Chapter 9
JAKE
"Is he dead?" Emma asks, her voice hoarse and low. Her hands fist at her sides, and there's something in her posture—not fear, not horror. Something else.
It bugs the hell out of me that I can’t read it. "Yeah."
"Good."
The word punches through the night air like a gunshot.
She exhales, slow and deliberate, her gaze on mine—wide, stunned, processing. But there’s resolve too. Strength. Relief. And something darker that I’d never seen when I knew her before.
Years don’t change a person. It hones them into who they truly are.
Eighteen years. Eighteen fucking years since I've seen her in person, and here she is—standing in the gravel parking lot of a dive bar, a corpse behind me, with harsh neon lighting that should have made her look washed out.
It doesn't. It just highlights how goddamn beautiful she is.
At eighteen, she’d been all long legs and sharp edges with big green eyes, trying to hide how badly she wanted me from her father.
Sneaking out to meet me. Letting me touch her, kiss her.
Letting me fuck her—in the back of my truck, in the hayloft of her dad's barn.
In her bedroom. Coming apart under my hands with her teeth sunk into my shoulder to keep quiet.
Listening to me, my plans for the future. Believing in me.
Who is thirty-six-year-old Emma?
I study her. The years look good on her. The softness of eighteen has been replaced by something sharper, more defined. Lines around her eyes now, a maturity that wasn’t there before. Her dark hair trails down her back, longer than it used to be. Her mouth is fuller than I remember.
I used to know what that mouth tasted like.
I’ve been imagining that mouth on me for more years than is probably healthy.
She's wearing jeans with boots caked in mud, like anyone in Iron Ridge, but on top she’s bundled in a green wool coat with the collar buttoned up high.
I’ve kept tabs on her over the years, so I know she’s a successful wildlife photographer who’s in-demand.
I know she was stationed in Chicago until four weeks ago when her father died, and that she’d been married to the same man for nine years, initiating the divorce a year ago.
But I don’t know the important things, like if she can love me again.
Honestly? I’m not sure I care, as long as she’s mine.
And for a second, I’m that randy boy again—the one who needs her bad, who can’t keep his hands off her, and doesn’t want to. Who wants to deserve her because she’s everything.
It’s by sheer force of will that I pull my head back into the operation.
"Emma." My voice comes out rougher than I intend as I step in front of her. I'm acutely aware of Turner's blood on the ground and the need to get him and his truck out of here. "You need to leave. Now."
She doesn't move. Her eyes drop back to Turner's corpse, and I watch her face, waiting for the fear, the panic, the scream.
It doesn't come.
Instead, she looks back at me, her green eyes the only light in my night. "He's been intimidating me since I moved back, showing up at my property and making threats disguised as offers, telling me what he'd do if I didn't sell.”
"I know."
She blinks. "How do you know? Did someone mention it to you? Jim Blocker?”
“I talked to Blocker about it.” Not a lie, because I don’t lie to Emma—ever. But I’m not telling her that I’m the one who contacted Jim. And no fucking way am I telling her that I’ve been watching her.
"Emma," I say again, taking another step toward her. Being this close to her for the first time after eighteen years is doing things to me I don't have time for right now. "You need to leave. If anyone finds out you saw this—"
"I didn’t see anything." Her voice is steady now, certain.
She meets my eyes without flinching. "He deserved this. He deserved worse. He’s beaten more women than I can count and God knows what else, and his lawyers always get him off without even a slap on the hand. Plus, this was self-defense, right?"
I could say yes without it technically being a lie. His knife, and he attacked me. But it’d feel like a lie if I say it to Emma, so I don’t say anything.
She steps closer, close enough now that I can reach out and touch her. Close enough that I see the way her pulse jumps in her throat. Close enough that if I bend forward, I could find out if she still tastes the same.
The air between us crackles, charged with something dangerous and electric. My blood runs hot, and my body is primed—not for violence but for her. And she's standing here in the aftermath of death, looking at me like I'm some sort of hero.
I’m not. I just do what needs to be done.
And what I need to do right now is get Emma out of here.