The day we first met, I’d spent the entire afternoon baking him cookies—chocolate chip, since they were his favorite, according to his mother. The still-warm cookies in hand, I went into the den, prepared to introduce myself to my new, impossibly attractive, older future stepbrother. Upon spotting me, and the cookies in my hand, he stood, smoothed his baggy shirt over his stomach, and straightened his hair. In that moment, I knew, then and there, that he was the cutest boy I had ever seen.

Or ever would see.

For a second, his expression went all soft and warm, like the melted chocolate in the cookies, and a smile quirked his mouth ever so slightly. He stepped closer, and his face transformed into something undeniably beautiful. But when I smiled back, something changed inside him. He backed off, took the cookies, and coldly thanked me—without a hint of emotion in his expression.

After that, he sat back down on the couch and ignored me.

With a flick of his wrist, the rap pouring out of his headphones drowned out anything I might have said in return. He tried to continue the pattern of ignoring me during the time we lived together, but I never gave up. I was determined to get him to notice me. He had. In fact, it even seemed as if he liked me.

But then I kissed him.

And he left.

Daddy said Jackson had used me to get kicked out of the house. If he had, it worked. After walking out, Jackson joined the army, like he wanted to. Lived the life he wanted to.

And I’d been left behind. Forgotten.

At first, I hadn’t wanted to accept the possibility that he’d only kissed me because he wanted to escape. That he’d used me. I wrote to him for years while he was off fighting, asking him if it was true. If he’d only kissed me to make Daddy angry enough to kick him out. For years, I spilled my heart out to him, begging him to write back even one simple word…and he’d never once written back to me.

Not even so much as a Hey, I’m still alive. I still think about you sometimes. I didn’t use you, I swear. But even though he didn’t write back, I knew he received the letters because they were never returned. At least it wasn’t just me he ignored. He never wrote to anyone in the family at all. It was as though once he was gone, we were out of sight and out of mind. It even bothered Nancy, who had never given a crap about him in the first place, that her son didn’t want to talk with her.

It became painfully obvious that joining the army was his escape plan—and I had been a means to an end to get it. He’d used me, and then walked off as if my emotions didn’t matter at all to him. Probably because they didn’t. I didn’t.

Daddy had been right all along.

Once I went off to college, I’d finally stopped writing him. Stopped trying to get him to care about me, or even let me know he was alive. Some small part of me had been sure he would miss my letters, even though he’d never responded. That once he got my last letter, he would write to me and beg me to continue.

But he hadn’t. Clearly, he hadn’t missed me at all.

Go figure.

Now, after years of complete silence, he came to my rescue in a crowded bar, punches flying and rage burning in those brown eyes of his I never truly forgot.

He let out a long, annoyed breath. “Go. Leave. Now.”

I watched the back of his head, my heart racing. Where had he been all these years? Well, I mean, I knew where he’d been. But what had he seen? Done? And why had he gotten all that ink? The tattoos spread all up his arms and under his shirt. God knows where else. I mean, it was hot and all, but what would Nancy, or my father, for that matter, think of it? Who was Jackson Worthington now?

The old me would never ask him those personal questions.

The new me wanted to, so badly.

All my life, minus that one night by the pool, I’ve only ever been good little Lilly Hastings. I experienced twenty-two long, boring years, trying to be as perfect as I could possibly be, and it was killing me. As the only daughter of the reliable Mr. Hastings, the CEO of Hastings International, the best was expected of me, and I’ve always been overeager to deliver. He’d expected me to get good grades, so I had. I was told to go to school for marketing so I could work in the family business, even though I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, so I did. I’d been told to never stray from walking a straight line, so I never swerved out of my lane.

I always did what I was told to do.

But when they told me I had to marry Derek Thornton III, once I graduated, I finally realized that it would never stop. The demands. The orders. The expectation of perfection. If I married Derek, it would continue. And I’d never be free.

That was when I decided it was time to live my own life, for once.

Playing along as if I planned to marry Derek, I secretly sought out ways to escape the match. Sure, our fathers signed contracts, and, sure, they were legal. Hastings International needed Thornton Products to survive, and vice versa. But there had to be a way for me to get out of it, and I refused to stop looking till I found it.

And if I didn’t…

No. I wouldn’t even think about it.

When Derek came into the bar tonight and demanded I leave with him, even though I knew for a fact he had been getting up close and personal with someone else just a few hours earlier, I’d been annoyed. He might not have seen me in that dark parking lot, but, God, I’d seen him.

A lot of him.

Ripping myself from my thoughts, I eyed Jackson again. He’d come over, punched Derek, and laughed. That was insane. Crazy. Maniacal. And yet here I was, just staring at him, after he told me to walk away. I probably should have listened.

Backing up a step, I grabbed the door and opened it.

I almost went back in. I probably should have.

But I refused to be dismissed so easily. I wasn’t a doormat, and if I wanted to stay…then I would stay. Even if my racing heart drowned out all the noises of the busy street in front of us. Taking a calming breath, I released the door handle….

And let it close.

The second it did, Jackson covered his face. “Son of a bitch. How stupid can you be, Worthington?”

Blinking, I knew I witnessed a private moment.

One I didn’t deserve to see, because he obviously thought I had left, as advised to do. He also obviously thought I was still that overeager kid, whose only goal was to please those around her. The same one he thought wouldn’t have the balls to kiss him by the pool. I’d proved him wrong then, and I would prove him wrong now. “I insist on giving you a ride. It’s the least I can do.”

Slowly, oh so slowly, he lowered his hands. Letting out a harsh laugh, he spun and advanced on me. “You’re really gonna do this, little girl?”

That nickname…

It was, and always had been, a way to keep us separate. In my opinion, every time he called me that, he was reminding himself exactly why we shouldn’t be together. Why he shouldn’t let me too close. I hated it then, and I hated it now.

And everything it stood for.

I bit back any retort a younger me would’ve given him, lifted my chin, and stared him down. He might be bigger, and drunk, but he didn’t scare me. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Call it instinct. Call it intuition. Call it stupidity. All I knew was Jackson Worthington would never lift a hand against me. “Yes. And you won’t scare me away by being all tough and snarly. I’m not a little girl anymore, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He stopped when he was directly in front of me. Looking down at me—God, he was as tall as I remembered, at least six foot three or so—he cocked his head to the side. “You still look pretty little to me.”

I stared up at him, my breaths coming rapidly. He still had that hard, unyielding jawline I remembered so well. And his lips were wide and generous, even if they were pressed in a tight, angry line. He was pure muscle, but not in that bodybuilder way that a lot of guys got. More like a lean, strong, disciplined piss-me-off-and-I’ll-kick-your-ass kind of way. And all those tattoos…