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“Want to get out of here?” I ask, and a muscle works in his jaw.

“How much have you had to drink?” he questions, tilting his head to the side as he takes me in. He licks his bottom lip, and I can see a flash of metal. How is that going to feel on my clit? I’m guessing fucking amazing.

Two women appear on either side of us, herding us in. “Haze, you told us we’d be in your bed tonight,” one pouts, batting her fake eyelashes.

Haze doesn’t look away from me. There’s tension between us, but it’s something more than just sexual. The way he’s looking at me is like he wants to both devour me and never lay his eyes on me again at the same time. “Go get some water. You don’t belong here, Luella.”

He turns his broad back on me and wraps his arms around the club girls.

Dismissed.

Fucking ouch.

And then it hits me.

I never told him my name.

Fuck.

No?

“Hayden?” I call out, and he stops in his tracks but doesn’t turn around.

It’s him.

He looks so different—his body is bigger, wider, taller

He never used to have any tattoos or piercings, and his hair was never this short.

He’s a man now, no longer the sweet boy who played guitar for me through his window so I could fall asleep to something other than the sounds of my parents fighting.

But those eyes…

I knew I recognized them.

“Go home, Luella,” he replies, turning his head to show me his profile. I watch in horror as he then starts to make out with both women right in front of me.

Like I mean nothing to him.

Like our past means nothing.

And I guess that’s the truth.

We’re both living in different worlds now, as different people, but he still rejected me again.

Some things never change.

I blink away the sudden rush of tears in my eyes.

The Hayden I knew, my Hayden, doesn’t exist anymore. It has been thirteen years, so what did I expect? Hayden is gone, and now only Haze, the callous, tattooed, manwhore biker is left.

Bones was right. I guess one woman isn’t enough for him.

Then again, I never was.

LU

Here I am, but I never thought I’d be living in a biker clubhouse right next door to my childhood love.