But I’d seen the look in her eyes.
I’d spent enough of my life around someone who looked like that to recognize it immediately.
That storm-wrecked panic. That sassy mouth. That edge of exhaustion she’d tried to hide under sarcasm.
She wasn’t just passing through.
She was running.
And now that she was here, I didn’t want her to run anymore.
My instincts had always been better at catching people than letting them go.
I didn’t know what I wanted from her, exactly. I didn’t know what the hell she even was to me. But the minute she’d stepped out of that car, blinking through the rain, dazed and confused and absolutely done with the world…I knew I wasn’t finished with her yet.
I knew it, and it settled in like something that had always been there.
I could still see her in that room. Jea
