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“Are you mistaking me for someone with a heart?” I aim for a joking tone and miss by a longshot. “I left my grandmother two months after my granddad passed. I was her only other family...and I left. Like a coward.”
Shit. Why did I say that?
The sincerity shines out of Hannah’s eyes like she’s turned into a fucking Care Bear. I don’t want her to look at me like that. I’m not a person to be saved. Hell, I’m not a person to be loved. I operate best in the middle ground between friend and acquaintance.
“Why did you go? I’m not buying the whole ‘I’m chasing a whim’ thing.”
“You don’t need to buy it because I’m not selling it.”
Nobody from my police force days is aware of my past, except for the people who run the psych evaluations and the superiors who looked over my file before I entered the academy. I haven’t told a single person unless it was absolutely, one-hundred-percent necessary. Not even Max knows, and he’s the closest friend I’ve ever had.
“You were missed,” she says quietly, almost as if reflecting to herself. “By a lot of people.”
“By you? I thought you hated my guts.”
“I did...for a bit.” She leans against the railing and tilts her head up at me—all lashes and big brown eyes and a sweet expression that’s softer than anything I’ve seen from her before. “It’s hard not to hate the guy who made you a laughing stock.”
“You were hardly a laughing stock.”
“Really?” She pushes back up to a standing position and folds her arms. “Let me see if I remember this correctly. You snuck into my room, found my diary and decided to do a dramatic reading to a bunch of my peers.”
“Firstly, I didn’t sneak into your room. I was visiting Vanessa and she opened the door. Secondly, it wasn’t like I had to scavenge for the damn thing. It was right there on your nightstand...in a box. Under a picture frame.”
Okay, fine. It had been hidden and I’d hunted it out.
Hannah rolls her eyes. “And how do you explain busting open the lock, huh? Did it fall off when you picked it up because your hands are so strong no metal can withstand your grip?”
I laugh and the feeling drives all the way through me, loosening my muscles. Thawing the ice cage around my heart. She always had that effect on me. It’s hard not to like a girl who can make you laugh from down deep.
“I may have encouraged it to open,” I reply. “With a paperclip.”
“You picked the lock on my diary like a ten-year-old boy!” She’s blushing again and I know we’re thinking about the same thing.
Hannah Anderson, who’d always seemed like this straitlaced, buttoned-up good girl, had been harbouring some dark and dirty thoughts...about me. At the time, I didnotexpect to see my name on those pages. She’d always acted like I was a bug to be swatted. Or some gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
When I decided—in my young, stupid brain—that it would be a good idea to read her diary, I had not planned to make it a show. But my roommate had caught me, demanded to know who it belonged to and rounded up a bunch of guys to listen in. Ineverdivulged Hannah’s name. Ever.
But someone obviously figured it out.
“Do you remember what it said?” she asks. She’s luminous under the moonlight and street lamps, her dress glimmering through the gap between her coat lapels. That peek of bare skin is everything and nothing—the best kind of tease.
I want him. Even though I don’t truly know what wanting is because I’ve never slept with anyone before. But I want to send everyone away for one night—just one—so I can lose everything I have to him. I want to know what it’s like to be fucked. Will it hurt? Will he lie with me afterward? I have no idea if I’m even on his radar. Owen could have any girl here, but I want him to haveme. Hard.
The words were forever imprinted on my brain. They’d circled like vultures, preying on my sanity and concentration. The night she’d come to me after we graduated, with sooty eyes like blackened pits, my fucked-up brain hadn’t been able to shut out the darkness. The second I started to feel anything about Hannah, all I could think about was the dead girl I’d loved more than anything else.
“You do remember,” she says. “You just weren’t interested.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t like that. I only took the damn diary because I wanted to know more about you and being a dumb kid, I didn’t think I could ask.” He shook his head. “I never meant for anyone else to see the pages.”
“Water under the bridge now,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not like it stopped me doing anything I wanted to do...well, not most things anyway.”
I don’t respond to the innuendo hanging in the air. We shouldn’t be talking like this—not when we’ve got shit to do and a case to close and not when I’m leaving the second it’s all over. “Nothing will ever stop you, Anderson. You’re a force.”
“Why do you say sweet things like that when I’d rather you say something dirty?”
My head snaps toward her. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Why?”
