ChapterFourteen
Nathan
Fuck.She’s so pretty.
I follow her, eyes roaming over her from the top of her ponytail to the bottoms of her sneaker-clad feet.
“Thanks, Ad.You’re a lifesaver.”
The door swings shut behind us, muffling the shrieks of my accidental fan club.I’m relieved to have escaped, but the second I look at her I know something is off.Something’s wrong.Very wrong.
She’s pale.Eyes tight.Shoulders tense.
And her voice is flat when she mutters, “Don’t thank me yet.”
I frown, stepping closer.“What’s going on?You seem upset.”
She lets out a sigh—sharp, exhausted—and her hair shifts with the movement.The motion is so familiar it hurts.
“It’s not good,” she says quietly.
Then she hands me a letter.
My stomach drops before I even read it.But when I do?
I feel my blood turn to lava.
“I thought Bella didn’t have a father,” I say—stupidly, uselessly—because what the hell else am I supposed to say?
“She doesn’t,” she snaps, pacing now.“I’ve never even heard this man’s name until he showed up at the house the day of the play.”
I freeze.
“He showed up at the house?”
My voice is low.Dangerous.
“Adrianna?Are you telling me this guy came to your door?”
Now I’m furious.
Likeseeing redfurious.
My hackles are up.My fists curl without permission.
My vision tunnels for a second, and it takes everything I have not to go find this Giovanni prick and introduce his face to the nearest wall.
Adrianna is not mine.Not officially.
She hasn’t been mine for a very long time.
But that means exactly jack shit to whatever part of me still claims her.
The idea—the mere fucking idea—of some man showing up at her home, threatening her family, frightening her?
It makes something feral and lethal snap awake inside me.
“What can I do to help?”I ask, my voice rough.
