He was too speechless to respond, and his lips flinched upwards involuntarily, enjoying her attitude. He forced himself to look away from her haunted eyes as he grabbed at her opened wallet. He saw her student ID, saw the school she went to and would quickly forget the name of, and then her name.

“Emma Warne,” he muttered. “Fourteen years old. What the fuck have you been up to all night, alley cat?”

“None of your business,” was her reply as she snatched the wallet out of his hand and stuffed it in her bag.

“Do you have a family?”

No response.

Marcus huffed in exasperation, moving closer to her. “Where do you live? Fuck sake, let me help you, Emma.”

Just as he went to touch her arm, she pulled out a switchblade from her pocket and quickly backed away, holding it firmly in her grip, warning him with the dark threatening look in her eyes not to come closer.

“Like I said,” she gritted out, “I didn’t need your help.”

Never having suspected the girl was armed, Marcus stared at her in awe.

“Even with that blade, you would have needed help,” he gently told her, probing her face, wondering who the fuck this girl was.

She shook her head slightly, continuing to back up. “Help is for the weak.”

She didn’t even look at him one more time before she stood back up, her backpack flung over one shoulder, that blade still in her grip. He watched her turn and hurry down the sidewalk, practically running, her hair a black wave in the early dawn light.

“Emma Warne,” he whispered to himself for a reason he didn’t understand.

She would be the first and only person Marcus Borden ever wondered about.

*

He pulled out Kate’s number half a dozen times a day throughout the week. He debated long and hard about calling her. He might score another lay, and it might even be better than the first time, but what was the point of it all?

She was the kind of girl he could get dangerously attached to, and the last thing he needed was to get attached to someone. Especially when he was involved with some really shady guys. If he fucked up, they might find his weaknesses and hurt him, and if he had a girl he cared about, she’d be that weakness and she’d get hurt too.

After the hundredth time staring at her number, Marcus fumed and crumpled the paper, throwing it in the nearest bin on his way home from the diner he’d eaten at.

There was no fucking way. She was too good for him.

She belonged in her world, and he belonged in his.

Four

Kate

He didn’t call me.

It’d been nine days and I’d heard nothing from him. I didn’t even see him around.

I thought one night stands were just notches on a bedpost, a moment in time you move on from and never reminisce about again. But I was doing the polar opposite. I’d been obsessing and licking up the festered wounds of rejection. Why would he promise he’d call and then not?

I had gone all bunny boiler. Every day I thought about our conversation together, how genuine he sounded, how good he looked, how well he’d taken care of me. The more I obsessed, the more upset I grew. And then, to my embarrassment, I found myself taking the long drive to his apartment one afternoon. I’d completely lost my mind, and even thinking about it in the present, locked up inside this cellar, I felt mortified by that decision. I don’t know what had come over me, but I was desperate for Marcus Borden. He did things to women that you couldn’t really explain without sounding like a dazed fool.

I parked my blue Corvette on the side of the street in front of the rough building, and then I stepped out and walked to the intercom. I searched for his name, feeling frustrated when I couldn’t find it. It was as though he didn’t exist. I stood there for minutes on end, debating whether I could just pester some resident to let me in, when I heard, “Kate?”

I jumped and turned around. Marcus was standing on the sidewalk, wearing jeans and a plain black tank top, showcasing his tanned arms and all those black and grey shaded tattoos. There was a silver chain around his neck carrying a large cross. And was he always so big? I didn’t remember him being that wide or that intimidating to look at. If my dad was here, he’d have called him a hooligan, and it wasn’t the clothes or the way he looked, but it was the way Marcus carried himself. That “fuck authority” attitude was present in him as ever, and for a moment, I wondered why in the hell I had come here for him in the first place. He was different in a way I would never understand.

I hesitated. What the hell are you doing here, Kate? This was wrong. He was just a stranger, and I’d made a very bad judgment call thinking this guy kept to his promises, or even that he’d been genuine that night. God, I was just a fool. I felt so naïve and stupid.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me, mirroring my inner thoughts, looking bewildered as he glanced at me up and down, taking in my flower summer dress. I felt even more out of place than I already was.

I shook my head. “No reason. I was just going.”

He took a few steps closer to me, his blue eyes cutting into my own. “I don’t understand. You came here for me, right?”

I shook my head adamantly. “No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I was just leaving.”

I made to move when he held his hand out to me.

“No,” he told me, his hard face softening. “Talk to me, Kate. Don’t run.”

I took a few breaths, wondering how the hell I was going to explain that to him without sounding like a crazy person. There was really no way I could pull it off, and my humiliation felt heavy and dirty. You couldn’t wash it off, not for several lifetimes.

Resigned, I looked away and muttered, “You didn’t call.”

He didn’t move or respond for several moments, and I was sure I was red all over. He probably thought I was nuts.

“Look at me,” he suddenly said, his voice low and solemn. When I refused, he drew closer to me, blocking my vision with his frame. “Look at me, Kate,” he repeated.

Slowly, I looked up at him, and in the brilliant sunlight, his gorgeous face reminded me exactly why I was here in the first place.

“I didn’t call you for your own sake,” he explained carefully. “You’re the sun, babe, and I’m the fucking darkness. We come from completely different realities, and you deserve a fucking hell of a lot more than me.”