“Yup,” he issued like a challenge as he crossed his arms over his chest.
My nod was slow and fueled by menace. Jaw cracking under the pressure. “You’d do well to rethink your position.”
He barked a laugh. “You think I’m scared of you? You’re nothin’ but a fuckboy. Know your type. Think you’re better than everyone else just because you wrote a song or two. Think you can come in and take whatever you want, whoever you want, just because you have a little fame tacked to your name. And I won’t let an asshole like you mess with a girl like her.”
“You don’t know a thing about me. I’d suggest you don’t act like you do.” The warning hung heavy in the air.
He scoffed and took a step forward. “Yeah…and what is a pussy like you gonna do about it?”
Dude had the balls to spit on the ground when he said it.
I had him by the throat and shoved against the side of her truck before he knew what hit him.
Adrenaline coiled and rose.
This poison that surged.
The same bated violence that I’d lived by the last six years. So close to being unleashed.
I leaned down close to his face and seethed the words, “Keep your ass out of my business and you won’t have to find out.”
He laughed a sound of disgust while he thrashed against the hold I had on him. “Fuck you.”
Anger blistered across my flesh, and I pressed him harder to the metal of the truck, trying not to lose it. “Stay the fuck away from me and stay the fuck away from her. You got me?”
I heard the roar of Rhys’ car barreling up the road, and I jerked him by the collar of his tee and slammed him back down. “You’re not gonna like it if I have to remind you.”
I shoved him off, dude stumbling and trying to right himself.
I straightened myself as I turned to walk away.
If I stayed a second longer, things were going to get ugly.
Last thing Violet and Daisy needed was to see me coming unglued.
To witness the man I’d become.
The one who would fight to the death if it was required.
Saul’s voice pierced me from behind. “It’s time she moved on, and I’m going to see to it that it’s with me. Nothin’ you can do about it.”
Possession slammed me like a punch to the face.
Devotion screaming.
Charring my insides with the betrayal that I had cast.
Spinning around, I walked backward, pointing at the bastard who thought he had everything figured out when he didn’t have a fuckin’ clue.
“Stay the fuck away from my wife. This will be the only time that I warn you.”
Then I turned around and stormed down the drive toward the road, knowing my claim was nothing but selfish.
This distorted greed that warped all logic.
But I knew right then it didn’t matter how much time or space or treachery I put between us. There was no lie I could tell that would cut her from my soul I’d given her years ago.
Fourteen
Richard Eight Years Ago
“No way,” she mouthed. Her eyes went wide in shock where he’d sidled up at her side at the bar after they’d finished their set.
He felt frozen, staring at her.
Girl casting some kind of spell. What he’d felt in an instant.
He’d been right. He hadn’t been imagining it while he was onstage watching her through the raving crowd where she’d sat tucked back at a table like there was a chance she could hide from him.
This girl’s eyes were dark, almost black. But what had held him rapt was the intense violet surrounding her pupils that fractured out in little veins through her irises.
Every time the light would strobe across her just right, they’d struck him like thunderbolts.
At first, he’d thought it was those crazy-ass eyes that had captured him. Nearly had him stumbling over the frets of his guitar when she’d come into view. Stomach lurching. Not knowing whether to climb off that stage right then to get a closer look or to wait and take the chance that she might be gone before the end of their show.
The girl was like looking at a glittering flare. A thousand sparkling colors in a sea of drab that gathered at the foot of the stage, same way as they did night after night.
But this girl? She was nothing but a jumpstart to his senses.
A kick of a million volts that had slammed him from across the space.
Which was damned ridiculous, so he’d spent the next hour trying to convince himself he was making it up. Envisioning himself a prize that didn’t exist. This porcelain girl with soft, soft cheeks and softer lips. All pink and plush and plump and begging for his kiss.
“Hey there.” His voice rumbled low, just loud enough for her to hear it over the clamor of the busy bar.
“Hi,” she returned. Her voice was this cross between a bell and sensuality. Earnest and real and ripe with seduction.
A remedy.
Truth was, the stage was his life. The focus of each day. What got him out of bed in the morning.
The music that lived within him was the single purpose he’d been given. To breathe something magical into existence. Create something good in the middle of the atrocities and the strife.
Give a little hope and distraction.
Which was why he’d felt shocked when he’d had the compulsion to climb down from the stage and end a show early for the first time since he and his band had started touring years before.
All for this girl, right in his hometown.
“I’m Richard. You’ve gotta be new around here.”
Redness pinked her cheeks. He wanted to press his nose to it to find out if she was as hot as he felt. “Violet. And no. Not new.”
He kicked up a wry smirk, leaning in closer. “You’re lying. No chance I could have seen you before and then forgotten you. Not when you are, without a doubt,
