A crunch sounded behind her, like leaves beneath shoes.
She stopped and turned, her heartbeat speeding up.
No one was there.
Of course there was no one. Because the street was empty. The women had gone missing in the forest, not here in town.
She turned and started walking again, her heart beating a fraction faster.
Her phone lit up with a notification from her travel Instagram account.
And that was the second reason that something as small as a shuffling sound made her jump…because someone had been harassing her.
It had started with comments on every post. Then direct messages commenting on what she was doing. Telling her the weather looked nice, or she was lucky to be where she was.
But then other things had started happening.
She’d returned from work trips to notice strange things in her house, like a pair of her favorite earrings missing, and her bed having a faint, unfamiliar scent.
Then more obvious things. Like her loofah being wet after a week-long trip. And a burnt wick on a brand-new candle.
Stalker. That’s what the police had called it. Her skin chilled at the title.
But she wasn’t in LA anymore. She was in Deep River. She hadn’t posted about coming home. That was all behind her.
Another crunch of leaves.
The back of her neck tingled, and she sped up yet again, moving so fast she was nearly jogging down the street.
She raced around a corner—only to run right into a big broad chest.
She gasped, and would have rebounded off the body, but strong fingers gripped her upper arms, steadying her.
“Maggie?”
Her gaze shot up at the familiar voice. Not just a familiar voice—his face too. It was older, but in a good way. He wasn’t in his early twenties anymore, closer to mid-thirties.
“Connor.” The name was barely a whisper on her lips.
She turned to see his friends, suddenly feeling impossibly small. They were huge, all well over six feet, and so muscled she almost stepped back.
But she knew they wouldn’t hurt her…because she knew all of them too.
Shock seized her, wrapping its fingers around her lungs, making it hard to breathe. They were all here. And iftheywere here, that meant…
The bar door opened, and Maggie’s world narrowed.
For a moment, air didn’t make its way into her chest. Her vision started to haze as one word—one name—fell from her lips.
A name she hadn’t said in eleven years. A name she’d thought about, dreamed about, more times than she should have.
“Ethan.”
3
Ethan blinked.
She was still there. Maggie Sinclair was still there. It wasn’t a dream. The woman he’d loved, the woman who’d broken his damn heart eleven years ago, was standing less than a foot away.
