Roman crosses the threshold first, then Valen stands close—too close—as he scans the driveway. Close enough that I catch the scent of him. Cedar, coffee, and something darker underneath. His warmth radiates against my side, and I hate how my body leans toward it. Toward him.
“After you,” he says, his voice low enough to feel in my bones.
I follow Roman, regretting my stubborn decision not to stay with Madi.
“Where—” Roman stands in the hallway, but I quickly slip around Valen to engage all the locks, then scoot past them both, leading the way to my family room, where I sink into the overstuffed chair that billows out before settling in all around me.
If it was built for anxiety, it’s for me—that’s my motto these days. Everything in my home, from my clothes to my furniture, was designed with managing anxieties in mind.
Valen dwarfs my space when he enters, checks the perimeter of the room, then focuses on the details before finding me surrounded by a pillow fort of weighted cushions pressing in on me from all sides.
“Savvy was hit by a truck her ex, Riley, was driving,” Roman says.
Swallowing razor blades would be less painful than hearing this.
He must see my expression because he’s quick to continue, this time, a little more…tactfully. “She has extensive injuries and has been placed in a medically induced coma while she heals. Her attacker was apprehended immediately.”
He sits on the edge of the couch. “It’s possible that with him in jail, your threats will be eliminated too.”
“We know that Savvy’s ex doxed your personal information, so we’ll keep a close eye on things,” Valen says.
His tone indicates that he doesn’t believe Riley’s my only problem. Honestly, neither do I. The packages are too personal to come from my best friend’s ex—someone I’d never even met before he started terrorizing Savvy again.
No, someone else has been watching me—someone who knows things only someone from my past would know. That’spart of the reason I haven’t told my friends everything about this stalker situation. The packages I’ve been receiving are a new issue, but I think this started years before I met them, and I don’t want them involved in it.
As terrible as I feel, Valen looks worse. Tight lines pinch around his eyes, accentuating the dark circles, but somehow, he’s still beautiful.
“Miss Danforth,” he says, then winces when I glare at him. Can’t he hear how wrong that sounds from his lips?
“Clover,” I snap. “My name is Clover.” Less than five minutes in his presence, and my voice has found its backbone.
What the hell would happen if he…stuck around?
“Clover.” The sound of my name from his mouth makes my chest flood with hot lava, cracking it open in places I’ve kept sealed for years. “I have some questions for you.”
“I don’t think?—”
“Please.”
That one word clogs my throat with emotion for the boy I loved.
He stands in my family room like he doesn’t quite fit. Too tall. Too solid. Too present.
His gaze sweeps the space—taking in my bee-themed throw pillows, the stack of books on the coffee table, the row of snow globes on the mantel, the framed photo of me with Madi, Savvy, and Elle at graduation.
“Do you want to sit?” I ask, needing to say something, anything, before my inner thoughts slip out.
“I won’t stay long. I just—I need to explain something.” He shakes his head. “At the fair, when I saw you…”
I press deeper into my chair, the tiny, weighted glass balls molding around me. “When you looked through me like I was nobody?”
His jaw tightens. “I didn’t mean to?—”
“Didn’t mean to what?” Holy crap. I just growled at him. “Not recognize me? Forget about me? Leave me in the trauma so you could pretend I never existed?” Sweat forms on my lip, and my throat scratches as though it’s already raw.
“I didn’t…forget you.”
“You literally said, ‘Are you okay, lady?’ Not, ‘Oh my God, Clover. It’s you!’ That’s the very definition of forgetting.”
