“It wouldn’t be the same way.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

I advanced toward him, touching my chest. “I am the only one who knows what you’re capable of, just like you’re the only one who’s seen me at my most vulnerable. You’ve seen me stripped bare. He could’ve done whatever he wanted. I was the most helpless that I’ll ever be in my life.” A ball grew in my throat.

The words didn’t want to come. Hell, I didn’t want to say them, but this was important. Everything in me was screaming to let this out. It needed to be said, and somehow, I hoped it would help him. Somehow, it had to.

“Kian,” I murmured, moving with caution toward him. I was nearing a cornered wild animal, one that was wounded. I needed to go so carefully. “You lost control with Edmund because he was hurting me. You stopped him. Losing control that day and losing control with me—they’re two very different things. This is something else. It’s life. What you did to Edmund was to punish him. You saved me. You ended a life. Two completely separate things.”

“I can’t ever hurt you.” He shook his head. “I was in prison for two years. Thinking of you…I wanted to be with you even then. You were the first thing I thought about when I got out. I could finally see you. I realized you were hiding, and I had to find you. It felt like it did in high school—” He bit off his next words.

What? I frowned. My voice was hoarse again. “Finish that sentence.”

He didn’t. He waited, holding my gaze steady.

“It felt like it did in high school,” I started for him. This was important, whatever he was holding back. “What about high school? How was it like in high school?”

His gaze was lidded as he watched me. There was yearning there, but anger sparked, too. It flamed up, and his jaw clenched once again, but he still said nothing.

I had to know. “Kian.”

“Nothing.”

“Kian.” I reached for him.

He brushed me off, retreating from the room. He’d moved with such litheness that I stopped from going after him. It hadn’t been a big movement, but it was how he’d moved.

I remembered how fast he’d sliced Edmund’s throat. At one moment, Kian had stared at me. I had seen the intent in his eyes, but before I could register it and say something or even consider saying something, it had been done. He’d held Edmund in front of him, his arm paralyzing Edmund against himself, and then his arm had slashed in one smooth motion. It had been done. Edmund had watched me, too, his eyes wild and frenzied. He had tried to struggle against Kian’s hold, but Kian brought the knife across Edmund’s throat and then let him fall.

Kian was a killer.

The reminder was glaring to me. Caution and warning mixed with the lust swirling inside me.

It didn’t matter. I still wanted him. “Kian.” My throat was filled with emotion. It hurt to call for him. When I stepped from the room, he was pulling on a jacket by the back door.

“Where are you going?” I asked, bracing a hand against the wall.

His eyes were tortured. The fury and desperation were gone. He was haunted now.

“I need to calm down because I’m two seconds away from grabbing you and taking you against the wall.”

Yes! My eyes lit up. I started to grin.

I wanted nothing else, but he clipped his head from side to side and reached for the door. He was outside in the next second. I hurried to the door, grabbing the handle. It wouldn’t open. He was holding it from the other side.

His voice came through the door, low and quiet. “You can’t follow me.”

“Kian.” I hit the door with my fist.

“When I’m with you, it won’t be while we’re hiding. It won’t be when I can’t hold your hand in daylight. It won’t be when I have to call you a different name. And it won’t be fucking. It’ll be tender. It’ll mean something.”

I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the door. With each statement, the fight left me.

He added, his voice rough, “It’ll be when I can call you mine to the world. Until then, let me cool off.” He quieted for a beat. “I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”

I felt his absence more than hearing him walking away from the door.

I took in a gasping breath, feeling the tears burning at the corners of my eyes, waiting to be shed. I didn’t let them fall, but they burned me, just as his words had singed me. Turning against the door, I slid down to the floor and bent forward, my head hanging over my knees.

I let the tears fall.

They weren’t falling because Kian had left me. They were falling because, for once, I didn’t have to hide.

Kian was gone for an hour when my phone started ringing. I moved to the couch earlier and grabbed a blanket. My phone was next to me on the nightstand, and I grabbed it, bringing it to my ear.

I hit the Answer key. “Hello?”

“Dude, where are you?”

It was Erica.

I yawned into the phone. “What time is it?”

“It’s one in the freaking morning.”

“It is?” I sat up on the couch and checked my phone.

She was right. Kian had been gone longer than an hour.

“I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“Yeah, about wherever you fell asleep, you need to give me an answer to give to Jake—in, like, two seconds.”

“Why?” Alarm filtered in. “Is he there?”

“Uh, yeah. He’s been going crazy since you left.”

“He called me earlier, but I told him I was fine.” I frowned, trying to remember what I had said to him. I’d been too distracted by Kian. My thoughts had been jumbled when I was on the phone with Jake. “Didn’t I?”

Her voice lowered. “You told him you went back to work, but, Jo, I called your job. You weren’t there, and they told me what happened. I covered for you, but I don’t know what to say to Jake anymore. Are you in a hotel or something? I mean, you didn’t go and do something crazy, did you?”

“What?”

“The baby,” she hissed into the phone.

I jerked to my feet, pressing the phone even tighter against my ear. “What?”

“Jo, don’t lie to me. I know about the pregnancy. That host guy told me all about it. He sounded worried about you, but between you and me, I wouldn’t trust that kid as far as you could shot-put him. He had a wicked look in his eyes the one time I met him.”

I wanted to smack myself on the forehead. My head fell back, and I groaned, “Oh my God, that stupid rumor.”

“Come on.”

“No, no, no. That’s all a rumor, Erica. I swear.”

She grew quiet on the other end.

“I called in sick twice this last month, and my boss jumped to the worst conclusion ever. I think he partly did it to joke with me. Worst joke ever.” I laughed. “I haven’t even had sex since Jake.”

She remained quiet.

Oh, no! “Since the first time with Jake, last Christmas time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you and Jake—I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing something.”

“No, no, no.” I couldn’t say it enough. “We’re accountability partners, but we’ve just been hanging out. That’s all it is. He,” I hesitated to what I revealed here, “He needed help staying away from Tara.”

“For real?” Her voice was suddenly louder and clearer. “Are you sure there’s nothing going on?”

I gripped the phone tighter. “Nothing’s going on. I mean,”—there was, and it was Kian—“Jake’s still not over Tara. And, I don’t know, I haven’t been feeling the same attraction as I did before.”

“Oh. I gotcha.”

“You do?”

“Once bitten, twice shy. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Okay. Well, whatever. Back to the problem at hand. Your boy toy, who’s not really a boy toy, is here and looking for you. What should I tell him? And where are you, for my own nosiness?”

“I…” I glanced around. I needed a lie and quick.