“Nice flowers,” he says, nodding toward the bouquet and pulling my attention back to the monstrosities taking up too much space in the room.

  My eyes lift slowly—death stare. No smile.

  He holds up his hands, smirking. “Or not.”

  “If you were buying a woman flowers, is this what you’d go for?”

  “Probably not. This is the kind of thing I’d buy for my grandma though.”

  Perfect.

  “Do I give off grandma vibes?”

  “I know you’re not actually asking me that.”

  I let out a small laugh, shaking my head as I scroll through the next design.

  “These are great. Do you have a favorite?”

  “Yeah, the third one,” he says. “But I wanted your opinion.”

  “They’re all strong,” I tell him honestly. “You could pick any of them, and it would work.”

  “Would it be worth developing a couple more so the client has more choice?”

  I purse my lips, thinking. “Probably not. Not for this one. Sometimes giving them choices backfires. If we show them what works and why it works, they’ll usually respond well. If they want revisions, that’s when it becomes collaborative, but we need to lead first.”

  He stands up, tucking his tablet under one arm. “I’ll move forward with the third and send it back over to you when it’s done.”

  “Thank you, Xander.”

  It’s been an hour, and all I’ve done is procrastinate like a champ. I’ve been refilling my coffee, replying to emails I don’t care about, and trying to remember whether I’ve eaten anything today. Then, like someone flipped a switch, the ideas start pouring out of me.

  The sun’s been down for hours, and I’m still sitting here at the office long after everyone else has headed home. My back’s aching from being hunched over this desk, and my neck is a little stiff from staring at the screen all day. The last person I saw on their way out was Hilda, and that must’ve been at least an hour ago. She finished putting the cleaning supplies away in the closet, then waved goodbye, wrapped up in her oversized winter coat that swallowed her tiny frame whole.

  So when the elevator kicks up, and I hear the cables whine as the car rises, something inside me snaps tight.

  There shouldn’t be anyone else here.

  I shut off my computer screen, giving myself a clearer view of the hallway outside my open door, and… yeah. Not gonna lie. I’m shitting myself just a little.

  When the elevator dings and the doors slide open, relief hits me fast. Phoenix steps out—tall, tattooed, and way too fucking tempting—and walks toward me like it’s completely normal for him to know I’m here and not, god forbid, somewhere else in the entire city, like a normal human adult with free will.

  Dread settles in my stomach as he gets closer.

  No. Not dread.

  It’s really hot, sick, addictive anticipation.

  I hate the effect he has on me and the way my pulse skyrockets when I know it should freeze. It drives me out of my mind. But what I really hate is the part of me that wants this man—that’s missed this man. And he is a man now—a dangerous, obsessive, impossibly beautiful man who could hurt me again without even lifting a finger.

  He knocks before pushing the door fully open, and I stare at him like he’s grown a second head.

  “You knock now?”

  “I’m trying to be polite.”

  “Since when?”

  He shrugs, stepping inside. “Since now.”

  I roll my eyes, flip my screen back on, and pretend to care about the spreadsheet in front of me because it’s easier than looking at him.

  Numbers.

  Cells.

  Projected losses.

  Profit margins.

  All of it blurs because none of it matters when he’s here, just existing the way he does. He doesn’t say a word, but his energy is off. Something feels wrong. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it everywhere, especially in that stupid buried place that still remembers what it felt like to ache for his nearness.

  I lift my gaze, and he’s staring straight through me. He’s looking past me and out the glass window as if I’m not even here.

  “What’s happened?”

  Fuck me, I still care.

  I hate that the concern hits me exactly the same way it used to.

  He drops into the chair across from me and exhales like he’s been holding that breath in until he finally feels safe enough to let it go. He leans forward, elbows hitting the desk, fingers dragging through his hair as I watch his usual fight drain out of him.

  “I went to visit my mom.”

  Chapter 11

  Phoenix

  “You need to leave him.”

  “I can’t, Phoenix. If I could, I would’ve done it when you were a boy.”

  I’ve imagined killing my father in forty-two different ways.

  Yeah. I counted because hatred like mine needs a number. It keeps me steady. The garden shears were my first fantasy—one clean cut to his hands, the same hands that always turned into fists, then straight through the cold, dead muscle beating in his coward’s chest. Sometimes I imagined smothering him when he passed out drunk, pressing a pillow over his face and waiting for the kicking to stop. Hell, I almost did it once. I was sixteen. My mom walked in and ripped me off him before I got the satisfaction I’d been owed since the day I was born.

  My favorite would’ve been taking his tongue so he couldn’t call my mom a whore ever again, and then forcing poison down his throat because that’s what he is—poison in a man’s skin.

  The only reason that bastard is still breathing is that she begged me not to kill him. She knew it was coming one day, but I loved her too much to make her watch it happen.

  No wonder I’m fucked up, since my love for her is the reason she stays with the man who hurts her.

  I don’t understand her, and I don’t want to.

  She’s made every wrong choice a woman can make, and I paid for it. My whole childhood became collateral damage, and I was the price of her weakness.

  I took the hits meant for her, swallowed the words that destroyed my self-worth, and stood between them before I even understood what I was protecting her from. The worst part is I’d suffer it all again if it meant she finally chose herself—not me, not him, but her.

  “You can’t love him. Love isn’t abuse.”

  “He wasn’t always like this. After he left the military…”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop making excuses for him. One day, he’ll kill you. You know that.”

  “He wouldn’t⁠—”

  “He absolutely would.”

  And if that happens, I’ll rip the skin from his bones while he screams, and I’ll make him watch every piece burn.

  “Maybe if you came home, you could see that he’s changed.”

  “I can see the black eye under your makeup. Don’t insult me with bullshit.”

  “I just… I miss you.”

  “Then leave him and come to New York with me. I’ll take care of you.”

  My mom starts to sob quietly. “I can’t, baby boy. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  “Then you really are lost,” I whisper. “And as much as I love you… I can’t keep watching you do this.”

  That was the last time I saw her.

  Seventy-three days later, my mom was gone.

  She had a heart attack in her sleep, which wasn’t exactly the ending I’d spent years preparing for, but life’s got a fucked-up sense of humor. The woman survived strangulation, beatings, and broken bones. She survived being thrown down the stairs, nights that should’ve killed her, and a marriage that was nothing more than a long, slow execution.

  My father couldn’t kill her outright—not with his hands or his rage—so he did it the slow way.

  He broke the one thing she still had control over: her heart.

  He chipped at it year after year, bruised it with invisible marks, and reshaped it until it learned that the only escape she’d ever get was to stop beating entirely.

  And it did.

  It just gave the fuck up when it realized the only way to stop suffering was to stop living in a world where he existed. There was no big dramatic finale to her life, no last words, just a muscle that decided it was done fighting a war it could never win.

  “How is she?” Shannen asks.

  How is she?

  Fucking dead in the ground, that’s how she is. Buried six feet deep, with nothing to show for her life but a son who got screwed up along the way and a husband who probably celebrated with a bottle of whiskey.

  “Dead.”

  Shannen gasps, her hand flying to her mouth like she’s trying to shove the sound back in. “Phoenix… I’m really sorry… How long?”

  “A year ago. I just got back from Indiana. It was the first anniversary.”

  “Jesus…” she whispers. “What about your dad… Is he…?” She trails off because even she knows there’s no good way to finish that sentence.

  Is he alive?

  Is he rotting in a cell where he belongs?

  “He’s still breathing, but one day, I’ll be the one who decides when that stops.”

  Shannen gives me that soft, pitying look, not realizing that I fucking mean it. That bastard is going to die because I decide he dies. Shannen can get over it later.

  “That’s not a figure of speech,” I add, leaning back in the chair as if we’re not casually talking about murder. “I mean it. That’s why I went back. I thought it’d be a good time to end him, but the fucker’s hiding from me, which just means he knows what’s coming.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “My mom’s funeral. I didn’t stay long.”

  “So that’s where you’ve been?”

  I smirk because she’s practically serving it up, and she doesn’t even realize it.

  “Sounds like you missed me, pretty girl.” She ignores it, which just makes me want to push harder. “Don’t worry, next time I’ll take you with me.”

  “Phoenix, this has to stop,” she says, and I can hear the frustration beneath it.

  But I’m not listening to her anymore. My attention snags on the ugliest, most obnoxiously bright bunch of flowers I’ve ever seen, sitting on the corner of her desk like a fucking joke. My chest tightens instantly because they’re not from me. They look like the exact kind of cheap, desperate shit a man sends when he doesn’t know her at all, which is every man except me.

  The longer I stare, the worse it gets, and the more it feels like someone just walked into my territory, pissed on the walls, and left their name scrawled on my girl like she was free to take.

  I don’t even look at her when I reach for the card beside it, my adrenaline kicking in because I already know who they’re going to be from.

  “Phoenix—”

  Her voice cracks as she realizes, way too late, that she should’ve fed them through a shredder the second they showed up. She could’ve burned them, buried them, or launched them at the fucking sun for all I care. Literally anything other than leaving them out like this.

  She says my name again, but I don’t bother acknowledging it.

  I open the card instead and let my eyes drag over the letters, each one somehow more irritating than the last.

  Shannen, thank you for lunch. It was lovely to finally meet you, and I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do for me. Looking forward to the gala. James.

  My jaw ticks.

  Don’t kill him—he’s too high profile.

  Lucien’s voice is in my head, warning me not to be an idiot.

  “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, stop… I want this contract, which means you don’t get to act out.” I crumple the card in my fist, walk it over to the trash, and drop it in. “I’m serious. If you want to be in my life, then you don’t get to decide who I work with.”

  “The hell I don’t, when that asshole’s eye-fucking you through a goddamn thank-you note.”

  “So what if he is? I’m going to date. Get used to it,” she fires back.

  God, she’s fucking beautiful when she’s pissed—but not even that’s enough to put the leash back on me right now.

  I’m around her desk before she can blink, and she stands, her shoulders squared, trying to match my energy.

  Cute effort.

  Stupid as hell, but cute.

  “Say that to me again,” I murmur.

  “Why do we keep doing this, Phoenix? I’ve told you where I stand.”

  “Tell me again,” I growl. “Once more.”

  “Whatever you think is going to happen between us… isn’t.”

  “It has happened. It is happening, and you haven’t done anything to stop it aside from a few weak-ass words that don’t mean shit to me. I’m inside you, pretty girl. It’s me. It’s always been me, and yet you still deny me. Why?”

  “If this is about sex⁠—”

  “Don’t insult what this is by reducing it to that. If this was about sex, I’d have had you ten times over by now, and you know it.” I tilt my head, eyes narrowing as I lean in, my lips brushing the air beside her ear. “You had me beneath you in that hotel room, soaking through your underwear, grinding down on me like your life depended on it, and that had nothing to do with power. That was all me. That was us. And maybe you’d have gone through with it… Maybe not. But you sure as fuck would’ve let me make you come in that prick’s restaurant, when the only thing going through your pretty little head was how fast I could get my fingers inside you and whether you could keep quiet long enough for me to finish what I started.”

  I slam my hands down on the desk beside her hips, the sound cracking through the room. She doesn’t flinch. Not even a blink, and that trust, the way she knows I’d never hurt her, even when I’m this close to unraveling, sends lightning down my spine.

  I cage her in, my chest nearly brushing hers, my breath matching hers, inhale for inhale, as if my lungs forgot how to work unless they follow her pace.

  “If this was about sex, I’d fuck my virginity into you right here against that glass so the whole goddamn city could see exactly who I belong to.”

  Her eyes drop to my mouth, and I nearly lose it.

  I want to kiss her so bad it hurts.

  I want to consume her.

  Rip her open.

  Climb inside her chest and close the door behind me.

  I want to live there.

  Fuck it, I’ll die there just so I can taste her again.

  “This is about everything you’re too scared to admit you feel and the parts of you you’re still trying to pretend don’t react to me.” I lean in, just enough to feel her breath stutter against my lips. “It’s about the fact that we belong to each other in a way that doesn’t give a single fuck about timing, logic, or whatever version of reality you’re clinging to.”

  I leave the words hanging between us, and she stares at me with those golden eyes I’ve been obsessed with for as long as I can remember—that impossible molten gold that’s like honey laced with fire, a shade that I’m sure no one else in this world has.

  I reach up and push a strand of her red hair behind her ear, my fingers lingering against her skin longer than they should, tracing the curve where her jaw meets her neck.

  “I’ve been living half a life without you. I’ve been walking around like half a man, but I’m almost whole, Shannen. I’m so close. And I know you love me. I know you do.” She shakes her head, her lips parting like she’s about to argue and deny our history, but I cut her off before she can get a single word out.

  “I’m fine with you not realizing it yet or pretending you don’t. But don’t stand there and tell me you don’t recognize the boy who carried you out of that trailer the day your mom threw up all over your only pair of shoes, and you wouldn’t move because the floor was covered in needles.”

  “Or how I ran six blocks with you in my arms because you wanted to stay out and feel the rain on your skin, and I was terrified you were going to freeze to death on me. You were laughing so hard you could barely breathe, and I looked at you and thought, If I can just keep her like this… If I can keep her laughing like this, nothing else would matter.”

  Her breath hitches, and I feel the exact moment her body remembers what her mouth won’t say. Her shoulders drop, and her eyes shift—not away from me, but straight back into us. And not just the memory, but what we were before I picked up a bat and smashed everything to hell.

  “I’m still him, baby.” My thumb traces her cheekbone, catching the tear that spills over. “He never left. I just buried him under all the shit I became.”

  “It’s not about what happened anymore, Phoenix. I believe you. I believe what you told me about that day. But I can’t—” She swallows, her eyes hardening as she tries to shut the door I’m desperate to kick back open. “I won’t be that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “The one who forgives you for all the bad,” she snaps, a bitter laugh escaping before she bites it back. “You’re a fucking killer, Phoenix. Jesus, why am I even—why am I still standing here having this conversation?”

  “You’re not scared of me.”

  “I am scared of you, but not for the reasons I should be. So what does that say about me?”

  “It says that you know me, really know me. I’m not some psychotic monster who throws women in dumpsters and calls it a night. You know that.”

  “I know…”

  “No, you want to paint me as the villain because it’s easier that way. Because it fits this little story you’ve built in your head, where I’m dangerous and you’re smart enough to stay away.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Don’t. I’m serious, Shannen—don’t do that. Don’t roll your eyes and laugh your way out of this.”

  “I don’t want to give myself to you, and you know what? Fuck it. Yes—yes, I’m sexually attracted to you, Phoenix. Obviously. I’m not even going to pretend, but it ends there.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. You can touch me, you can kiss me—hell, you can even fu⁠—”