“They were saying he had borrowed money from one of them and never paid it back. The guy works for the mayor. Anyway, they said your father got mixed up in some crazy stuff to get back what he owes him.”

“What crazy stuff, Rose? Think.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “They closed the door to the office after that.”

I ran my hands over my hair and sucked in a deep breath.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“There’s one more thing.” Rose wrung her hands together as she chewed on her lip out of nervous habit.

“He said if he didn’t get all of what he was owed he was going to turn you in for that string of burglaries happening across town.”

“I didn’t do that, Rose.” I cupped her face with my hands as I looked her directly in the eye. “I would never do something like that. I’m not the bad guy.”

“I know you’re not, Cole.”

“I’ll take care of it.” I leaned my forehead against hers and closed my eyes. None of my father’s mess mattered. All that mattered was Rose.

A loud bang came from outside of the office, startling us.

“Rose!” Jacob turned the corner from the gym and stopped as his eyes fell on us.

Rose jumped back out of my arms, a look of terror on her face.

“Holy shit. You and Cole?” He laughed.

“No! He’s just a friend.” She laughed and took another step back. “I was gonna see if he could do my homework so I could go to the game tonight.”

“Is he going to come looking for you?”

“He might. Everyone is going to wonder what happened to me. I won’t tell anyone if you just…”

“It’s too late for that.” I shoved the rest of my sandwich in my mouth and placed the plate on the coffee table.

I walked back into the kitchen to grab a beer from the fridge. Lily had barely eaten anything.

“You need your energy. Just eat it. You want a beer?” Her eyes met mine and I could tell she was trying to figure out my angle. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t need to get you drunk first.”

She nodded once and I pulled two bottles from the fridge. I unscrewed the cap to her bottle and sat it in front of her. She eyed it for a moment before I snatched it back and grabbed a cup from the cupboard.

“It didn’t keep him down; a bottle to the head sure as fuck wouldn’t keep me down. It would only piss me off.” I smirked as I poured the contents into the cup and put it in front of her a second time. It was a deep dig bringing up her stepfather, but it pissed me off that she would even think I brought her here to rape her after I stopped that son of a bitch from hurting her. I would have given up everything. I would have killed him if she’d asked me to.

She picked up the cup and took a healthy swig. My eyes watched her hand as she drank. There was no ring on her finger. No one would be missing her at home. That thought was normally comforting but with Lily, it just made me sad.

“So this coworker…you didn’t seem to have a problem making him jealous at the bar.”

“It was you. It was different. I wouldn’t have done that if it was anyone else,” she said sadly before taking another drink.

“I wish you wouldn’t have walked into that bar.” I tried to keep my tone level but I knew she understood that I regretted this and that gave her a tiny glimmer of hope. Her eyes met mine again and I could see that she didn’t regret it. My stomach turned at the thought of this woman being so fucked up that on some level she was okay with being kidnapped and held against her will.

“If I hadn’t…would…”

“There would be someone else here, sweetheart. It would have happened no matter what.” I tossed my bottle into the trash can and grabbed another beer from the fridge. There was no ignoring how fucked up this situation was. I needed to separate the Rose I remembered from Lily sitting in front of me now. I had already broken all of my rules. She should have been secured behind that door, and beer has never been on the menu for any of the marks. I was thinking with something other than my brain; I just wasn’t sure if it was my heart or my dick.

“Come on.”

“Please don’t lock me back in there. I’ll lose my mind. Let me sit with you.”

“This isn’t personal.” I held out my hand for her to take. I was offering an olive branch. I could have easily overpowered her and forced her into the room if I’d wanted.

“Yes it is.” Her eyes filled with tears and her shoulders slumped. I sighed and took a long drink from my beer.

I walked Lily back to the spare room, refusing to look her in the eye before locking the door. It was ripping me apart inside to have her so close again, to smell her, see her eyes sparkle. She had been the catalyst for the crooked path my life had taken, and now she was here to bear witness to the destruction I had left in my wake.

What we’d had was so much more than a high school romance. I protected her, made her smile when the world was dark, and she did the same for me. She kept me grounded when I wanted to lose control and become the guy that society had already labeled me. I was the poor boy from the abusive home. My father a criminal with no concern for anything but cash in his pockets and dope in his veins. My mother was just an innocent victim who sat in his path of terror. I tried to protect her, tried my best to stop him. When it became apparent that she had no intention of saving herself or me, I focused my attention on fighting any asshole who looked at me wrong. I placed myself in my father’s shoes and was learning to walk that walk until the day I came face-to-face with Rose.

“Cole!” Her voice cracked as she screamed at me from the spare room.

“Beat his fucking ass, Cole!” Trey screamed as he took a long hard drag from his cigarette, pure rage flashing in his eyes. His hair was long like mine but brown and curly.

My fist connected with Aiden’s jaw, and I felt my knuckle pop as his head flew backward. I kept my left hand gripped on his T-shirt. I didn’t want him to fall, not yet. I wasn’t done with him.

“Come on, man. The cops are gonna be here any minute.” Trey flicked his butt to the ground and blew out his breathe, clouding me in his smoke.

“I’m not fucking done,” I said through clenched teeth as I grabbed Trey’s jaw and forced him to look at me through swollen purple eyes. I blocked out the small crowd of teenagers that had circled around us. The guys watched with excitement as the girls turned away in horror.

“I’m gonna make sure you learn a fucking lesson,” I growled and swung again, my broken and bruised hand pounding against his eye socket. His body went limp and I smiled down at him, not even close to finishing.

“Cole!” Rose squealed and the fog that surrounded me lifted. My eyes locked onto her terrified face and I smiled like a fucking idiot. “Stop,” she mouthed and my dick instantly pushed against my jeans. That was the first time she had ever said my name, and the breathy way it crossed her lips made me think about her saying it under completely different circumstances. I frowned, realizing the look of horror on her face was because of me, not Aiden. I let my grip loosen until he fell to my feet, clutching his face and crying like a bitch.

“Cops!” Someone yelled and the crowd took off in different directions like a herd of antelope running from a wolf.

I took off with Trey on my heels, laughing so hard that I had to stop running after only a few blocks.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Aiden’s face was a cross between delight and disappointment.

“He had enough,” I replied, rubbing my bloodied knuckles with the bottom of my dark blue T-shirt.

“Yeah. You almost fucking killed him.”

I shrugged as my eyes scanned the street. He deserved more than what he got. Visions of that prick grabbing Rose’s ass in the hallway flashed in my memory. Anger began to creep back as I saw the look of fear on her face. Not the normal reaction you would expect from a girl who was used to getting attention from dumb high school boys. That look…I had seen it before on my mother a million times. It doesn’t matter that he thought this was all about bumping into me in the hall, doesn’t matter that Rose didn’t know my true motive. I knew.

“Which way did Rose go?” I asked.

“What? Who the fuck cares, man?”

I turned back to him, still seething and ready for round two.

“I fucking care.”

“Yeah, I see that. It’s just weird because I’ve never even seen you two talk.” He took a step back and shook his head.

“We don’t.” I scanned the street again, not hearing any sirens. “I just don’t want her going down for my stupid shit.” I had barely said two words to Rose, but I knew she wasn’t like them. The way she looked at me it was just…different. She didn’t see the worthless criminal everyone else saw, even though that was exactly who I was.

I sank down on my couch and listened to Rose sobbing in the bedroom. I fucked up. There was no coming back from what I’d just done. She had broken my heart into a million shards and I had never recovered, and now I was going to return the favor.

I pushed myself up from the couch and made my way to the kitchen in a haze of confusion. I grabbed the bottle of Jack from the freezer and tilted it to my lips, closing my eyes and letting it burn a path of fire down my core.

“Please! I won’t tell anyone,” she cried from the other side of the locked door. I shook my head and tilted the bottle back to my lips. I knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, just like she had never told anyone about us. My memories were mine alone. No one else saw the way she held my hand, the way her eyes sparkled before she pressed her soft lips to mine. It was like none of it had ever happened, and I wasn’t sure that it ever really had, until today when she walked back into my life.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Her voice wavered as she called out to me. I wasn’t there. The guy standing in the kitchen with liquor burning his throat was not the guy she fell in love with. I was an angry, empty shell of my former self.

“Why?” I called back, laughing maniacally as my brain began to succumb to the fog. I was an angry drunk, and I realized too late that this was going to end very badly. “You have always been such a selfish bitch. Why am I doing this to you?”

Her cries grew louder and I ran my hand roughly through my hair, trying desperately to calm myself before I did something I regretted.

“Why the fuck are you even here?” I screamed, on the verge of losing it. I tipped the bottle back one last time. Chilled amber liquid ran down my chin and over my chest before it stopped at the waistband of my sweatpants. “Fuck that’s cold,” I said to myself as I screwed the cap back on and placed the bottle back in the freezer.

“You’re going to be the death of me, Rose.” I shook my head and stumbled back into the living room, falling gracelessly onto the old leather couch. A pile of stacked books behind me toppled and slammed into the hardwood floor. Rose stopped crying instantly. I let my head fall back as I stared up at the peeling, cracking paint on the ceiling. Good. A moment of fucking peace. My vision blurred as I tried to rationalize what was happening.

I stopped looking for Rose years ago, forcing myself to believe she was long dead. The odds had been stacked against her since she was a kid. Regardless of who that woman was locked in the spare bedroom, my Rose was dead. This was no different from any other job I had done in the past. Although I had never had to down half a bottle of Jack to be able to do this before. There were rules, and as long as everyone stuck to them, we parted ways.

My head was completely fucked and she was the reason. She was always the reason. My eyes continued to blur, but now out of sadness and loss.

“This is all your fucking fault,” I mumbled as I leaned forward and rested my head in my hands. “All of this!” I yelled as my emotions began to spill over and I lost any semblance of control.