I f*****g hate you, Xavier Michaels.
Xavier’s gut clenched at the finality of the words. Ava had said them to him before, but this time was different, and he felt it as sharply as if she’d taken a knife to his chest.
Before he’d made a conscious decision to do so, Xavier was out of his chair and standing before Ava’s rigid form. When he reached his hand out to her, this time she didn’t flinch. There was too much fire in her, a fire that he recognized because it matched his own. It was the same inferno that had lit his darker moments for more than a decade.
It was also the same inferno that made it impossible to discount the fact that she might be a killer.
“Don’t say that to me.” He lifted a hand and brushed a lock of Ava’s auburn hair behind her ear, “Say whatever else
