Chapter Two

MIRA

“Ms. Volpe,”

my driver says as he opens the door. I slide out, knees together like my mama taught me. The line to get into the club winds around the block, and I wouldn’t want to flash everyone my chocha.

Gianna and the guys exit the car after me. My date, Alex, tries to take his place by my side, but Gianna beats him to it, giggling as she winds her arm through mine. She’s already two glasses of champagne—and who knows what else—deep. It’s her birthday, after all. She can do what she wants to.

That’s why we’re here at Tonic, Pyle’s newest, hottest club. Even I’ve heard of it, and I never go out. It’s the week before Christmas, so the velvet rope has been strung with colored lights, and the bouncer is wearing a Santa hat.

I follow one of my bodyguards toward the head of the line. The bouncer has the rope unhooked before we get there.

“I love going out with you.”

Gianna sighs. “It’s like you’re famous.”

The folks waiting to get in murmur, wondering who I am, and a few snap pictures with their phones. Good luck to them; my men are very good at blocking lines of sight.

The party people are destined for disappointment anyway. I’m no one. Just some rich girl. Take away the car and the bodyguards, the Balenciaga dress and the Hermes bag, and what would you have?

Not much.

I plaster a smile on my face. Gianna is one of the few friends from school that I have left. I’m only twenty-six, but most of the girls I hung out with at Saint Celestine’s are married with kids already.

It’s not unusual to settle down young in our circle, but I see women my age on social media who are dating and job hopping and self-diagnosing and changing their minds, and I wish I knew people like that. People who don’t already have everything they’ve always wanted.

Gianna has nothing figured out, and that’s ninety-nine percent of what I like about her. Her date for tonight, Nico, isn’t even on her roster. He’s a guy from the gym, and she’d never even talked to him until he asked for her number a few days ago. I don’t think she’s been home to her own condo since. I don’t blame her. He’s hot, even though he’s pale as a fish belly. He’s not an Italian Nico; he’s some other kind.

His friend, Alex, is hot, too. Sharp cheekbones and a sharp haircut. Talks too much. Asks a lot of questions. Not my type, but fine for an evening out.

“Are you actually going to try to have fun tonight?”

Gianna stage-whispers as my bodyguard throws open the nondescript, windowless door and a wall of thumping bass hits us in the face.

I cup a hand around my ear, mouth I can’t hear you, and strut into the cold, clammy darkness.

I don’t have fun. I work. I have Sunday dinner with my parents. I go shopping with my mom. Every so often, I let Gianna drag me places so I don’t grow moss.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to be the one bitching about never having time to myself and sharing recipes online for Chocolate Sin Cake and Better Than Sex Chicken and pictures of myself in ass-lifting yoga pants with the caption “keeping it tight for my man.”

Wyatt was supposed to be the man.

I curl my hands into fists and stride more briskly toward the VIP section, my bodyguard a few paces ahead, clearing the way. He’s a new guy—Morris? Mikey?

Dad usually has one of the people from his own team on my detail, but he took Mom to Santorini for their anniversary, and Marco is working for the organization now, so the guys Dad likes are on a Greek beach and the ones he doesn’t are babysitting my little brother.

Dad was freaking out in his very Dad-like way—which can get disturbing if you’re not used to it—but after I pointed out to him for the hundredth time that watching me hang out at home did not require advanced skills and training, he chilled out.

Tonight was kind of spontaneous. Gianna had been on me to come out, but I wasn’t going to until she called crying that Olivia canceled on her because her kids have hand, foot, and mouth disease, which is apparently something human children get.

That is the kind of thing I should know about. I should have gross little grubbers of my own with my very own annoying husband who drives me nuts with his weaponized incompetence and then makes me forget my own name with his huge cock. That’s what I was promised, what I never doubted that I would have, not since Wyatt beat the snot out of all three Henderson boys when they messed with me on the playground.

Blame my overconfidence on my dad’s genes. He thinks the world is designed for his pleasure, too.

I stalk up the three carpeted steps to VIP, drop into a suede upholstered booth, and scan for the bottle service girl. I need a drink.

Gianna and the guys follow, crowding into the curved bench. Alex ends up pressed flush against my side. He shoots a wry smile down at me. He’s a tall one, and he knows it.

Wyatt was average height. Taller than me, but no more than five nine or five ten. He might have kept growing in college—Marco sure did—but at first, it hurt too bad to see him, so I made a point not to look, not at his socials, not at his parents’ house in case he happened to be visiting.

He was done with me, so I was going to be done with him forever.

After he left, his younger sister walked the dog for a while. When the first wave of burn-the-world-down rage subsided, I timed my walks so I’d run into her, like I did with Wyatt in the beginning. She always had her earbuds in, though, filming videos or doing lives, so I could never make friends with her and ask her how Wyatt was doing. If he’d picked a major. If he had a girlfriend. If he missed me like I missed him.

Like a phantom limb.

Then, one day, his sister got a serious boyfriend, and there were no more walks. They probably rehomed him. Wyatt was the only one in that family with a heart big enough to love an animal.

I tried to get over him. I’m not stupid. Dad would never tell me what happened down in the basement, but I can imagine. Shit went down, and Wyatt decided he wanted out.

My brain doesn’t blame him.

My heart wants to tear his out and throw it on the ground and mash it into pulp just like he did with mine.

For a few years, I starved myself of him. I cultivated my playlists so I’d never hear a song that we listened to together or see one of our shows. I was going to move on. A husky gamer with a C average who never made varsity? He was replaceable; I would replace him.

But I never did. Because I didn’t want someone else. I wanted Wyatt Foster. I want what he felt for me.

“Champagne?”

A pretty woman in a short dress interrupts my private walk down memory lane. She’s holding up bottles in both hands.

I nod, she pours, and I focus on calming my breath. Do other people still think of their exes a dozen times a day, eight years later?

Sometimes I think I’m not even remembering it right. Love couldn’t possibly have really felt like that. Nothing in life feels that good. I’ve mixed up reality with a dream or a hallucination from the trip I went on that time I mixed up a fifteen-milligram gummy with a thirty and got too high.

No heart can be that full. No one can be that happy.

Alex clinks his glass with mine, startling me back into the moment. His shoulder is pressing mine, and he’s leaning in. His breath is astringent and hits me full in the face when he shouts over the music. “So, Gianna says you’re a day trader?”

“Something like that,”

I shout back. Day trader or stockbroker is close enough to my real job that I can talk about it, if I want, which I don’t. I want to go back home and rot on the couch. This space is too big, the ceilings are too high, the lights are flashing too quickly, the walls and floors and booths are too black. How much grime is the paint hiding? A lot, I bet.

“Got any hot tips?”

He smirks, revealing sharp incisors and very expensive veneers. He has the slightest accent. I can’t quite place it, but I’m not interested enough to ask.

“Buy low. Sell high.”

He smiles wider, as if he’s genuinely amused, as if I’ve said something actually amusing. I’m so bored. Men like these turn it on and off like lamps. That’s fine when I’m ovulating, but I’m on week one of my birth control this week.

I sip more champagne and survey the dance floor so I don’t have to think of something to say. It’s a young scene. I’m not quite too old for the crowd, but I’m pushing it.

The DJ crossfades from one song to another that sounds exactly the same. The dance floor rises up and down in drunken waves. Huge, shimmering snowflakes hang from the rafters, dusting the people below with glitter.

I yawn.

“Keeping you up?”

Alex asks, still smiling.

I wish he wouldn’t. It’s so fake. This is all so fake—the sea of lip filler, the bleached smiles and BBLs, the smoldering looks that make promises no one intends on keeping much past closing time. I had a man who looked at me like that once, but he meant it, for all that it mattered in the end.

For the millionth time since that last night in high school, my heart adjusts to the disappointment. I don’t get to fall in love in a club at Christmas under spinning silver snowflakes. I fell in love already, and lucky me, it stuck.

I pretend that I didn’t hear Alex and survey the room as if I’m fascinated by other people having fun. I scan half the room before my gaze is drawn to a cluster of finance bros gathered around a high top by the bar.

They must not have stopped home after work because they’re still in their khaki slacks, collared shirts, and power vests, each holding a beer, hands on hips and slightly stretching their lower backs in the most casual way as they listen to the head bro animatedly regale the group about something or other. They’re absolutely generic. A dime a dozen.

I can’t look away from the one in a navy-blue vest. Well, they’re all wearing navy-blue vests. I can’t look away from the one with his back to me, stocky, medium height, brown hair. He’s standing like the others, but there’s something about his stance. A familiar sullenness. I’d recognize it anywhere.

The man takes a hand from his pocket and rubs the back of his neck. I know that hand. Didn’t I hold it for three years straight in high school?

Everything inside me bottoms out—my stomach, my heart, whatever air had been circulating in my lungs. I straighten my spine. I feel called on. Called out.

But no one’s paying attention to me except Alex.

“See someone you know?” he asks.

I want to click him off. X out of his tab. I can’t be in the same room with Wyatt Foster for the first time in eight years and pay attention to this guy at the same time. I especially can’t talk. I can hardly breathe.

Without conscious thought, I rise to my feet.

“Mira?”

Alex grabs my arm to get my attention.

I yank it free, already walking away, down the steps to the dance floor. I skirt the edges, heading for the bar. I have zombie feet.

What am I going to say?

I’ve imagined this moment a hundred times, and I’m always with a hot guy—my rich, powerful husband—and I cling to this new love of my life so that my huge diamond ring shows, and Wyatt sees it, his face falls, and he says my name—Mira—like he still loves me with every cell in his body, just like he used to say my name before he abandoned me like the leftovers from a bad meal.

My feet deliver me to the finance bros before I’ve figured anything out, and for a few seconds, I stand there, mouth working like a fish, like that’ll pull out the words choking my throat.

“Hey, there,”

the head bro says, noticing me first. “How are you this evening?”

He was really into his story, but I’m not bragging when I say I stop traffic. Cars stop all the time. I’ve got the porn star package—blonde hair, killer rack, and toned ass that says “pilates”

but was actually a gift from my mother.

Wyatt turns to see who his bro is talking to, and we’re face to face.

I clutch the ruched side seams of my silver lamé dress because I have to hold onto something.

He’s taller than he was when he left. And bigger in general. He’s mostly muscle—it’s clear he works out—but he’s also got a little paunch. Not much. Just enough that the fabric of his navy checked shirt pulls across his stomach.

I want to rub his belly. Squeeze the biceps that also strain the fabric of his shirt. Throw my arms around his neck and burst into tears.

I’ve missed him.

He doesn’t seem to feel the same.

He looks like he’s run into a bear on a trail, and he’s trying with every ounce of his being not to show fear. His eyes flick over my shoulder, and he tenses. I don’t have to turn around. I know it’s one of my men, come to loom a discreet distance away. I can smell the Acqua di Giò. They all wear Acqua di Giò.

“Go back to the table,”

I toss over my shoulder without taking my eyes off Wyatt. When he runs away from me this time, I’m going to watch him do it.

“You gonna introduce us to your friend, Foster?”

the head bro asks, circling the table, grinning widely.

Wyatt says nothing. He stares at me, teeth clenched, brooding brown eyes flicking from part to part of my body like a skipping stone—eyes, nose, lips, tits, legs, hair, hands. The lamé is getting damp, wadded in my fists.

“I’m all here and accounted for,”

I say to him.

He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He still has a strong, thick neck, and I see he still nicks himself shaving. He always had shit hand-eye coordination.

“What are you now?”

I ask. “An accountant?”

“Foster here is our Director of Strategic Analytics, and if he keeps making deals like he did today, I say you might be looking at the youngest VP in company history,”

the head bro says, slinging an arm around Wyatt’s shoulder. The move looks about as easy and casual as slinging an arm around a refrigerator.

“What’s a Director of Strategic Analytics?”

I ask Wyatt.

The head bro and the others laugh. Wyatt keeps staring.

“Good question. Wish we knew.”

The head bro cracks himself up. “And who are you, darling?”

Wyatt’s jaw tics.

“No one important. Right, Wyatt?”

I stare him down—right back—and the blood that sank to my feet reverses course, like a swimmer kicking off a wall, flooding my head, pounding in my ears, and ballooning in my brain.

I want to snatch the beer bottle that he’s holding on to for dear life out of his hand and smash it over his head.

I want to stab him with a jagged shard until his heart is ground meat, too.

“Mira,”

he says, his voice gruff and raw and lost. My name in his mouth sounds exactly like it used to—like he still loves me with every cell in his body. Like he’s still the same big, fat liar, or I’m the same deluded idiot.

“No!”

I step forward and slap his chest. I was aiming for his face, but my visual spatial skills must be on the fritz along with my pride. I feel eighteen again, reckless and hormonal, like my skin doesn’t fit, and my rage is a mushroom cloud, and my heart is as fragile as a robin’s egg.

He’s mine, but he’s a stranger. He became some whole other person without me.

I let my hands fly again, but he grabs my wrists and pins them to his chest, dragging me close, bending to press his forehead firmly against mine.

“It’s okay, Mira,”

he says, which is a joke and a lie and he knows it.

Thank the Lord, head bro and company decide this is private and back off, leaving us alone on this side of the high-top table.

Wyatt gently lowers my arms to my side, keeping a grip on my wrists to hold me close. His belly bumps mine when he breathes. His shaved cheek rasps against my forehead as he lifts his nose to subtly sniff my shampoo. He used to do that all the time, and I thought little things like that meant everything, but they didn’t.

“Let me go,” I snarl.

He releases my wrists, but he doesn’t step back and neither do I. His brown chukka boots kiss the toes of my strappy silver sandals.

“You look the same but different,”

he says on an exhale.

He doesn’t get to say it that way, like he’s so surprised that I’ve changed. He walked away, and I grew up. That’s what people do. They get older. They get perspective. They get over shit.

Everybody but me.

Because he walked away without a word, left me on read and blocked me. Left for college and never looked back. Because unlike every other sixteen-year-old in the world, I was right—I was never going to love another man.

I dart my hand out, shove it into his front right pocket, and snatch out his phone. He startles, but he doesn’t try to get it back. I tap in his password. 12-8-13. Terry Bradshaw’s number and my birthday.

It still works.

I open his contacts and scroll to the Ms, expecting any second for him to yank it back, but all he does is watch me, a strange expression on his face, bemused and desperate and tormented all at the same time.

There I am. Mira-baby. He didn’t delete me.

I unblock myself.

His notifications light up with my undelivered messages, and I shove the screen in his face, too close for him to read, but I don’t care.

“You’re a fucking coward, Wyatt Foster.”

He grabs my wrists, gently lowering the phone between us. His eyes catch on my hair. “You cut it shorter now,” he says.

It’s longer than it was right after he bailed when I chopped it all off and dyed it brown, and it didn’t make me feel the slightest bit better. “I hate you,” I say.

“You’re even prettier now.”

“Fuck you.”

He has nothing to say to that. He never could argue for shit. When we’d fight, he’d just get quiet and wait until I wasn’t quite as mad, and then he’d drag me onto his lap and wrap his arms around me and silently feel sorry at me until I decided he’d suffered enough. But we were kids then, and he hadn’t ripped my heart out and blown town with it yet.

“You could have at least said goodbye,”

I mumble even though it wouldn’t have been nearly enough. “You could have been man enough to say it to my face.”

His breath catches on the inhale. Direct hit. Plus ten points for Mira.

My chest aches harder. I don’t want to win. There’s no winning.

“Was it even hard for you?”

I ask, my voice catching, too.

His eyes close for a second. His whole body is braced for impact, like he expects me to sucker punch him at any time. He lets one of my wrists go, but he keeps his fingers curled tightly around the other.

He takes his phone, taps open the Notes app, and presses it into my free hand.

“What?”

I ask, my fingers automatically curling around the case so it doesn’t fall as he lets go.

“Read,” he says.

I huff and lift the screen close to my face. I left my glasses at home.

It’s a bulleted list. I see his spelling hasn’t improved any since high school.

skwerrel on windersill w/ penjamin

t swift not so bad

lemoncello fried banana at nihao on boston street is FYRE

I scroll. The list keeps going and going—things he saw, notable events, things he likes, things I would like. I love limoncello.

the beemer died October 5 rip – dear killed it, dear survived

i miss your shampoo

back at the gym – day 1 – max squat 250

i miss your weird baby toes

My thumb cramps by the time I finish scrolling. My nose is burning.

“You saw a squirrel with a vape pen on your windowsill?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

I glance at the last item on the list.

macroeconomics is dumb. i miss you.

“When did you take macroeconomics?”

He has to think for a second. “Freshman year of college.”

My fingers tighten around his phone in a death grip. I feel like each note scooped out my insides like a melon baller, and now I’m a ghost wearing a sheet, and the only thing holding me up is the fumes from an old anger that I never really had a right to at all.

He would never have left me if he hadn’t been driven away by who I am.

“I want to be mad,”

I whisper.

“Mira—”

He exhales, my pain echoed in the word, but before he can say anything else, a voice calls out from right behind me.

“Mira?”

I startle backwards. Alex strides right up to stand beside me, smiling at Wyatt like he’s the interloper.

“Alex Anderson,”

he says, sticking his hand out.

Wyatt immediately shakes his hand, his country club manners still ingrained. “Wyatt Foster.”

“So how do you know our Mira?”

Alex asks, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close.

My body tenses, shouting that he’s not the right one, but neither is the businessman in front of me with Wyatt’s face and Wyatt’s dad’s fashion sense. He’s a civilian. We might belong together, but he doesn’t belong in my world any more now than he did when we were kids.

When Wyatt saw behind the curtain, he ran, and like Mom always says, it was for the best. People are who they are. You can’t wish them into being someone or something else.

I want to be mad, but I can’t be. I have to watch him go. Again.

I force myself to relax and snuggle into Alex’s side.

“We’re old friends,”

Wyatt says, his eyes locked on mine.

“Were,”

I say, clutching my old hurt tightly to my chest. I can’t let it go now. I need it to get through this next part.

“Oh,”

Alex says, all laden with meaning, like he has any clue what’s happening here. I’m staring down a part of me I haven’t seen in eight years, and forcing myself to be mad that he’s still upright and functioning, directing fucking analytics, when he should be as broken as my ability to trust and feel and be happy.

“You left,”

I remind Wyatt—and myself. It’s a fact and an accusation and still—after all this time—a shock, like I’m the hero in the movie driving away from the scene of the shootout who looks down and sees blood seeping through his white shirt.

Wyatt left me—and if he thought of me a hundred times a day like I thought of him—there’s still nothing he can say to that. Nothing has changed. Nothing is different.

Wyatt keeps his eyes locked on mine, blazing with a feeling I can’t understand, until I drop my gaze to the gummy, black floor, dusted with the glitter from a hundred cheap, cardboard snowflakes.

“Let’s get out of here,”

I mumble to Alex.

“Yeah, sure, absolutely,”

he says. “How about we go to the upstairs VIP? My buddy said come up and see him when we got here.”

“Sounds good.”

I look at Wyatt one last time and cock my head, pretending my lips aren’t quivering and my stomach isn’t bottoming out. “Are we done here, Wyatt? You don’t have anything else to say?”

I wait.

Because I’ll always wait for him. Just a little longer.

Alex is the one who calls it, gently guiding me away. I don’t look back, and Wyatt doesn’t stop me.

History repeats.

I’m hardly paying attention as Alex leads me around the bar and down a hallway lined with stacked boxes of booze. The stairs to VIP are in the employees only area?

Hold up.

Alex’s hand wraps around mine like a vise as he shoves open an exit door.

“Where are we going?”

I ask numbly as he drags me out onto a metal fire escape overlooking an empty alley and a windowless industrial building.

Oh, no. Oh, shit.

My body takes over. I pitch my weight backwards and jerk my arm away, but his grip is too strong, and he has momentum as well as at least fifty pounds on me.

I grasp futilely for the handle on the exit door as it slowly swings closed on an empty hallway.

Where are my men?

I sent them away, but how far did they go? This is the first time in my life that they actually give me space when I ask for it?

“Help!”

I scream. “Someone help!”

Alex hoists me off my feet, half dragging, half hauling me down the stairs as I flail and scream. The building behind us thumps with bass.

I never realized how softly I scream. The wheels screeching to a halt in the alley below easily cover the sound. The side door of a white van flies open. Three men in black ski masks pour out with guns drawn.

Semi-automatics.

With silencers.

Fuck.

“Here, boss.”

One of the new men passes Alex a weapon, and he immediately presses it to my temple.

“You’re going to be a good girl, right, Mira?”

he says. Where did that accent come from? Those cheekbones, a dude named Alex, a blond Nico—they’re with the Russians.

I raise my palms slowly in the air. A heel broke off my sandal on the stairs, so I balance on the ball of one foot like a ballet dancer.

He didn’t put a bullet in my head already, so this is a kidnapping. I have time. I need to think.

Where are my men? They would’ve fallen back, but when they saw me on the move, they would’ve followed. I glance up at the exit door.

Alex chuckles darkly. “They’re not coming, princess. Daddy Dearest needs to stop playing favorites with who he takes on vacation with him. Favoritism hurts feelings. Makes enemies out of friends.”

He smirks. He wants me to see that he’s a clever villain, but bribing a weak man isn’t exactly next-level strategy.

Director of Strategic Analytics. What the hell does that mean? Why won’t my brain focus? I’m in trouble here.

Alex is propelling me toward the van. Don’t let them take you to a second location. That’s the first rule, right? My gaze careens from the van to the fire escape to the green dumpster against the brick wall two yards away.

The gun’s muzzle digs into my skin. I am so screwed.

I stumble, whimpering as my ankle twists.

Alex chuckles again and hisses in my ear. “You’re going to make us so much money, princess. While we wait for Daddy to pay up, you’re going to play the market for us like you do for him, and then after he delivers, we’re going to mail your cum-crusted body back to him in pieces.”

He brushes a hair off my forehead with the gun. “But don’t worry—I’ll leave you a few fingers and an eye ’til the very end so you can still make those big trades.”

He bares his wolfish white teeth at me, and it occurs to me what really annoys me about his type. They’re so invested in being the main character, they don’t pay attention to their surroundings.

Like, for example, the exit door at the top of the fire escape creeping open.

I get ready to drop to the ground. Please let it be one of my men. Don’t let it be some busboy ducking out for a smoke. I’ll use whatever distraction I can get, though. I’ll take a bullet in the back over whatever Bratva bullshit Alex has planned any day.

Above us, a hinge creaks.

Five pairs of eyes—and the barrels of four guns—tilt thirty degrees upwards.

Wyatt Foster, in his fucking checkered shirt and fleece vest, steps out onto the metal landing. My jaw drops, followed by my heart. I draw in a breath to scream.

Wyatt sees my face. He sees the man with a gun to my head.

He vaults over the railing of the fire escape.

I blink.

He lands on Alex in a thud of flesh and crack of bones. The impact throws me onto my ass, the concrete skinning my palms. The heelless sandal falls off my foot. I scramble back like a crab.

In a way, I’ve never seen Wyatt like this, but in another way, I have, a long time ago, on the playground in the middle of our cul-de-sac. He moved faster than you’d think a stocky kid could then, and he does now, too.

He dives for the gun that went flying when he tackled Alex into the ground, and as he rises with it, he hooks his arm around my shoulder and pitches me behind him in the direction of the van, pivoting so that he stands between me and the four men leveling their semi-automatics at us.

I land on my side against a wheel well. Wyatt calmly shoves his left hand in his vest pocket and raises Alex’s Beretta.

And then, as cool and collected as he could possibly be, Wyatt puts a bullet dead center between each man’s eyes.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The first body is still falling when Wyatt squeezes off the last shot.

I blink up at him. Where the hell did he learn to do that?

He engages the safety, lowers his weapon, and immediately turns the pastiest shade of gray I’ve ever seen.

“Shit.”

I scramble to my feet, stumble to my lost sandal, and shove my foot in. “We need to go.”

I grab Wyatt’s hand. He’s gaping down like he’s never seen hands before. He’s in shock.

“Come on!”

I shout at him and try to drag him down the alley, but he’s always been too heavy for me to budge. “Wyatt, please, move your feet.”

“Mira?”

His brow knits. Sweat pours off his face, soaking his collar.

Another screech of tires rings out as a familiar town car swings around the corner into the alley. Wyatt raises the gun again, his arm perfectly steady and the whites of his eyes so wild that he looks downright rabid.

I quickly lay a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. It’s Grandpa Ray,”

I say. I’ve never been happier to see the guy in my life.

Grandpa Ray skids the Lincoln to a halt behind the van and hoists himself—rather than leaps—from the driver’s seat, but the hands wrapped around his gun are steady as he approaches us, kicking weapons away from the bodies crumpled on the concrete. His joints are a little stiff these days, but he’s still got it.

“Russians?”

Grandpa Ray asks me.

“Yeah.”

“Where are your men?”

“Bought off.”

Grandpa Ray shakes his head as he stops several feet from Wyatt, who is still aiming the Beretta at his chest.

“Hey, kid. It’s been a minute,”

Grandpa Ray says to him. “This your work?” He raises his thick gray eyebrows.

Wyatt nods jerkily, finally lowering his gun.

“You learn to shoot like that at college?”

Grandpa Ray asks.

Wyatt nods again. “Yeah. I’ve been in sports shooting since then. I won bronze in the twenty-five-meter rapid fire pistol in Tokyo.”

“Oh, yeah? Only bronze?”

Grandpa Ray sniffs and smirks, nudging a body with the toe of his wingtip. “I guess it was less than twenty-five meters.”

Wyatt looks at him like he’s speaking Greek. He’s in shock.

“What’s the plan, Ray?” I ask.

“I’ve got backup less than a minute out. You two need to get out of here. Now.”

Grandpa Ray digs his keys out of his pocket and tosses them to me.

Somehow, despite how numb he’s acting, Wyatt snatches them from mid-air. He grabs my upper arm and drags me toward the town car.

“Hold up,”

I pant, scrunching my toes to keep my busted sandal on my foot.

Wyatt drags me faster. Behind us, Grandpa Ray chuckles and then grunts as he bends over to pat down a corpse. He acts like he hasn’t slowed down any in his old age, but he’s going to wait for the younger guys to do the heavy lifting. A rush of fondness warms my heart. I’m not surprised he appeared unexpectedly to bail me out. He’s been double-checking locked doors and going over my mechanic’s work and doing surprise inspections on my bodyguards my whole life.

Now, Wyatt, on the other hand—that was a surprise. I have no idea what he’s going to do next. My heart beats faster. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. I’ve been in a few sticky situations over the years, but I’m by no means accustomed to it.

Grim-faced, Wyatt shoves me into the passenger seat, circles the vehicle, and slides behind the wheel. He’s breathing like he’s run a race. He stares for a second at the console like it’s alien technology before he shakes himself off, shifts into reverse, and backs up the twenty yards down the alley and out to the street in a perfectly straight line. He always could drive.

I sink into the leather upholstery and flashback to Wyatt’s car in high school, his dad’s old BMW with the window that wouldn’t roll all the way down and the french fry smell that never went away, even after Wyatt had it detailed.

I glance over at his cute little stomach. Maybe the smell never went away because he was always replenishing it. My mouth curves, and my heart somehow melts and aches at the same time.

He didn’t let me go. He saved me.

“A bronze medal, eh?”

He grunts. I’m surprised I didn’t hear about it, but I guess shooting isn’t as big as gymnastics or swimming or track.

“And now you direct analytics, strategically?”

“Shut up, Mira.”

Wyatt is holding the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are as white as his face is gray. At least it’s not green. The first time I killed a man, I puked my guts out.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer; he just keeps driving the speed limit, hunched forward in his seat, scrupulously obeying all traffic laws until we’re out of downtown and entering the neighborhood where we grew up.

“My dad’s not home. He and Mom are in Greece.”

“I’m not taking you there.”

He doesn’t elaborate.

I cross my arms and settle back, watching the familiar homes and their meticulous, landscaped yards go by. When he turns onto Canterbury Lane, I figure out where he’s taking us. Homestead Park. It’s a Revolutionary War-era property that they’ve turned into the county’s historic society. The wooded acres around the old house and barn are a public park with hiking trails and a tractor tire playground. My mother brought me here all the time when I was little.

Wyatt would bring me here, too, when I convinced him to take me for a drive. He was never fully comfortable taking me away from the neighborhood. I told him that Mom would cover for me, but he was always intimidated by my dad. Who wasn’t?

I guess that’s why I could never really blame Wyatt. At the end of the day, my dad is Dario Volpe, consigliere of the Corso syndicate, and more to the point, a genuine psychopath. Wyatt would never have been a match for him, and I didn’t see then what I can see clearly now—Wyatt doesn’t need to be as hard as Dad. I am.

I sneak a glance over at him as he hops the curb onto the grass to weave around the boom gate blocking the entrance. He pulls into a spot in the dark, empty parking lot, his expression grave as hell.

He yanks up the emergency brake, and for a minute, he stews in silence. I wait. Wyatt never would talk before he was ready.

Finally, he glares over, his brown eyes gone black. “Why would you go out there alone with him, Mira? Jesus!”

He loses it and pounds the wheel with his fists. Good thing it’s an older model.

When he’s done, his shoulders heave as he drags in a ragged breath. “You could’ve been killed, Mira. Fuck!”

He slams the steering wheel again, open palmed.

I stare at him, scrunched motionless against the passenger door. I’m not worried about getting hit—Wyatt would never hurt me—but I want to memorize every second of freakout as his brain pieces together what could have happened. I don’t care that it’s not healthy, well-adjusted love. What use would I have for that with who and what I am?

The feelings playing out on Wyatt’s stubborn, honest face are tormented and more instinct than anything, but it’s love, too, all the same. And it’s identical to the love I carry inside me for him. Still. Always.

“Wyatt,”

I say softly and reach for him.

He’s quicker than me. He grabs me first, digging his fingers into the flesh of my upper arms as he hauls me over the middle console and out the driver’s side door.

“Wyatt?”

“Shut up, Mira,”

he growls, flinging the back door open and throwing me in. I land on the bench seat and bounce. Yet again, I lose my broken sandal.

He follows me in, trapping me on my back.

I try to help him, but he won’t let me. I reach for his fly, but he’s already tearing my dress over my head, leaving it bunched around my elbows, pinning my arms above my head.

“What are you doing, Wyatt?”

“What I should have done a long time ago.”

He shoves my bra up to my neck and latches onto my tit with his hot mouth, suckling hard, while he wrestles my panties off. I whimper, arching my back to free my nipple. It hurts. He’s not being gentle. He knows I like to start off gentle.

“Wyatt,”

I whine and wriggle.

“Shut up, Mira. You’ve said enough. No more.”

He’s not making sense, but he let go of my tit to speak, so it’s all good.

He grunts and keeps going, finally untangling my panties from my ankles, shoving my leg up so it’s wedged like a chicken wing between his solid torso and the seat. I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to, and that sets the heat swirling low in my belly ablaze.

“Don’t you ever do something that stupid again, Mira. Never—”

He pants, struggling with his zipper. “Ever—” He gets it down. “Again.”

He slams his hips forward, ramming his cock into me, splitting me in half. I scream, with surprise more than anything, jerking my head up since I can’t throw a punch with my arms trapped in my bunched dress. Our skulls crack. My ears ring. Immediately, his nose swells.

He freezes.

“Goddamn it, Wyatt!”

Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, he’s thick. I’m spit roasted. Stuffed like a turkey. It’s been a while, and he’s way girthier than my toys, and there are no fun bumps and ridges, just freaking meat. Did he tear something? I was wet, but I was not prepared.

“Mira?”

Wyatt pushes himself up on his arms, gazing down at me with such absolute terror and regret that my heart melts. His biceps bulge. They’re crazy huge for a Director of Strategic Analytics. “What’s happening, Mira?”

He shifts his hips, not much, but it’s too much. I whimper and try to relax my pussy muscles, but they’re stretched to the limit.

Horror dawns across his face. The bridge of his nose is swelling fast. Did I break it?

“Oh, shit, Mira. Tell me you’ve done this before.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I’m twenty-six. What do you think?”

He blushes, and my stuffed belly warms. He’s adorable. “I’m sorry,”

he mumbles, hanging his head, but I notice he makes no move to pull out.

“For what?”

I lift my knees and tilt my hips, experimenting. He slips impossibly deeper, putting pressure on a certain spot in a particular way that I’ve never felt before. I groan, letting the knee that isn’t trapped fall open.

“For leaving. Blocking you. Staying away. For everything.”

“But not for stuffing my poor, little, innocent pussy with that overstuffed beef sausage you’re packing with no warning at all? I can taste it in the back of my throat, Wyatt.”

That stops his spiraling. I’ve always been able to get him off track with my dirty mouth. I don’t want him to be sorry anymore. I want him to prove that he missed me—my shampoo, my toes, everything.

“Do you want me to pull out?” he says.

I do a Kegel. “Why are you always trying to bail on me, Wyatt Foster?” I tease.

His eyes darken, and something blows his self-control out of the water again. He falls on me, devouring my mouth, careless with his teeth, his weight pressing me into the upholstery and driving his cock even deeper. It rubs that spot he found, and yummy, hungry, greedy bursts of goodness make my belly quiver and my thighs shake.

I pulse my hips, chasing the high, and he groans. “Mira,”

he says as he lifts himself to gaze down at me, bemused, and at the same time, so very, very serious. He begins to rock his hips, exactly like I want, as he gently guides my arms free of my wadded-up dress.

“Wyatt,”

I say back to him, cradling his precious face, gently prodding the bump on his nose to assess the damage. He hisses and ducks his head away.

“Leave it alone,”

he says. “It’s fine.”

“Okay,”

I say, wrapping a leg around his waist so I can kick his butt cheek to urge him on. I’m good now. I want him to go faster. Harder.

He frowns at me and smooths my hair, tucking it behind my ears. “Are you okay?”

I smile up at him. “So okay. You can fuck me now like you want to.”

“You know what I want?”

he asks, his eyes lighting up.

“Yeah.”

I crane my neck so I can kiss him. “Me,” I whisper in his ear.

“Always you,”

he agrees, and he gathers me to him with an arm under my shoulders, hoists my thigh higher, and begins to fuck me like he means it.

I roll my hips as much as I can while getting jackhammered to see if I can rub my clit against something—a pubic bone, that big, hard belly—but I can’t reach, and he’s still dressed. I want skin, and I want to see him. Us. Together.

“Take your shirt off,” I gasp.

He immediately rips off his vest and shirt together, and then braces his forearms by my head. I glance toward our feet. He’s sucking in his gut. He’s so freaking cute. He’s obviously built; he’s just got a little layer of beer chub over the muscle.

I sneak my hand between us, tracing his happy trail. It’s thicker now. I like how it rasps against the soft skin of my stomach. I experiment with lifting my hips so I can feel the hair tickle my bare belly. I love it.

“Oh, shit.”

That did more than I intended. The angle is somehow even more perfect.

“What do you need, baby?”

he asks. His face is turning red. From the plank he’s doing on top of me or from trying not to come?

“I can’t reach my clit,” I whine.

“Okay,”

he grunts and shifts, trying to hold his weight on one hand and reach between my legs with the other, but this is the backseat of a Lincoln, and we’re both grown-ass adults. He’s strong, but not Hulk strong. He collapses on me with an oof. “Hold up. Hang on.”

Somehow, with brute strength and grunts and curses, he manages to flip us so he’s on his back, and I’m on top, hunched over, still stuffed full of his twenty-five-ounce-tall-beer-can cock.

He grins at me, and all of a sudden, he’s eighteen again— the poor little rich boy, bitter, jaded, and mad at everyone in the world except me, his princess, the only person who can make him smile, who knows what his silences mean.

Tears pool in my eyes.

“Hey, hey,”

he says, reaching to hug me to his chest. I stop him, bracing my hands on his stomach. I was right. Under the pudge, he’s hard as rock. “What’s wrong? Do you want to stop? We can stop.”

“No, I don’t want to stop.”

I sniffle. “I just want the time back, you know?”

“I know,”

he says, covering my hands with his, curling his fingers around mine, his eyes trained on my face like I’m a miracle or a revelation, like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. I arch my back and smile.

I haven’t felt beautiful for years. I know I am, in a conventional beauty standards kind of way, but I’ve never felt it except for when I see myself reflected in Wyatt Foster’s eyes.

“You can’t leave me again,”

I tell him.

“I won’t.”

“I won’t let you,”

I warn him.

“Okay.”

He smiles, and the emptiness that I learned to live with fills with warmth. I begin to rock.

Sweat beads Wyatt’s forehead.

“I love you,”

I tell him, grinning.

“I’ve loved you longer,” he says.

I tug one of my hands free so I can play with my clit. His eyes track the movement, watching greedily. I toss my hair and ride him, chasing down my orgasm, knowing in my soul that’s all he wants—to see me come. To see me happy.

It comes on quick and powerful, crashing through me, cramping my insides so tight that Wyatt shouts and comes too, even though he was holding it together with that Lamaze breathing he always did to make sure he lasted when I sucked him off back in the day.

I fold forward and land on his chest, wobbling like a Jell-O mold. He immediately strokes my spine, exactly how I like.

“You remember,” I mumble.

“I remember everything,” he says.

I try to nestle closer, but there’s no distance between us, and there’s never going to be again. Back when we were kids, I was a princess, but not anymore. I’m a dangerous woman. Nothing and no one is ever going to take this man away from me again.

“Come home with me.”

It’s not an invitation, and he knows it.

Wyatt smiles so wide that I get a rare show of teeth. “Okay,” he says.

He grabs my dress off the floor mat, flips it right side out, and hands it to me to wriggle on. I’m not excited about dismounting this monster cock or looking Grandpa Ray in the eye later. There is going to be a mess.

“You okay?”

Wyatt asks, smoothing my dress down over my hips.

“I’m great.”

I bite the bullet and slide off his lingering semi.

He does a crunch, gawking as a flood of cum gushes from my pussy onto his hairy lower belly. He grins. My cheeks catch fire.

I snatch my wadded-up panties from under the driver’s seat and wipe him up while he lounges there like he’s king of the world.

“Does this mean I’m a made man?”

he asks. “Since I bagged a Volpe?”

“This means you’re full of shit, Wyatt Foster,”

I say, grabbing his arms and leaning back to drag him upright. He raises an eyebrow. He’s ridiculously pleased with himself. “You said you’d never fuck me in the backseat of your car.”

“It’s not mine,”

he says, letting me pull him up. He grins, so happy that he looks high. His happiness burns away every lingering scrap of hurt and loneliness inside me. Finally, after eight years, I feel like myself again.

“Where’s your shoe?”

he asks, his gaze caught on my bare foot.

“I have no idea.”

Somehow, he gets us out of the car, carrying me to the passenger seat so I don’t have to step on gravel. He hunts for the lost sandal for a while until I tell him to leave it behind and take me home.

He’s as cautious as I remember all the way back to my condo, hands at ten and two, no more than five miles above the speed limit. He was always like this with me in the car, driving like he was on a suspended license until he dropped me off, and then peeling off like a racecar driver. Does he still drive like that?

I can’t wait to find out.

My insides warm as he pulls up in front of my condo building. I can’t wait to drag him upstairs, strip him naked, and make him talk until I know about every last thing on his Notes list.

Annoyingly, as soon as he engages the parking brake, my phone goes off. “Psycho Killer”

by the Talking Heads. It’s Dad.

I sigh and tap the green button, putting it on speaker out of habit.

“I’m fine,”

I say immediately.

“Put the kid on,”

he growls.

“Okay. Hold on. I’m handing him the phone.”

I don’t. There’s no way I’m not listening in on this conversation.

Wyatt gives me a look and then clears his throat. “Sir?”

“Ray tells me your balls finally dropped, eh?”

“I did what had to be done,”

he says, absolutely deadpan, not a shred of deference in his voice. My heart swells with love. I always knew he could be what I needed, but I never wanted to make him. He’s born to it, though, in his own way. Just like me.

“You got this now?”

Dad asks Wyatt. “Or do I have to upset her mother and haul her out of the chaise lounge in the cabana?”

“I have this.”

“We’ll talk when I get back. I have something that I’ve been holding on to. I guess you know what to do with it now.”

Wyatt grunts, hangs up, and then exhales long and hard. Of course, he realizes what’s going on. He’s not stupid. He must’ve caught on several blocks back.

I plaster an innocent look on my face and push my tits up. I hope he’s not too mad.

“Mira?”

His voice raises at the end of name. The jig is up. “Why is your condo right across from my job?”

“Is it?”

I widen my eyes and blink.

“Mira,”

he growls.

I huff and fold my arms so my tits lift even higher. His gaze darts down. I hide my smile.

“I might, possibly, kind of own S & E Logistics.”

“You own my company?”

“Well, yeah. Since the takeover. That was me.”

“You just bought it.”

“Well, I bought a majority of the shares. And it wasn’t me, per se. It was S & E International. My shell corporation.”

“Your shell corporation?”

“Well, one of my shell corporations.”

I cross my legs so my dress rides up, flashing a little thigh to distract him. His gaze darts again, and his jaw tightens. “I named it after the dogs. Sheldon and Eustace. S & E.”

“How come I never saw you?”

“I park in the garage in the basement.”

He rests an elbow on the steering wheel and lets his head fall into his hand. “And you just bought my company.”

He narrows his eyes. “Is that why I’m the Director of Strategic Analytics? Did you make them promote me?”

“Oh, no. That wasn’t the plan. I bought the company so I could bankrupt it and ruin your life anytime I wanted.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “It made me feel better. Knowing that I could.”

The corners of his mouth sneak up. “You are your father’s daughter,” he says.

“And my mother’s.”

I lift my shoulders. “I didn’t actually do it.”

He glances over, smiling ruefully. “What else of mine do you own, Don Mira?”

I fold my arms and hike my chin. “Not much. Your apartment building. The bank that holds the lease on your car.”

He snorts. “That all?”

“Your heart,”

I mumble, my cheeks burning, glancing at him from the side of my eye, shy and hopeful and scared as hell.

“My heart,”

he agrees, very simply, like it’s nothing more or less than obvious truth. “Hey, after you clean up, want to go to my place and say hi to Sheldon?”

“You’ve still got him?” I squeal.

“Yeah. His muzzle’s pretty gray now, but he’s good. Just slower.”

I’m out of the car in a flash, and Wyatt is at my side in seconds. He grabs my hand as we walk together up the sidewalk.

Like he’ll never let go.

Like, in a way, he never did.