2.

Z OEY

“What made you decide to take on a project like this?” I shrugged as I tried to match his pace, ignoring the pain shooting down my leg and across my back. After a few more steps, he said, “I thought cops weren’t supposed to socialize with convicted criminals.”

“If that was the case, then I wouldn’t be able to talk to half my family or friends.”

“True.”

I couldn’t take it anymore and finally stopped walking so I could bend forward and touch my knees, stretching out my back as I took a few deep, calming breaths. It must have taken a few seconds for Garvey to realize I wasn’t walking beside him anymore because when I looked up, he was at least six feet ahead of me.

“Are you coming or not?” he asked.

“Are we in a time crunch? Do you have plans?” I asked sarcastically. I took another deep breath and started walking toward him as I said, “I deeply apologize that I had to take a second and interrupt your schedule.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I got injured in the line of . . .”

Garvey waved his hand dismissively and interrupted, “I’m not talking about the limp, brainiac, I’m talking about your attitude.”

“My attitude?” I couldn’t help but chuckle before I said, “Are you forgetting our last interaction, Gravy?”

“Stop fucking calling me that,” Garvey hissed.

“Well, did you?” I thought about it for a second and said, “Actually, me knocking you off the bridge was our last interaction, but you know what I’m talking about.”

Garvey sighed and stared up at the sky for a minute before he looked at me again and said, “I’m sorry, Zo. I am truly fucking sorry for what happened that night.”

“Do you even remember what happened?” I asked.

“It came back to me in bits and pieces. Maybe not all of it, but enough for me to know that I fucked up and shouldn’t be surprised that you fucking hate me now.”

“I never hated you Garvey,” I admitted. “Not even for a second. It would have made things so much easier, but I just couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried.”

“Did you ever think about me - other than to curse my name and wish I was dead?”

I laughed and looked over at him, noticing that he’d slowed his pace. “Did you ever think about me?”

“Every day when I looked into the mirror and saw the permanent reminder of what I’d done.”

I stopped walking suddenly, and he looked at me with such a sad expression that I could feel my throat starting to choke with emotion and my eyes starting to burn with impending tears. I reached up and touched the scar that split his eyebrow and smiled at him before I said, “I think it gives you a sexy and dangerous look, don’t you?”

“No. It reminds me of how trusting you were and how stupid I was to take advantage of that.”

“I was just as stupid as you were. I knew how much you’d had to drink, but I still got into that car with you.” I chuckled before I said, “Technically, it was my car, but you know . . . we were both idiots and lucky that neither of us died.”

Suddenly, Garvey burst out laughing, and through his laughter, he asked, “I wonder how many of your friends have had to say that over the years?”

“That we were idiots and lucky that no one died?” Garvey started laughing again, and I couldn’t stop myself from joining him. “If you gave me two minutes to list them out, I could come up with three dozen or so.”

“At least.”

“Probably more.”

Finally, we stopped in front of a small house, and I looked at the ones around it before I asked, “Did he have all of these built at the same time or did he add on gradually?”

“The first two guys lived in an RV that was towed in for scrap. They helped him clean it up and make it livable and then stayed here and helped him build the first two houses. Once those guys moved into those first houses, then two more men moved into the RV and started building more. It sort of took off from there.”

“And now he’s got more than a dozen?” When Garvey nodded, I looked around and asked, “How many men have gone on to live successful and productive lives after leaving here?”

“That depends on what you consider successful.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not exactly easy to rebuild your life from the ground up, especially when there’s a record hanging over your head. Depending on the crime someone committed, that can interfere with not just them getting a job, but also finding safe housing while dealing with the other repercussions of the life they lived before their incarceration. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to fall back into harmful patterns of behavior when faced with an uphill battle that never seems to end.”

“Have you had that problem?”

“To an extent, yes,” Garvey admitted.

“If it’s so hard, then why do you live here instead of Rojo? I’m sure your parents would help you find a place, and if they couldn’t, then someone else in the family would. I know they’d find a job for you too.”

“I wouldn’t know because I never asked.”

“Why?”

“I’m pretty sure that the fine residents of Rojo wouldn’t want anything to do with me after the way I treated them over the years. God knows they put up with more shit than anyone should be expected to and it was probably a relief for them when I finally got locked up instead of getting out on bond to wreak even more havoc.”

“You’re just afraid that the rest of your family would give you the ass-kicking that you deserved all those years ago.”

“Maybe,” Garvey said with a big smile. “You know that we Forresters never forgive a grudge.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Have your parents or brother and sister mentioned anything about retribution or . . .”

Garvey shrugged before he said, “I haven’t talked to them.”

“Since when?”

“Since I came to the realization that I was a useless boil on the ass of humanity and they were better off without me.”

“So, you talked to them yesterday?” I asked sarcastically.

I couldn’t believe it had been very long since he spoke to his family because the Forresters were a tight-knit group - I knew because they were like family to me and had supported me through my ups and downs, especially since my attack.

Over the years, I had avoided asking about Garvey because we had such a tumultuous relationship when we were younger. In a way, I thought everyone might blame me for part of his problems, considering I was right there beside him through some very wild and crazy times that included a whole lot of alcohol and the beginning of his drug abuse. It took me years to forgive myself for not finding the courage to ask for help on his behalf, and I always wondered if his parents secretly blamed me for him getting out of hand and ending up in prison.

Because of that assumption, I had avoided Jesse and Robin Forrester when at all possible and kept my distance from Corey and Marley, Garvey’s brother and sister.

I noticed he hadn’t really answered my question, as sarcastic as it was, and asked, “When was the last time you talked to your mom and dad?”

“In court the day I was convicted.”

I thought about it and knew that meant he hadn’t spoken to them in years since he’d been locked up for quite some time.

“What about Corey and Marley?”

“Same.”

“You haven’t been in contact with anyone from home in years?”

“Just one person,” Garvey admitted, even though he didn’t tell me who.

“Why won’t you come home?”

“Because I fucked up so badly that I don’t deserve a place there anymore.” Garvey started walking again, this time up the sidewalk to the house we’d been standing in front of as he said, “Come check the place out. It might not look like much from the outside, but there’s plenty of charm inside.”

I looked around the small yard - it wasn’t fenced in, but there was an obvious delineation between its space and the one next to it. As Garvey pulled keys out of his pocket, I asked, “Does each resident take care of their own space?”

“Yes. It’s up to them to keep it clean and orderly, and they can spend as much or as little time as they want on the lawn,” Garvey said after he pushed the door open. He motioned up the street at the houses we had passed and said, “As you can see, some of the guys take more pride in the exterior than others, but I think that depends on their background more than anything.”

“What do you mean?” I asked as I walked up the steps to join him on the small porch.

“Well, if they were raised in an apartment or a place without much grass, it’s probably not all that important to them, but if they were raised in a home where taking care of the lawn was a thing of pride, then they probably revert to that mindset and do what they can to make it beautiful.”

“Whoever lives here must have come from the suburbs because the lawn looks great and this . . . Wait a second!” I hurried down the steps and across the grass toward the rose bush at the corner of the house. “I’ve never seen a rose like this!”

“Squirrel!”

I glared at Garvey before I bent forward to get closer to the bloom and closed my eyes to enjoy the scent. After a few deep breaths, I stood up and found him watching me.

When he didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was staring, I did the same thing and took in everything about him.

Garvey Forrester had always been handsome - which held true to his Forrester genetics because there was no arguing that the men in that family were incredibly good-looking in a rugged sort of way.

The last time I saw Garvey he was much too skinny for his large frame, which I knew came from losing himself to drugs and alcohol. At the time, it had been a shock to see the changes in him. His face was gaunt and his color was off, but that wasn’t the most jarring aspect. He was so skinny that it seemed like he would get tossed around if the wind started blowing. Even his posture was different back then. The young man who once stood proudly, his height putting him as tall, if not taller, than the grown men in his family, had somehow shrunk into himself, and he had a huddled look as if he was bracing himself for something horrible.

But now, ten years later, he’d found that pride in himself again and stood tall. He had also been taking care of himself and put back on the weight he’d lost and then some, but it seemed like all of it was muscle. His wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist which flared out again to show off thighs as big as tree trunks that seemed to stretch the denim of his jeans.

I let my gaze roam back up and admired his flat stomach, something that I used to have before my accident and recovery, and then moved over to the large hand that just happened to be scratching the abdomen that I was sure rippled with muscles.

As his hand moved, I watched the play of muscles in his forearm and had to swallow when I got a good look at his bicep as it strained the hem of the T-shirt he was wearing.

I skipped over his face because I didn’t want to get lost in his eyes - the pain I’d seen when we were talking about his family had almost broken me - and took a second to admire his strong jaw with a short beard that was a few shades darker than his russet brown hair. When I knew Garvey as a child and then a teenager, his hair had always been long and unruly. It was different now, but just as sexy, short and tousled as if he ran his hands through it too often for it to stay in place.

As if he’d heard my thoughts, he ran his hand through his hair, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking at his face.

He knew I’d been checking him out just like he had been doing to me, cataloging the changes since the last time I’d seen him and appreciating that the boy I knew back then had definitely turned into a man, even with the side quest he’d taken by turning into an asshole that I constantly had to make excuses for.

“You look good, Zo. Even better than I remember,” Garvey said with a sad smile.

“Been thinking about me a lot, huh?” I asked smugly.

“Every fucking day.”

I didn’t know if I could handle the direction this conversation seemed to be going, so I fell back on my tried and true defense - sarcasm. “Well, it makes me feel better to know that someone is, even if it’s you.”

Garvey smiled and said, “Don’t even pretend that you haven’t left a trail of broken hearts in your wake back home.”

“Of course I have. I’m a Duke. It’s impossible not to love me.”

Garvey laughed loudly, his whole body shaking with mirth as his hand went back down to his stomach and scratched again.

Although I’d never wanted to be a piece of thin cotton before, I suddenly wanted that more than anything. I shivered at the thought of what those blunt fingernails would feel like against my skin . . .

What in the hell was wrong with me? Absolutely not!

The good part of me was screaming a warning, but the bad girl that I’d tamped down all those years ago had a wicked smile on her face because she somehow knew that it was almost her time to shine.

No! The last thing I needed in my life was another Forrester getting all up in my business. I already had Rain and Lark on my ass.

Dammit!

◆◆◆

GARVEY

As much as it pained me to watch Zoey limp beside me, I knew from experience that the last thing she’d want was my sympathy, so instead of irking her by asking if she was okay or needed my help, I used sarcasm to gloss over what I was feeling.

It worked exactly like I knew it would, and just to help it along, I slowed my pace to make it easier for her to keep up.

It hurt my heart to see her broken, even though I knew she was much better than she had been even a few months ago. I knew that whatever she was feeling was a thousand times worse because it was a physical pain. I kept up with current events in Rojo through the news and had heard about her struggles since that day.

As soon as I found out that she’d been attacked, I started making a plan to see that the men who did it pay, ready to call in markers with men I knew who were still locked up to make sure those assholes received the same injuries she had but tenfold.

When I found out that one of them died on the scene, I was highly irritated. That was too quick. I had hoped for him to go through long-term pain before he died, although I rolled his punishment over to his friend and made sure he learned his lesson, even though I couldn’t teach it myself. That old country song about friends in low places was right - sometimes they really were the best ones to have.

But friends like Zoey were few and far between, and that’s what we’d been at the core of it all. Young love and rebellion aside, I truly cared for her as not just my first love, but as a friend who stuck with me even though her life would have been much easier if she’d just let me go.

After the wreck that got me my first felony charge, I fought to be able to talk to her again, and when I finally had the chance, words couldn’t express the grief and sorrow I felt for how I had hurt her - both physically and emotionally. Zoey had trusted me, as both a friend and a lover, and I let her down.

And then I did it again and again.

Even as I apologized and begged her to forgive me for putting her in danger and hurting her by my actions, she still tried to give me the benefit of the doubt and take some of the blame. I knew now, after years of working on myself to change the part of me that had brought so much pain to my family and friends, that our relationship wasn’t healthy back then. I was doing everything in my power to lose myself, whether it was through alcohol or drugs, while she was doing everything in her power to keep me healthy and whole.

It would be easy to chalk up our unhealthy relationship to teenage hormones and rebellion, but I knew now that it was really just Zoey’s giving heart and need to protect those around her that made her stay. When I found out that she had graduated from the police academy, I knew that Rojo would be a better place with her protecting it. Now that I knew she wasn’t going to be able to work in law enforcement anymore, I wondered where her focus would land.

It didn’t surprise me that she’d found a way to help people, and I wasn’t shocked at all to find out that she was going to do it in a spectacular way.

The woman didn’t know how to do anything half-assed - it was all or nothing for Zoey and always had been. That was what I loved most about her back then, and now that I saw she still had that drive, I found it just as attractive.

When I finally got a chance to really stop and look at her, what I found took my breath away. The beautiful girl I had fallen in love with all those years ago had turned into a stunning woman with a sexy take-no shit-attitude and a sarcastic wit to go along with that no-filter mouth of hers.

Damn. Zoey Duke was the whole enchilada. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t ever be able to get a taste of her again.

That thought hurt almost as much as seeing her in pain.