Prologue
Annalise
He lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with every breath. He was alive. That was something.
Life had taught me to expect the worst. When I’d been summoned to the emergency room, my head had been filled with disaster. Death. My stomach already twisting, my heart sick with grief. But Riley wasn’t dead.
He was unconscious, and his arm was broken, but that was it. The nurse told me he’d woken once, to ask for me, and was simply sleeping. I was having a hard time believing her. I’d been sitting by Riley’s hospital bed for hours, holding his hand. Waiting.
If this were normal sleep, he would have woken. Wouldn’t he?
The white bandage wrapped around his head was a jarring contrast to his tanned skin and dark hair.
Riley couldn’t be hurt. Riley was strong and smart.
Riley was everything. Since the day we’d met, he’d taken over my life.
It seemed impossible that anything, even a pickup truck and a drunk driver, could slow him down.
The nurse came back in, narrowing her eyes at the sight of Riley, still asleep.
“Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” I asked.
She spared me a sidelong glance as she checked his vitals and made notes on the chart.
“Not necessarily. The doctor can tell you more when he does rounds, but your boyfriend has a concussion and a broken arm. So far, that’s it.
No internal bleeding and his brain isn’t swelling.
I would have expected him to be up by now, but I don’t think there’s cause to worry. ”
She patted my shoulder as she left. I didn’t think you were supposed to go to sleep when you had a concussion, but it seemed ridiculous to question the nurse.
I knew nothing about head injuries, and she was a medical professional.
If she wasn’t worried, I shouldn’t be either.
I knew that. It didn’t seem to make a difference. I wanted Riley to open his eyes.
His dark lashes fanned against his cheeks, hiding the green-flecked hazel of his eyes. I loved Riley’s eyes. They were the first thing about him to capture my attention.
I’d been watching him for two months before we officially met. He sat three rows ahead of me in Intro to Psychology. Three rows up and just enough to my right that I could stare at his profile when I was supposed to be paying attention in class.
One day, as he stood to grab his backpack, he’d looked up, and his eyes met mine.
Warm, light hazel framed by the kind of long lashes men never appreciated, and women envied.
A strong blade of a nose, dark hair a little too long, and the hint of a tattoo peeking up from the collar of his gray T-shirt.
He was prime eye candy for a girl like me.
He wasn’t too pretty. None of that highly polished, pampered look I’d been over by the time I hit my teens.
I’d grown up around rich boys with their expensive haircuts and overpriced watches.
Designer clothes didn’t do it for me. The way that gray T-shirt stretched over his arms definitely did.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder, locked those hazel eyes onto mine, and winked.
My heart stopped in my chest. By the time I’d recovered, he was gone.
I’d never looked forward to a class as much as I did the next session of Intro to Psych.
He was there, in the same seat he always took—three rows up and four to my right.
The class went by in a blur. I took notes, but later I realized none of them made sense.
I spent most of my time studying the curve of his ear, the way his hair was a little too long in the back, curling up over the collar of his T-shirt, this time a faded navy blue with the logo of a classic rock band on the front.
His jaw, the side of it I could see, was clean-shaven and strong. His shoulders were broad, and his left arm was just muscled enough to be sexy. I could tell you I didn’t sketch the edges of his tattoo, visible below the T-shirt sleeve, but I’d be lying.
That time, when he winked at me, I had just enough composure to smile back. I leaned down to grab my own backpack, and when I looked up, he was gone. Again.
We played that game for another week, and suddenly it seemed like I saw him everywhere. Checking his mail at the student union, waiting in line in the cafeteria. Every time I caught sight of him, my heart sped up.
I thought about approaching him, planned on it, but when I had the chance, I chickened out. My mystery man was older than the rest of us, at least by a few years. He had a detached air about him that was intimidating, even to me.
I’m not easily intimidated. Not by most people. I’m Annalise Winters. Yes, one of those Winters. The Winters family of Winters Incorporated, heir to a company whose value dwarfed most country’s GDPs. I’d been born a billionaire.
Most people thought that made me lucky. In some ways it did. I didn’t have to worry about tuition. I’d never had to worry about paying bills or going hungry. I had a beautiful home and a sweet, tricked-out SUV my oldest cousin had gotten me for my high school graduation.
But I don’t know that ‘lucky’ was a good description of my life. I also had two dead parents, victims of a murder/suicide that had drawn relentless media coverage, a clusterfuck that had only gotten worse when the aunt and uncle who raised me died in an almost identical crime when I was seventeen.
The scandal had been irresistible. The legitimate news, gossip columns, people I’d grown up thinking were my friends—they were all obsessed with the downfall of the Winters family.
Money could insulate you from a lot of problems, but it couldn’t fix everything.
Not the stuff that really mattered. By the time I started high school, I knew how to keep my guard up, knew how to be cautious.
I’d learned the hard way not to trust easily.
Threats could hide anywhere. Even in the hazel eyes of a cute boy in class.
So, I’d watched him, and I’d let my heart beat too fast when he winked at me, but that was it. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. I was just trying to be normal for a while. Normal never lasted long for me.
A few weeks after that first wink, I’d turned around and bumped right into him, almost spilling my coffee all over another one of those faded, well-fitting t-shirts.
“Whoah,” he’d said, reaching out to steady my arm. His strong fingers closed over my elbow, and my heart fluttered.
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t see you there,” I babbled.
His fingers firmly gripping my arm, he led me away from the line at the coffee shop. “It’s my fault. I was standing too close. To tell you the truth, I was trying to figure out what perfume you’re wearing.”
Up close, I could see that his hazel eyes were flecked with specks of green and gold. My brain struggling to catch up, I said, “It’s not perfume, it’s lotion.”
“Good to know,” he said, the side of his mouth quirking up in a half smile that made my knees weak. “I’d offer to buy you a coffee but—” he gestured to my coffee with his own. “Looks like you’ve already got that covered. How about a walk?”
“Okay,” I said, my head spinning a little as I let him lead me out of the coffee shop and into the street. We’d fallen into step together, exchanging names, though I only gave my first. I didn’t want to tell him who I was.
Not yet.
I had my own reasons for being gun-shy about relationships, reasons that had nothing to do with my family. But I didn’t want to tell Riley who I was until I decided if he’d be worth the trouble.
It didn’t take long to figure out that Riley Flynn was worth the trouble, and I ended up spilling more than I meant to about my personal life by our third date.
I found out that he looked older than the rest of us because he was. He’d taken off after high school and backpacked around Europe before settling down for college. He’d taken the news about my family in stride, seeming disinterested, though he’d shied away from meeting them. I didn’t care.
I was living on campus for the second year in a row, and I was more than happy to keep Riley all to myself.
My oldest cousin, Aiden, was technically head of the family now that his parents were dead, and he’d come home to take the reins of Winters Inc.
My oldest brother Gage had joined the Army the year before, only a few days after our aunt and uncle had been killed.
My twin brother, Vance, was also in his sophomore year at Emory. I guessed everyone figured he was keeping an eye on me.
Not exactly.
Vance was keeping an eye on coeds and parties. His sister? Not so much.
That was fine with me. I was tired of living behind gates. I wanted to pretend to be a normal college student, with a normal life. I wanted to get serious about my photography and study art. So far, everything had been working out perfectly. I should have known it wouldn’t last.
I watched Riley sleep in the hospital bed and tried to tell myself that people got into car accidents.
It wasn’t good, but it was normal. It happened.
It didn’t mean Riley was going to die. If it were that serious, they wouldn’t let me in his room.
The nurse would’ve seemed more on edge. Everything was fine.
I must have squeezed Riley’s hand too hard because his fingers flexed over mine and he let out a low groan.
Those thick eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, and his eyes opened, bloodshot and swollen, but the familiar green-flecked hazel soothed my worries.
I felt my own eyes flood with tears, and Riley smiled weakly.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You wouldn’t wake up,” I said.
Riley squeezed my hand again. He knew me, knew what I was thinking. Knew how I feared more loss. More death.
“I’m awake now, and I’m fine.”
I swiped a tear from my eye and nodded. He squeezed my hand again.