Zander
The second I saw Gina standing in that parking garage, pale and frozen beside her car, something cold and violent moved through me.
Not fear.
Fear came later.
This was older. Sharper. The kind of instinct that didn’t ask questions before it started calculating how many ways a man could suffer for putting his eyes on someone who belonged nowhere near the uglier parts of my life.
“Gina,” I said carefully, keeping my voice low because she already looked seconds away from either crying or swinging her purse at someone. “Are you hurt?”
She blinked at me like she needed a moment to understand the question.
“No. I don’t think so.” Her fingers tightened around her keys. “I mean, I dropped these, but I’m fine. I think I’m fine. I don’t know. Am I fine? That was weird, right?”
Under a
