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T he phone buzzes on the bedside table like an angry wasp. I send a glare in its direction, too fascinated by the spiral curl currently wrapped around my finger to care. The languid warmth of Everly’s bare skin against mine makes it hard to stay awake, a cocktail of post-sex endorphins still buzzing beneath my skin. When she sighs against my chest, snuggling like she can burrow into me, I allow myself to enjoy it.

Just for a few more minutes …

Tanner can wait. So can murderous sociopaths, and the entire damn world, for that matter. Let it all burn down around us.

Christ, this isn’t like me.

She dozes like that for an hour or more, the steady rhythm of her breathing soaking into me until I begin to drift, too. But I can’t afford to let my guard down. Any minute, the whole world can shift—this is a lesson I’ve learned the hard way, and I can’t afford to get distracted. The stakes are too high.

She saves me from waking her by rolling over, balling up under the comforter like a contented cat. The buzzing has gone quiet, my lone contact finally getting the hint, so I jump from the bed and retreat to the shower.

Beneath the driving pulse of scalding water, I relive the past several hours. Everly on her knees, her hot mouth enveloping me. Her pale skin illuminated by the slivers of moonlight peeking through the blinds as layers of clothing slid off her body. The way she felt, writhing on my lap. Like I’m the only man she’ll ever dance for again—the only one who matters. The sounds she?—

“What the hell is this?”

I pull my face from the stream and look down. My cock is in my hand, fully erect despite the multiple orgasms it delivered last night. It pulses at the sound of Everly’s voice, oblivious to her tone.

Or maybe the potential of her anger is exciting. It’s a sadistic fucker sometimes.

The shower curtain is ripped open violently, leaving steam to fill the room. With the water still streaming in rivulets over my body, I look at her.

My phone is in her hand, the screen lit with a name.

Tanner.

Should have kept him listed as Dickhead.

Dammit, here we go.

“That’s nothing,” I say casually, knowing she won’t buy it. “Wrong number.”

“Okay, great. I’ll tell him.” With a cold smile, she slides her finger over the screen to answer and taps the speaker symbol. “Hello, Tanner .”

“Shit,” he says, and hangs up.

She plants one hand on her hip, her voice as venomous as her glare. “Explain.”

“We’re friends.” I shrug, pulling a towel off the rack and wrapping it around my waist. Since I’m not entirely sure how this conversation is going to go, there are some parts of my anatomy it would be wise to protect.

“You’re friends,” she repeats, her tone flat.

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to find Vincent since he escaped the bust. Tanner passed the information he’d gathered to me.” It’s not technically a lie, just a little out of order. I grab a second towel and use it to dry the rest of my body.

“You’ve been…” Her brows bend inward for a second, and when her eyes widen, I know all hell is about to break loose. “Oh my God, he was right.”

Dammit. I’m not ready to deal with this.

“It’s no big deal.” Stepping out of the shower and around her, I leave the bathroom.

“Wait a minute.” She follows me, piecing the subtext together as she goes. “Tanner’s a detective.”

“Yeah.” Grabbing my jeans from the back of the chair, I drop the towel and step into them, pulling them over my hips.

“And you—” She stalls at the foot of the bed. “You had a personal connection to one of the victims.”

I freeze in my tracks.

“Sara…” Her voice softens with the epiphany. “You were looking for Sara.”

I swallow. “You knew all this.” All I can do is stare at the faded wallpaper ahead. It’s been a year, and I’d all but buried those conversations beneath the ashes of that godforsaken lab. But she’s been living with bits and pieces of me, limited to the carefully filtered truths I’d felt were safe to reveal. And that character sketch I built is littered with holes.

“You were always so evasive. You said you investigated things but never once told me what you actually did for a living.”

Since the day I came to her in that club and she unraveled my identity one encounter at a time, the tension between us has been building toward an inevitable, all-consuming detonation. There’s been no time to look backward, no inclination to sift through the rubble. To dig up those fragments and glue them together.

I’d all but forgotten a piece was still missing.

Slowly, I turn toward her.

“You—” She takes a step back. “You were…undercover?”

“I didn’t get myself tossed in that hellhole on purpose, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But you’re a detective.” She nods to herself, slowly, deliberately, as it all fits together. “That’s how you know Tanner. You work with him.”

“Not anymore.” I exhale. “Everly?—”

She stops me with a raised finger. “Don’t. This isn’t something you can just blow off.” Pinching the space between her brows, she squeezes her eyes shut, letting the revelation wash over her. When she opens them again, they’re rimmed with unshed tears. “You knew me.”

I allow the confirmation to show on my face. I’m not going to disrespect her by trying to hide it. Not anymore. My palms slicken with sweat, and I rub them over the denim molded to my thighs. There’s nothing left to do but let the storm blow through.

The tears loosen, spilling down her cheeks. “The moment I gave you my name, you knew exactly who I was. My career, my personal life, what I looked like. That whole time you were this faceless person, while you had a window to everything about me.”

Fuck. What can I say to that? It’s not like I was an expert on the life of Everly Cross when I got locked up in that room, but I can’t deny that I knew her. So, I swallow the excuses and nod.

She lets out a soft huff. “Did you investigate my kidnapping?”

“No. Everly, I?—”

Her eyebrow rises like a judgement.

“Not like you’re thinking.” I slow down and proceed carefully. “A different precinct oversaw the investigation. I wasn’t on your case, but I did know who you were. My gut told me the disappearances—yours, Sara’s, the others—were connected.” Lowering to sit at the foot of the bed, I watch her pace in front of me, tense and unpredictable. “I followed that instinct. Did my research. Dug wherever I could find a common thread. Ultimately, all I had were theories. I got shut down, but I pushed back. Then I kept pushing until I went a step too far and got myself kicked off the force.”

Her hands move to her face, pressing against her temples as the details sink in further. “But you—you interviewed my husband .”

“I—”

“No.” Her voice is hard as granite, cold as frost. “Don’t even bother denying it. He told me he knew you.”

“I wasn’t going to deny it…not exactly.” Our meeting had been so brief, I didn’t expect him to remember.

“What does that mean?”

“I went to the precinct where he was called in for a follow-up interview months after you disappeared. He was leaving the building when I pulled him aside. I had a few questions, needed to clarify some things. That was it.”

A shadow passes over her, softening the stone but leaving heartbreak in its place. “But why did you let me think he was dead?”

“Sit with me.” I reach out a hand, afraid she’ll crumble to pieces right where she stands. “Please.”

She flinches back. “Tell me, Isaac.”

“I didn’t know what you thought.” Dropping my arm like it’s a weight, I lean over, elbows resting on my knees. The truth is flimsy, but it’s all I have. “It was almost like he didn’t exist. We were in our own world in there. You never spoke of him.”

It had been two years since her disappearance. People on the outside didn’t cross my mind—not until Jasper Cross showed up in that basement.

Surprise lifts her expression. “That’s not?—”

“It is true, Everly. Think about it. We didn’t talk about him. Not once.”

Visibly sifting through the memories, she shakes her head with disbelief, reliving the grief as she processes my explanation. The only sounds are the intermittent thumps from the room next door: the flow of water through pipes, the evidence of life continuing casually outside our heavy reality.

When the realization settles, she lets herself sink onto the bed. There’s a space between us. A gaping chasm I’m not invited to cross. “I thought he was dead.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Someone told me—” She takes a few shaky breaths, collecting herself. “I gave up. I’d already grieved him.” There’s guilt in her admission, like she could have changed the events that transpired if only she’d believed hard enough.

I could tell her it wouldn’t have changed anything. That even if she’d held on to her love like a burning candle, never letting that flame die, he still would have given up on her.

And that would have hurt even worse.

But anything I say will only serve to twist the knife. Drive her pain deeper. Push her further away.

I pull my lips between my teeth and say nothing.

I just wait.

Finally, she turns her body toward me, a wariness clouding the blue. “I feel like…like I don’t know what I feel. Why are you here, Isaac? Am I a job to you? Part of your mission?”

In the beginning, I told myself this was all just part of the job. I was here to head off Vincent and make sure she didn’t get caught in the crossfire. But the truth is, I thought about her while I hopped from continent to continent, chasing our revenge. In my head, she was a constant companion. I can’t deny the sense of possibility I had when Tanner told me she’d divorced Jasper Cross—and the panic when I came across the murdered woman that resembled her.

I’m beginning to suspect all those days spent with the stranger on the other side of the wall altered my brain chemistry. She started feeling like mine.

Now, I can’t stay away.

So, I tell her the truth. “You’re something else entirely.”

“What does that even mean ? If you don’t want me to walk out this door, you need to give me something I can understand. All I can think is that I—” She shakes her head, barely keeping herself together enough to get the words out. “I don’t even know you.”

That fucking hurts. More than I thought it could.

I move closer. “You know me.”

All that time I spent telling her she didn’t. Why would she believe me now?

“I don’t .” There’s a waver in her voice, but she doesn’t pull away. “Is your name even Isaac?”

I suppose that’s a fair enough question, given all the aliases I’ve told her about. “Yes.”

She huffs a humorless laugh. “Then that’s the only thing I know.”

My teeth grind, drawing her attention to my jaw before it slides down to my throat. I swallow thickly. “My name is Isaac Porter, and I was the best goddamn detective the Los Angeles Police Department had. I should have never been born, but I was, and it fucked me up. I used to drink too much—so much, it probably would have ended up killing me. My little sister saved me from self-destructing. When she disappeared, I unraveled.”

Everly lifts her hand to her mouth like it’s the only way to keep the emotions at bay. More tears stream down her cheeks until they gather in the cracks between her fingers.

“You know me, Bee. You know me better than—” My voice catches.

“Than what?”

“Than anyone alive.”

The look in her eyes is like a stab to the heart.

“I want to believe you, but I—I don’t know what to think anymore.” It’s hardly above a whisper, something I couldn’t have heard with a wall between us.

“There’s one more thing.” The admission sounds as raw as I feel on the inside. “When I met you, I was at my lowest point. I’d spent my whole life building a wall around myself, but somehow, you got through it.” I take a deep breath and let it all out. “And now, I can’t fucking stay away from you.”

Everly’s face crumples; a sob breaks free.

That’s when I pull her body into mine.

All the resistance in her muscles dissolves and she collapses against me, pouring the emotion into my chest.

My breaths are shaky, but I keep calm, so she doesn’t have to.

I don’t know how to do this. I’m not good with women’s tears, or emotions in general. Not even my own. But here we are, sitting on a bed in this motel room where I just unleashed my filthy fantasies on this girl, and she accepted every one of them.

Now, I’ve shown her the final pieces of me I’d been holding back.

There’s nothing left to do but tuck my face against her hair and let her fall apart.

When she’s wrung out, she backs up enough to look me in the eye. “I don’t like feeling lied to this whole time…but I’m going to try to understand.” Leaning in, she rests her forehead against mine. With her cheeks streaked with tears and her eyes rimmed red, I’ve never seen anything so damn beautiful.

My phone chimes through with a text. I glance at the bedspread; it lies forgotten where Everly tossed it, a message waiting on the lock screen.

Tanner

I have an update. Call me if you aren’t dead.

“You should talk to him. I’ll go get cleaned up.” Everly leans back, rubbing her index fingers beneath her eyes. “Tell Tanner I said hello.” The last part is delivered with a smile that promises my friend will eventually be getting more of an earful than hello .

I hit the call button, and he answers on the first ring. “On a scale of one to ‘I’m in danger of losing a sensitive area of my anatomy,’ how fucked are you right now? I mean that in a bad way.”

“I’m in one piece. Everly says hi. What’s going on?”

“Sure she did. Remind me to wear a cup when I see her next.” He switches me to speaker, suddenly sounding farther away, and I do the same. I’m not going to hide this from her anymore. “I’m about to send some information over and wanted to give you a heads-up. Nothing earth-shattering, but I think I’ve tracked Vincent to Belgium. No further signs in your area. It’s possible he sent that picture to keep you distracted with the girl so he could move.”

“He sent a picture? Of me?” Everly emerges from the bathroom, wiping her face with a washcloth. The fresh cloud of fear I see there burns through my veins.

This was what I’d been trying to avoid.

“Oh, hey, Everly.” Tanner’s voice is tinged with wariness. “Don’t hate me, okay? Your man’s a handful; I’m just trying to keep him safe.”

“Isaac, The Time—” She’s ignoring Tanner. Needing confirmation from me. “Vincent… Is he?—”

“I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

“Are we in danger now?”

“I’ve got a handle on it. That’s why I?—”

“Holy shit. Oh, my God.” Her panic is snowballing by the second.

“Everly.” Her name comes out sharply. “I am not going to let anything happen to you.”

“You can’t watch me every minute.” When I merely raise an eyebrow, her eyes widen. “Oh… You already are.”

Tanner breaks in, reminding me he’s still on the line. “I’m going to go. Best of luck there, buddy. I’ll check in when I know more.”

My eye contact with Everly doesn’t waver; she needs to know she’s safe. “Listen to me. I won’t be responsible for someone I care about getting hurt ever again.” When she moves closer, I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her toward me so she’s standing between my thighs. “I don’t care what it takes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to wipe him off the face of the earth. He’s as good as dead right now.”

Her eyes widen. “You’ll kill him?”

“Yes. I’ll fucking kill him.” Warmth soaks into my chest before I realize I’ve picked up her hands and taken them in mine, pressing them against my heart. “I’ll kill him for you.”

Fingertips dig into my chest. Her eyes close, and when they open, the blue has gone hard as granite. “Good.”

My lips twitch. That’s my girl.

Lifting her hands to my cheeks, she looks into my eyes. “Be careful, okay? I worry about you.”

“Don’t worry. This is what I was meant for.”

I should have done it a long time ago.