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“I’m sorry, Cher,” he quickly stated, his voice still deeper than normal, and I swallowed the rising desire forming in my throat.

“No, it’s fine. I’m the one that should be apologizing for walking in when—” I paused mid-sentence and spun back around as everything in me shifted. “Hold on, fuck no,” I hissed. Marching back to the front door, I plopped the broom back in its spot and flipped the light switch next to me.

Twisting back around, I watched as he quickly slapped a baseball cap backward on his head, and then his fingers finished tying his joggers around his waist. In a momentary lapse of judgement, my eyes slid across a hardened body of muscle. My mouth fell open.

The skinny boy who’d left had returned as something else entirely. Colorful tattoos covered nearly every inch of skin on the right side of his body, starting at the edge of his wrist, rising across his shoulder, and down the mountain of a pec. The designs eventually disappeared beneath the waistband of his joggers, which hung low on his hips.

A trail of hair rose up to his navel, thick and all manly, and ugh… A specimen like him only came along once in a lifetime, and it was taking every ounce of self-control to not drool over the man I wanted to simultaneously stab and straddle.

My eyes slid up an abdomen that wasn’t veiny and ribbed like someone whose muscles were all for show, but each divot and crease, each mountain and valley had me sweating. Scars that certainly had never been there beforewere in abundance. It would be easier for me to start tracing my eyes along the left side of his body, which lacked a single tattoo.

I pulled my brows together. Why would he only get tattoos on the right side? They were beautiful and hauntingly familiar as I slid my gaze back across the designs that I couldn’t quite yet decipher from this distance.

Of its own accord, my foot took a step forward.

He wasn’t the Ford I’d lost.

My gaze slid up his thick neck and danced across a square, wide-set jaw covered in stubble that hadn’t been shaved in a day or two. On the left side was a small slice of bare skin where a scar inhibited the growth of a beard. That was also new. Where had he gotten that? Where had he gotten any of his scars? He was the last person in the world to end up with battle wounds. Wrinkles lined the edges of his lips, as if at least once in a while, he had smiled over the past fifteen years.

Finally, my gaze met his eyes.

I nearly stumbled back at the blatant regret and longing he held in his own piercing stare.

He was a stranger and the one person I wanted most at the same time. It had been such a long time since this type of desire coursed through my body. I had long since been resigned to the fact that my chance at love had passed since I’d already had two—but here stood one of those men.

His forehead creased as his thick brows rose. There was a weariness about him. He’d aged into a man I’d once thought he could be, but also something else entirely. There was something hardened and distant about him, something that held secrets buried so deeply I wasn’t sure he even remembered theywere there anymore.

“I didn’t mean to point the gun at you,” he muttered beneath his breath, breaking the stillness that slithered around us.

He quickly tugged the same long-sleeved shirt from yesterday over his head as I stared. Uncertainty waffled within me. Anger tasted bitter but strong. Longing was a little sweeter but barely palatable behind the roaring frustration building.

“What the hell are you even doing here?” I grumbled as he reached for a duffel and odd-looking backpack. Odd in the sense that I’d seen it before but couldn’t quite place where. He bumped a strap over his shoulder and then reached forward to the coffee table. I watched as he quickly gathered two beer bottles in one hand, then picked up a silver chain, which he quickly tucked into the palm of his other hand.

“I’ll replace these. I didn’t eat anything, though, so don’t worry.” He raised the bottles and then slid unusually quietly around the table.

I studied him for a moment, feeling more questions rising in my throat. But I wasn’t even sure how to ask what I didn’t know, and all of these damned questions were of things that made no sense about the man I thought I knew.

“You…You didn’t answer my question.”

He paused, and like a wave, a mask slid across his face, hiding away every emotion. “Sorry, I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”

“A motel.”

“Booked because of the music festival.”

“Well, suck up your pride and go live with your parents.”

“Already tried that.” His jaw knotted for a moment.

“Well.” I cleared my throat and crossed my arms. “Find somewhere else for tonight.”

He slowly nodded. “And why aren’t you doing your doctor duties? I thought—”

“Ford, just shut up. I have my first appointment soon, but like I already mentioned, there’s another doctor at the clinic.”

His brows rose, and he opened his mouth, but I continued speaking. “And before you say anything, I’m aware he’s taking my patients, and the renovated hospital a town over doesn’t help. But I have too much to worry about right now, so I’ll deal with that once I figure out how to get rid of this jackass real estate dude hounding my parents about the restaurant.”

He tipped his head. “The same jackass who owns your clinic, hired this new doctor, and is trying to force you out?”