chapter 2: He Knows Too Much

Scarlett didn't sleep. She spent the night replaying two words that weren't even words she'd heard out loud.

You're going to want to remember that name.

By seven in the morning she had decided the smartest thing she could do was forget it entirely. Strange men in bars said strange things. That didn't make them true, and it definitely didn't make them her problem. Her problem was the folder on her passenger seat and the lawyer's office six blocks away.

She signed her half of the papers in the parking lot before she lost her nerve. Her hand shook on the last line, but she pressed the pen down hard enough to leave a groove in the paper.

"Done," she said to no one, and felt something crack open in her chest that was equal parts grief and relief.

The lawyer's office was efficient and cold. A young paralegal took her folder, glanced at the signature, and told her Ethan had until the end of the month to file his response or the process would move forward without him.

"And if he doesn't respond?"

"Then eventually the court rules in your favor by default." The paralegal's smile was polite and practiced. "You'd get everything you're asking for."

Scarlett almost laughed. She wasn't asking for much. Just her name back and enough of what remained of their savings to survive the next few months. Ethan could keep the business he'd let devour their marriage.

She was three steps out of the building when her phone rang. Nora.

"Please tell me you're sitting down."

"I'm standing in a parking lot. Why?"

"Draven is outside your apartment."

Scarlett stopped breathing. "What?"

"The man from the bar last night. The one with the terrifying eyes. He's standing beside your building like he owns the sidewalk."

"You're sure it's him?"

"Scarlett, I watched him walk up to you last night. I would recognize that face anywhere."

Scarlett's stomach dropped. "Is he still there?"

"He hasn't moved."

"I'm coming."

She broke every reasonable speed limit getting there. She told herself it was concern, that a strange man loitering outside her apartment was a legitimate thing to be alarmed about, and that had nothing to do with the way her pulse had kicked up the second Nora said tall, dark hair.

He was exactly where Nora said he'd be, leaning against the brick wall beside her building's entrance like he had every right to occupy that particular six feet of sidewalk. When she got out of the car, his head turned toward her before she'd even shut the door, like he'd known she was coming from three blocks away.

"You're following me," Scarlett said, stopping a careful distance from him.

"I'm not." His voice was calm, but something tight sat behind it, like he was holding a leash on himself. "I'm making sure you're safe."

"From what?"

He didn't answer right away, and that silence told her more than words would have.

"You don't even know me," she said. "You met me for ninety seconds in a bar last night."

"I know your name is Scarlett Reeves. I know you signed the divorce papers three hours ago. I know your husband owes his bank a debt he can't cover by Friday, and I know he isn't going to be the one who pays for it."

The air left her lungs.

"How do you know any of that?"

There was a flicker across his face, the same internal war she'd seen the night before, the look of a man measuring exactly how much truth he could afford to give her. "It's complicated."

"Try me."

"Not yet." He said it gently, but there was no give in it, an immovable wall dressed up as patience. "Not until you trust me enough to hear it without running."

"I don't trust you at all."

"I know." He almost smiled and it was gone as fast as it came. "That's the smart choice."

She should have walked past him. She should have gone inside, locked her door, and called the police to report a man who apparently had access to her legal filings and her husband's private finances. Instead she stood there, close enough to feel the heat coming off him, close enough that the strange electric hum from the night before sharpened into something that made her fingers itch to touch him and made her furious at herself for wanting to.

"Whoever you are," she said, "you don't get to know things about my life that I haven't told you. That's not protective. That's a violation."

"You're right." He said it without hesitation, without the wounded pride she expected from a man used to being obeyed. "It is. I'm not going to pretend otherwise."

That honesty threw her more than anything else he'd said.

"Then stop."

"I can't." His jaw tightened, gold eyes darkening with something that looked dangerously close to torment. "Believe me, I've tried telling myself I could walk away and let you live your life. I can't. Not anymore. Not since last night."

"Why not?"

He stepped closer, close enough that she had to fight the urge to close the distance herself instead of retreating.

"Because you're mine," he said, low and rough, like the words had been dragged out of somewhere he didn't want them touched. "And I don't expect you to understand what that means yet. But you will."

The strange pull in her chest tightened violently, almost like something inside her had answered him.

Scarlett's heart slammed against her ribs.

"I am nobody's," she said, and she meant it with every splintered piece of the woman she was rebuilding. "Not my husband's. Not yours."

"We'll see."

There was no arrogance in his voice. That frightened her more than arrogance would have. Then his eyes cut sharply past her shoulder, toward the street, and every line of his body changed in an instant, tension replacing the strange stillness he'd carried a second before.

"Get inside," he said, no gentleness left in his voice at all.

"What?"

"Now." His hand closed around her wrist, firm and urgent. "Someone's watching you, and it isn't me."

Scarlett followed his gaze to the black car idling at the curb across the street, windows tinted too dark to see through, engine running, going nowhere.

It had been there the whole time.