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I can’t shake the knife edge of danger that jabs me, just like the old and new guilt which has tainted my life down to the bone.
Blood stains from my actions. Guilt. Regret. They’re always with me, and now there’s an edge of danger telling me to run.
A shadow shifts and I shiver, right as a glass of amber liquid hits the table in front of me. There’s the watch, now up close, and it’s an A. Lange & Söhne. This man is beyond rich flashing a watch like that.
I slowly raise my eyes.
Shock ricochets through me as I meet hard, cold eyes the color of whiskey. The mouth isn’t smiling, but it’s familiar. As is the man himself.
The bottom falls from my world.
It’s him.
The punk of a drug dealer who was responsible for my brother’s death.
The guy I tried to kiss when I was fourteen, before I knew what he was about to do to my family.
Even now, almost ten years later, my cheeks burn with that humiliation, the rejection.
Then I discovered the deception. He wasn’t my brother Jaxson’s friend. He sold him drugs. And I turned him into the police.
The chain of tragic events that followed rest on his shoulders.
I hate him.
Despise him.
Mercer. That’s his name. Mercer.
And dammit, he’s even better looking than I remember.
He smiles, and it’s a blast of heat to my insides. Like something from the more evocative corners of hell. I try and pull away but can’t.
He’s holding me there.
And not by touch.
The expression in his face, the unwavering power of his stare.
He probably doesn’t recognize me. This isn’t the same Mercer I remember. The one back then was maybe early twenties, hungry, poor. He had a devious edge. And he used my brother, got him hooked on the drugs that my sister Elise found.
And I—did the right thing. I called the cops. Mercer got arrested, my brother enlisted in the military, and then the accident happened. Everything went straight to hell for my family.
Now it’s just me and Elise. My little sister wears the scars of that hell, along with my own mistakes, on her body. She’s only eighteen.
My hand clenches on the table as he sits, right against me, the heat from his body snaking around me.
I don’t look like the skinny fourteen-year-old anymore.
He doesn’t know who I am. Although, how he knows Cara?—
Actually, I don’t care.
The other Mercer had fire in his veins that drew me in like a stupid little moth.
This one is ice, he’s hard. And commanding. That electric pulse I felt earlier runs through me, this time amped up.
“You should probably thank me.” His breath is hot against my skin. The light of the place, a low gold, hits his dark hair just right and gives him the appearance of a fallen angel.
