before. He looked… worn.

Words slipped out before he could stop them. “You let me go.” The hurt in his voice made shame follow instantly, the old insecurities rising ugly and fast.

“You foolish, wounded boy,” Dominic murmured. The tenderness in it was somehow more terrifying than anger would have been. “You really believe that?”

Knox’s pulse spiked. “What else am I supposed to believe?”