I didn’t question it.

I didn’t doubt it.

I just accepted it, the way you do the sky above your head, knowing he was a stronger force than my resistance ever would be.

Bane had helped me. He’d protected me.

And, sadly, it was more than anyone else had done in my life.

All he wanted was coffee. Somewhere public. Once. I could survive this. I could.

I thought about the wilting Mrs. Belfort, and how loneliness drove me running from my memories and nightmares in the middle of the night, then nodded. He motioned for me to get into his truck, and I shook my head, lowering Shadow to the ground. We were going to walk. Bane threw his cell phone into my hands.

“Five, three, three, seven. Have 911 on speed dial. I’ll drive slowly. Keep the passenger door open just in case. But you’re not walking home with your feet looking like that.” He motioned down, and I followed his gaze, finding my ankles and Keds beaten almost to death, the little pocketknife nearly falling out of my blood-soaked sock. I nodded slowly, tucking it back in. I then dialed 911 and kept my thumb hovering on the green button, and got into his truck.

It was the shock that made me do it.

New Jesse never got into anyone’s vehicle.

“Just one question, Bane,” I said after giving him directions to my house. “What were you doing here tonight? It’s a gated community.”

He cut his engine, sank back into his seat, and rolled his head to look at me. “I have a hookup in El Dorado every Thursday. I have the electronic key.” He flashed the small black device between his fingers.

I swallowed hard as I tumbled out of the passenger’s seat with Shadow in front of my house.

My ankle dragged, leaving a bloodstain on his old leather seat.

And I thought it to be ironic.

How he was the most powerful man I knew, and yet, I was the one to mark him before he marked me.

THE MINUTE DARREN TEXTED ME that Jesse went to the track for a jog, I was out of bed and in my truck, speeding in its direction.

Fine. I’ll rephrase: I was out of Samantha’s bed—an El Dorado local lay and a lawyer who gave me legal advice—and heading toward the track.

It was three thirty in the fucking morning. If Snowflake had a death wish, she worked hard on fulfilling it. I’d arrived just in time. In a classic, deus ex machina, more-luck-than-brains scenario, there were two douchebags, one jaded girl, and Jesse and her dog in the middle of the shitshow.

She’d been so disoriented and horrified that she’d accepted the excuse for my sudden arrival and hadn’t even doubted me. She’d tripped on her ass bolting out of my truck when I dropped her off, and I’d pretended not to notice because I didn’t want to embarrass her. It was a lie I didn’t usually offer, but she had special circumstances.

Thin trails of her blood smeared on my passenger seat reminded me just how broken she was, and how careful I needed to be with that one.

I fucked plenty of women for money. Unfucking them, though? That wasn’t my expertise.

The flip side was I’d finally milked a coffee date out of her. Only, between surfing and taking care of business, I had very little time for coffee, so today, she was going to tag along for a business meeting.

And by a business meeting, I meant extortion. Same shit, really.

I met Jesse at Café Diem the next day at four o’clock. The fact that she showed up at all was a miracle. She glided between the busy tables and hectic bar, wearing her usual, creeper-from-the-nineties attire of black ball cap, baggy jeans, and that damn black hoodie. The blandest outfit in the world to hide who she really was.

My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You

A poet. An explorer. A romantic. A culture-loving, dragon-slaying princess.

Bonus points—she apparently had the ability to make me sound hella emo. So there was that, too.

Darren Morgansen gave me the gist of what had happened to her. Jesse had dated Emery Wallace, heir to Wallace, Walmart’s main competition on the West Coast, all throughout high school. Emery was your typical spoiled fucktard with too much money and zero grasp of what real life was about. The one with the right clothes, the right car, and the wrong friends. He loved the idea of dating the prettiest girl in school. A virgin, no less. On the night his jackpot of a girlfriend had supposedly lost her virginity to him, Emery installed a camera behind the PlayStation in his room to record the whole thing.

Only he never deflowered her.

There had been no blood.

There had been no signs of virginity being taken.

Jesse Carter had been about as virginal as a used condom.