Behind me, I hear Rook howl with laughter.

  Even hear him mutter the words 'Bullet Boy' under his breath.

  Beside him, Marcus—my closest friend since I was five years old and just learning to ride a bike—bursts out laughing. "Bullet Boy? Is that what you called him? That your superhero name, or what?"

  Maybe there is something to my road name. I get shot way too much for comfort.

  Angrily, I throw a look at him over my shoulder and then turn my attention back to Madison. Somehow, she's grown more beautiful in the years since I left her. Somehow, all those pictures I've seen of her don't do justice to how stunning she is; chestnut brown hair that frames her elegant features in loosely curled waves, fine cheekbones, a dimple on her chin, lips made for kissing and for smiling, a smile that always seemed brightest and proudest when she was explaining to me some subject—no, many subjects—that I didn't understand, but which always seemed to be in her wheelhouse. Back then, she was as smart as she is beautiful, and I’d bet that’s the case now, too.

  "Madison, will you put the gun down?" I say, taking a gamble that the sound of the surrounding highway will be enough to keep Alexander from hearing me. He cannot know that I'm still alive.

  "Who said that?" She says. Carefully, she opens one eye, gun still pointed in my general direction, gripped tightly in shaking hands.

  I put my hands on my helmet and lift it, just a little, enough to reveal my face to her. After a smile and a wink, I cover myself again.

  Her jaw drops. "Ja—"

  I raise my finger in a shushing motion and her lips clamp shut before she can reveal my identity.

  Then I beckon for Rook to come to my side.

  "Get on the bike, Madison," he growls, pointing to my motorcycle.

  After a long look at me, one that seems to pierce through the tinting of my motorcycle helmet and into my heart and mind, she nods. Does she know she's been in my heart every moment since I left her?

  She climbs aboard my bike.

  My heart stutters at the sight of her, wearing a black dress that hugs her curvy ass, a dress that's slit up the side to show her long, tanned legs, as she slides onto my motorcycle.

  "Let's go. We got what we came for," Rook bellows the order.

  I get on the bike in front of her and she clenches her thighs tight to me, holding on just how I taught her. My heart hitches in a way that I thought it never would again. Not since I broke hers. Not since I tore mine in two to save her life.

  Marcus whoops, laughs and cranks the accelerator, making his bike scream like a banshee as it pulls off the shoulder, spraying gravel and smoke. Rook follows. Slowly, angrily, as is his style.

  Then I follow.

  With a wild grin on my face underneath my helmet.

  I've just kidnapped the woman I love.

  The woman I love… who's engaged to one of the most powerful men in the state.

  A man with an army of bodyguards willing to break laws and necks to do his bidding.

  A man who will unleash hell to take back the woman he considers his stolen property.

  From this moment on, everyone I care about is in mortal danger.

  Chapter Eight

  Madison

  At some point, I wonder if I actually died during the car ride—maybe I had a heart attack when I got in next to Alexander, as the approaching doom that is my graduation hit me like a meteor-strike of stress and ruptured my heart, or maybe the car crashed during the drive, slamming into a barricade and driving a huge chunk of concrete through my skull—because what I am seeing, what I am experiencing, the man that I am holding on to for dear life as we scream down the highway at nearly supersonic speeds, absolutely cannot be real.

  Can it?

  The last I remember of Jackson Reid is that he was a young man, a young man who was supposed to meet me at a special spot, who was then going to ferry me away from the developing nightmare of my life and take me away somewhere, anywhere, where we could live together, free. How can that young man be in front of me now? After everything he’s done to break my heart and break his promises?

  Yet he's back.

  Back in the most confusing, inexplicable, heartbreaking way. And he's kidnapped me.

  When the winding road we’re following finally makes its way to an abandoned lighthouse that looks like it is ready to crumble into its component pieces and join the rocks and sand of the surrounding bluffs, a place where the air splatters my face with salt and sea and cold spite, the motorcycle stops and Jackson slips off, sliding up the visor on his helmet to smile at me and then extend his hand to help me down. I pause, looking at that hand, feeling even more like I must’ve died on the highway because there’s no way this can be real.

  Nothing else makes sense.

  How else do I explain my dead ex-boyfriend coming back to life?

  "I'm dead, aren't I?" I say.

  Another biker, the one who's built like a gorilla made of bricks, laughs.

  "No, you’re not dead. Yet. In fact, if I put my money on who's going to die first in this mad fucking enterprise, it'd be your Bullet Boy."

  "Bullet Boy? What does that even mean?" I say, looking at Jackson, who now has a frustrated tilt to his shoulders.

  He removes his helmet, revealing the same ruggedly handsome features I remember from years ago, only now with a little age to harden them and more than a lifetime's worth of pain and sadness in his eyes. His unkempt, dark-as-night hair whips in the breeze and he frowns at the larger biker before turning his cobalt blue eyes on me. "It's a nickname. A road name. He's trying to make it into Bullet Boy when, really, it's just Bullet."

  "Why Bullet?"

  "Because I keep getting shot," he answers.

  "It’s either ‘Bullet Boy’ or 'dipshit,'" the big biker adds. "You're lucky you got a choice. Most people don't."

  "It's true," the third biker adds. "You don't get to pick your nickname. It's just given to you."

  "Marcus, why are you taking his side in this?" Jackson says.

  "It's just common sense, man. You know I got your back, always have, always will, but there are some rules you just don't break. This is one of them."

  "Then just call me 'Bullet,' alright?" Jackson says. He rolls his eyes at me, and though I'm roiled with confusion and feel intense anger simmering in the background of my heart, I can't fight the heat that his soul-sucking blue eyes inspire in me. "Come on, Maddy. Let's get you inside." He looks to the sky, which is growing darker by the moment, and right now, is full of ominous storm clouds that roll directly toward us, threatening rain and thunder. "Weather's going to turn. We should get inside before it does. The lighthouse isn't a perfect shelter—the roof leaks in places and the walls weep sometimes—but it's better than nothing. We got a spot made up for you that's safe, dry, and comfortable."

  I take his hand. When we touch, I shiver and a jolt runs through me that stirs old nerves, old synapses, and it reminds me what it's like to touch someone that's so close to you, or was so close to you, that at one point you forgot where you ended and they began.

  Jackson leads me into the lighthouse.

  I take a deep breath; salt, sand, freedom tickles my nose. It's cozy in here. The walls are brick and concrete, stained dark with decades of rain and sea air, but there's no hint of mold or mildew. It's clean. There are blankets, a cot, candles, a radio, several plastic boxes loaded with rations, large jugs of water stacked against a far wall, there's a card table and chairs, everything necessary to make this abandoned, falling-down-old structure a home.

  Home.

  That thought jolts me back to awareness. Home means family. My family. My responsibilities. My future.

  "Nice, right?" Jackson says. There's pride in his voice. He clearly put a lot of work into fixing this place up. Some of the little touches, like how nicely the cot is made into a bed, with military-straight sheets, extra pillows, and even an electric blanket hooked up to a portable power unit, show genuine love and care.

  There's something deeply romantic about it. Something deeply entrapping about the way he's looking at me, too, and how the heat in his voice is an invitation to shut myself in this cozy hideaway and forget about everything in the world while I lose myself in his lips.

  It is a temptation that calls to that young girl inside me; eighteen, frightened, running from her problems and getting in over her head with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

  I have to put that part of me to rest. I have to fight it. Because that young girl has some very adult problems and her way of doing things is not the answer.

  "What the fuck are you doing with all this?"

  His face falls. "Maddy, what do you mean?"

  "I mean, you need to let me go."

  "Let you go? I'm rescuing you."

  Behind me, I hear the larger one say, "Bullet, you really know how to put the shittiest plans together."

  Jackson ignores the larger one.

  I do, too. The responsibility for my plight sits squarely on Jackson's broad shoulders.

  "Rescue me? You call this a rescue? You shot up the car I was riding in and abducted me in the middle of a freaking highway and then took me to some weird, crazy-ass old lighthouse. This isn't a rescue. This is a kidnapping. I can't afford to be kidnapped, because I have finals, my thesis paper, and I have to graduate, and I have to..." The sheer weight of all the things I have to do crushes my chest and cuts off my words. I take a long breath, look into his vivid blue eyes, eyes that burn with the strongest case for staying and will ruin everything in my life if I let them. "Take me back. Please."

  "Back to him? Alexander? That asshole is fucking poison. He hit you, Maddy. I've seen the proof. If you go back to him, he's just going to kill your fucking dreams and, hell, who knows, he may even kill you one day. You know his family has buried bodies all over town. They're criminals and killers. I won’t let you go back to that."

  My lips set in a line so firm it hurts.

  My hands clench into fists so tightly my knuckles pop.

  I glare into his eyes.

  "You think you can just do all this without my consent? That you can just rip me out of my life with no regard for my responsibilities, for the things and people that are important to me, and I'll just be fucking grateful? You had your chance years ago, Jackson Reid, and you fucking blew it. I was ready to run away with you and you abandoned me to reality. I learned from that heartbreak. I grew up. As a grown up, I have shit in my life that is important to me, and I'm not about to give it all up because of some foolish fucking boy who thinks he can just waltz back into my life without so much as a 'sorry' for all the pain he’s caused me and who expects me to be excited to light my life on fire just to run away with him."

  Jackson’s eyes flash, deep blues that catch fire with rage and passion.

  "What life? As Alexander's little trophy? You know he's never going to let you do anything for yourself. He owns you. If you go back, he'll lock you away and only trot you out when it's useful to him. You won’t be a person, Maddy. You’ll be a possession."

  His words hit so close to the truth that tears rip themselves from my eyes.

  Yet he does not know how right he is; he doesn't know the deal my family made. Which is why I have to go back. It’s why I have to resist this ill-timed, ill-conceived, tempting promise of his.

  "Fuck you, Jackson Reid. Fuck you. You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. What happens if I stay here with you, huh? I give up my degree? Something I spent four years of my life working towards, just gone like a puff of smoke? And I’ll have to give up my family, too; my mom and dad, who have been there for me whenever I needed them, which is more than I can say for someone else I know who abandoned me when I needed him the most. Is that what's supposed to entice me so much? The affection of some cocky, brain-dead boy who struts back into my life and thinks he's some glorious hero who's finally going to fix everything for me? Fuck off. Let me go."

  "If Alexander loved you, if your parents loved you, if you loved yourself, you wouldn't go back to him. You wouldn't give up. You wouldn’t accept this terrible engagement. No, Maddy. Instead, you'd fight for what's important to you—your freedom and your education," he growls. "We both know that the second you go back is the second you become nothing more than a fucking tool for Alexander Covington. You're not a person to him. You don't have any value." I flinch, take a step back, and Jackson advances on me. "You want to know the saddest thing? It sounds like you actually believe that about yourself, too."

  "Shut up," I whisper.

  "But I value you. I think you're worth something, whether or not you believe that about yourself. I won't let you go back and throw yourself away for whatever ridiculous, self-sacrificing reasons you have. You’re worth more than that."

  "Jackson, please..."

  "Anyone who really loves you would support you. They’d want you to be better, to have better. Not this shame marriage as a pathetic trophy wife. What you’re allowing yourself to be is so beneath you, and I will not let that happen."

  "Please stop," I whisper. The words come out a choked sob. My heart aches and my throat clenches shut in pain and heartbreak.

  "Stop? I will never give up on you, Maddy."

  I want him to shut up, to stop poking that deep, pained, insecure part of me that echoes every single one of his accusations. The part of me that knows I am selling myself out, that knows that I won’t have any freedom or future in my marriage to Alexander.

  So I make a fist and I swing, hitting Jackson hard in the face.

  Then I turn and run for the door.

  There's no plan in my mind, nothing more than an urge to get out and somehow find a way home. Even if I have to run through the wilderness, I just want to get away.

  A hand lands on my shoulder. Grips me. Holds me in place. Turns me around and brings me face-to-face with those accusing blue eyes.

  "I won't let you do this to yourself. You're staying here,” Jackson says.

  Marcus steps forward. "Buddy, I think she's had enough. She gets it: you care. But can't you see she's hurting? Ease up a little."

  "As if I'm not?" Jackson snaps. "You know what I went through for her." His hand goes to his midsection, to a spot on the right side of his body. "That's why I can't give up."

  My eyes narrow. What he went through for me? What is he talking about?

  "Not saying you give up, buddy. I'm saying you compromise. Give her something. Be better than that Alexander jerk."

  The two of them talk in low voices. Two men uninvolved in my life until this moment, talking as if they can decide my future, as if they have the right.

  But no matter what they say, I won't give in to them. There's no way they, or anyone else, can make me give up my life for some silly fantasy. Even if it comes in the form of the boy I once loved so much that the thought of him made my heart want to burst.

  Carefully, I reach for the small gun I carried with me from the car, which they overlooked in the commotion of my kidnapping. Or maybe Jackson believes that, just because I know him, I’d never use it on him.

  I draw it, aim it, keep my eyes open, and say, "Jackson, whatever you're planning on saying, save it. Shut it. All of you stay right where you're standing. Don't make any moves. I'm leaving."

  Step by careful step, I back toward the door to the lighthouse.

  Every one of my senses alert, my fingers vibrate with the electric determination to pull the trigger and fire a lethal shot if that’s what I need to do to get free.

  Because I will not be kept captive.

  I will not abandon my family, my degree, or my life.

  But as I back away, sound touches my hyper-alert ears: tires crunching on gravel, followed by the sound of a car door opening and closing, and then footsteps coming closer.

  There's more of them.

  More kidnappers than just Jackson, Marcus, and the big biker.

  I'm going to have to fight my way out.

  There’s a jiggle on the door handle.

  A creak as old hinges move.

  Just in time, I whirl to aim my gun as the lighthouse door opens.

  Chapter Nine

  Madison

  "Maddy, stop," Jackson cries out, just as my finger freezes over the trigger at the sudden sight of a startled woman wearing a nurse’s scrubs standing in the doorway. "Don’t shoot her. Stay, just hear me out."

  I lower my gun, because there's no way I'm going to shoot this woman, and so I turn back to Jackson and raise the gun at him. As I turn, I see the large biker has a gun out and pointed right at me, though the gun lowers a little once I aim my gun at Jackson. Was he only going to shoot me if I threatened the nurse? What is going on here?

  "Why shouldn't I go?" I say.

  "I never meant to hurt you. Not back then, not now. But I didn’t have a choice. All I’ve wanted is to keep you safe, even when it's cost me so much."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" How can he claim he's looked out for me when the defining feature of our relationship is that he let me down? What has he sacrificed for me, except for the weeks we wasted together before he broke my heart?

  As a way of answering, he moves his jacket aside and lifts his shirt, revealing an ugly red wound that's still healing into a scar.

  "What is that?" I say, my voice a raspy whisper, shaken by the sight of something so visceral and brutal. Why would he show me this?

  "Your fiance did this to me. All because I tried to check on you."

  "You're lying," I say.

  "He isn't, Madison," says the nurse behind me. She still hasn't moved from the doorway, and when I look at her over my shoulder, I see her hands are folded calmly in front of her, as if this doesn’t unnerve her at all. "They found Jackson floating in the harbor several weeks ago with a bullet would in his abdomen. It's a miracle he survived. A miracle and the work of some very talented surgeons. I work at Costa Oscura General. He was in my ICU. And the day he arrived, some men that work for your fiance showed up and tried to finish the job."