Page 29 of Burning Daylight

ROMAN

The shading is off.

Sighing, I stare down at my black book like it’s personally offending me.

I’ve been lying around all morning in nothing but gray sweatpants and a nagging sensation, urging my fingers to pick up a pencil and sketch out a new design. But the design isn’tright. And it has to be perfect before I turn it into an actual piece like the others from last night.

I run my fingers over the sketch, my brows furrowing.

It’s a rose. Blood-red with thorns jutting like daggers from the stem. The petals drip like wet paint, melting and disintegrating.

It’s a physical representation of what running into the girl from Rosebrook Falls feels like. Fragile in a way that isn’t soft, and the kind of beauty that bruises if you get too close. She’s attitude and defensiveness. Every word she throws at me laced with venom and thorns.

The color issupposedto be the shade of peach that blooms on her cheeks when I flirt with her. I’ve thought about that color so many goddamn times. Fisted my cock while I dreamed aboutwrapping my hand around her pretty little throat, watching that pink crawl down her neck and spill over her collarbone while she begs me to paint my cum on her skin.

Fuck.

I’m still recovering from running into her in the first place.

The last thing I expected was to ever see her again, especially in Cali. And I sure as hell didn’t expect to have so much chemistry with her, or for her to be so affected byme. Which I think she is, unless I’m completely misreading the signals.

When I first met her four years ago in Verona County Park, she looked so familiar it made my stomach ache, and I fully intended to walk away. The only reason I was there in the first place was to look out from the cliff and find a spot to tag before I left. Something to leave my mark for my piece of shit father, a rebellion that would stain his precious town whether he wanted it to or not.

Maybe a glaring “I’m alive, bitches,” or just: “Roman Montgomery was here.” In the end, I didn’t have the guts.

My mom has always said he faked our deaths to protect us, but that when I became an adult, as long as his wife was out of the picture, he’d want me back. So when I actually went back after her funeral and was still rejected? You could say that chip on my shoulder felt heavier than ever.

I went up to that cliff with one thing in my head: rage.

But thensheopened that perfect little mouth and started hurling insults like me saving her life was a personal inconvenience, andfuck, if that didn’t turn me on.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about my piece of shit father, or how badly I wanted to burn down everything he ever built—everything he kept me out of.

I was thinking abouther.

About how easy it was to get under her skin. About how nice it was to experience something other than that gnawing rejection.

She made me forget how small he made me feel. How unloved.

Her irritation? That was something I could hold on to. A memory from Rosebrook Falls he couldn’t taint.

The problem is, I think I know who she is.

My mother has always kept up on anything to do with my father, including the town he lives in, and that means I’ve seen my fair share ofThe Rosebrook Ragheadlines and articles from various events and newspapers.

And even though I’ve been a bystander to his life, my mother made sure I knew everything there was to know about being a Montgomery, including the rivalry between him and the Calloways.

I’m ninety percent sure she’s Juliette Calloway, but I’ve resisted the urge to look up her name. I don’t want to have it confirmed, because right now, she’s just a pretty girl who’s fun to flirt with.

Potential is limitless when there aren’t strings attached.

And recognizing that she’s a Calloway would definitely attach some strings, even if I doubt she knows I exist.

It’s not as if Marcus spent time parading me around like a trophy, and I’ve only ever been to Rosebrook Falls twice in my entire life.

My mind flashes back to when I first woke up after the car crash eight years ago: a dark room with wires taped to my chest, and the steady beeping of a heart monitor to my left.

“Nobody can know who you are to me, do you understand?”