And yet here he was.

How much had these past five years changed him?

Forcing myself to snap out of my musings on the kind of guy Riley was now—because it shouldn’t matter; it didn’t matter—I asked, “Why are you here?”

He was quiet for a moment, and if he was shocked to see me, he didn’t let on. Had he known I was here this whole time? I wondered if, despite my attempts to keep myself hidden from him, he’d found me anyway somewhere along the line. The thought that he’d known where I was but hadn’t made any effort to see me shouldn’t sting the way it did.

His face was a mask, hardly different from the one I put in place every day. Finally, he said, “Ghost sent me.”

I swallowed against the disappointment I felt, pushing it down, down, down. Burying it deep where it belonged. There wasn’t room here, in the life I lived now, for those kinds of emotions. Especially not when they were for Riley. “Why?”

He stared at me for another moment, then blew out his breath and shook his head, a hollow laugh leaving his lips as he looked toward the floor. “Apparently my ex-girlfriend, who I thought was dead, is alive and well, living in a fucking mansion in Minneapolis.” He looked up at me, his eyes locked on mine. “Engaged to a rising attorney.”

He didn’t let me answer, didn’t even give me time to contemplate the look in his eyes, before he plowed on, “A picture-perfect life to anyone looking in. Not for long, though. You’ve got a bull’s-eye on your back, and people are coming to collect. Soon.”

RILEY

The trip here had been brutal, both because I’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, thanks to the job I’d just come off of when I’d gotten Gage’s call, and because my mind wouldn’t stop spinning. Like Gage had told me to, I’d dropped everything and moved as quickly as I could. I’d thrown a couple things in a bag, jumped on my bike, and gotten the hell out of the city. Minneapolis was a long enough trek from the South Side of Chicago—one that was, thankfully, made easier by the middle-of-the-night road trip and the fact that I didn’t have a problem breaking every speed limit, but I was still edgy. Still worried I wouldn’t make it to Evie before someone else did.

And now that I was here, looking at her in the flesh for the first time in so long, I didn’t know what the fuck I was feeling. Over the course of the past five years, I’d run the gamut of emotions when dealing with grief, eventually ending with acceptance.

Yet here she was, standing in front of me, alive and well. A part of me wanted to simply turn around and leave, forget all of this. But then another part of me—a part that was too fucking big for my liking—wanted to grab her and shake her, brush her hair back from her face and look into her eyes, feel her under my hands and make sure she was real.

“I’m not—” she started, shaking her head and running a hand through her hair.

I still couldn’t get over it—how different it was from the short, blunt styles she’d always preferred. Before, she’d dyed her hair a different color every week and had dressed in all black. Combat boots and baggy black jeans all topped off with a fuck-everything attitude. Now, she stood in front of me, her long, vibrant red hair hanging in loose curls all the way down her back, an oversized ivory sweater falling off one shoulder, not even a bra strap to interrupt the creamy, pale skin dotted with the freckles I’d once had memorized. My fingers itched to see if she was as soft as I remembered.

She looked up at me, her eyes pinning me in place just like they used to. With her jaw set and her shoulders straightened, her arms crossed right under the tits I was sure were bare beneath that sweater, she said, “I’m not going anywhere, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

I clenched my teeth, at both my reaction to seeing her in the flesh and her defiance. I’d already anticipated her reluctance. As much as Evie had changed—and I had no doubt she’d changed as much as I had these past five years—she wouldn’t have been able to drop this part of herself completely. The part that always pushed back, the part that always had to be in control—the part that had craved it.

While I’d definitely anticipated that aspect of her, what I hadn’t anticipated was the pull I still felt toward her. Shoving that aside, forcing it down where it belonged, I said, “You’d rather stay here like a sitting duck? Waiting for whoever Max sent? Whoever is coming? Because”—I stepped closer to her, lowering my voice—“don’t doubt this, Evie. They’re coming.”

She rolled her shoulders back, jutted out her chin. Defiance pouring from every inch of her. “I can take care of myself.”

Raising an eyebrow, I said, “Can you, now? Take care of yourself like you did when I had you pressed up against the wall? If I was someone who wanted you dead, make no mistake, you would be right now.”

Her eyes hardened even further, into the look I used to be wary of. The one that used to tell me I needed to tread carefully. That was the great thing about no longer being together, though. I didn’t have to tread for shit. “If you think Max will let you go after a talk, you’re wrong. You have something he wants. Whether that’s literal or figurative, I don’t know. But either way, he’s not going to stop with just a slap on the wrist.”

With her arms still crossed, she stared at me, none of her softening at my threat. Willing to do anything to get her to concede, I tried a different tactic, even though the words burned my throat as they came out. “What about your fiancé? What about keeping him safe? Whoever is coming isn’t going to stop with just you, if they find him here.”

It was the first time I saw any kind of emotion other than anger cross her face, and I clenched my fists at the wave of unease that washed over me. I hadn’t felt jealousy in a long, long time, and I sure as hell wasn’t ready to feel it now. Not for her. Not for the girl who, up until half a dozen hours ago, had been out of my life—dead to me—for the past five years. She wasn’t mine anymore, and I had no right feeling anything other than indifference now.

“He’s out of the country until the end of the month, probably.” She shook her head and glanced out toward the window across the room. As she did so, the softest whisper of movement from somewhere else in the house caught my attention. “I can—”

So fast she didn’t see it coming, I had my hand over her mouth, her body clutched tightly against me, chest to chest as I pressed her back into the wall around the corner. We hadn’t turned on any lights, and it was still dark outside, providing the cloak of coverage we needed. Lowering my mouth so my lips brushed against her ear, I breathed, “We’ve got company.”

She went still as stone in my arms, and I carefully removed my hand from over her mouth, clutching her harder against me and telling her without words to stay still. We stood there, waiting, watching, for what felt like an hour, when in actuality it was mere seconds.

Whoever had broken in was good, because as hard as I tried to hear something, anything, there were no noises. I peered over my shoulder and strained my eyes, looking for shapes in the shadows, and finally, just when I started to wonder if I’d mistakenly heard something, a dark form loomed on the wall across from us. Evie tensed even further in my arms. I gripped her hips and pushed her back against the wall, pressing her into it, hoping she got my meaning and stayed put while I dealt with the problem.

I didn’t know who was here, if it was just one guy or a handful. And if it was the latter, I didn’t know if I’d be able to take them all down while keeping Evie safe. Making sure she got out was my number-one goal. That was why Gage had sent me here, because he’d known that even after so long, after years of her absence, after accepting her death, I would still do anything for her.