Chapter 2
When Hadley Lockhart was in middle school, an older boy, Brandon Rowe, loaned her his jacket to wrap around her waist when he noticed a spot of blood on the back of her jeans. It was the first time she’d gotten her period, and she was unprepared and utterly humiliated.
But Brandon had been super calm. He told her he had sisters and this kind of thing happened all the time.
When tears sprang to her eyes, he’d tipped up her chin and told her to dry her eyes, because everything was going to be fine.
Then, he’d walked her to the school nurse so she could get a pad and call her mom to bring her a change of clothes.
For the next four years, she’d doodled Mrs. Brandon Rowe on her notebooks, memorized his class schedule so she could cross his path a million times a day like a creepy stalker, and fantasized about the kind of magical life they’d have together once he realized they were meant to be.
Brandon, of course, never seemed to think of her again after their initial meeting.
He’d only done for her what he obviously would’ve done for anyone in her situation, because he was simply a great guy.
But she’d convinced herself (in all her na?ve, childish glory) that she was in love with him because he’d been kind to her.
For four years.
That’s how she ultimately learned she was prone to romantic idiocy. Which was why she vowed to never, ever fall in love with a man first. The right man, the one she’d eventually marry, would fall ass-over-elbow for her, then—and ONLY then—would she allow herself to fall for him, too.
That vow was the backbone of her dating strategy. The second a man gave her even the barest hint of a clue that he might not be as into her as she was into him, she ruthlessly cut him from her dating roster. No second chances, no letting things play out.
Now, that’s not to say her mercenary dating style had jaded her. It hadn’t. She still loved love. And if romance novels had taught her anything, one day she would find a knight in shining armor who’d adore her as much as she’d once adored Brandon Rowe. Only, you know, without the stalking.
So, even after years of failed relationships and dead-end dates, she still held out hope that the love of her life was right around the corner. As a matter of fact, it was hope that had landed her in her current predicament.
Fucking hope. What a horrid cunt.
When she met Darren in the wild at her favorite coffee shop, he’d seemed so normal. He was employed. Owned his own home and car. Was attractive, but not so attractive that she’d always be wondering what he saw in her. Like, vanilla attractive, which was nice. She liked vanilla.
And best of all, he seemed way more interested in her than she was in him. On paper, he was perfect.
Sure, the bar of her standards was in hell. And on fire. But Darren had cleared it with ease. They’d been on four perfectly nice dates.
And yet…
Deep in her gut, she’d always felt something was off about him. Everything he did and said felt calculated somehow. It was like he’d taken a “how to woo a woman” course and was implementing tactics instead of genuinely getting to know her.
But it wasn’t until tonight, when he’d acted like sex was a given because this was their fourth date and tried to invite himself into her house, that his nice-guy mask truly slipped. And when she told him she thought they weren’t a good fit and it was time to go their separate ways?
The mask disappeared altogether.
The man she was looking at right now was not the man she’d been dating for the past month.
His normally warm brown eyes had instantly frosted over when she said she wouldn’t be inviting him to “make love”, as he put it.
She cringed at the thought (and at his choice of words).
Like she owed him entrance into her body because he’d paid for a couple dinners, a bad rom com movie, and tickets to the art museum’s Impressionists experience.
Seriously, what had she done to deserve this? Her one and only dating rule wasn’t that strict. Why wasn’t she married with 2.5 kids and a couple of matching chocolate Labradors by now?
But despite her best efforts, here she sat, not a single husband, kid, or chocolate lab in sight. Just an asshole who thought he was entitled to her body after a handful of aggressively average dates.
Darren shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand. What do you mean we’re not a good fit? We’ve been out four times. Four! I did everything right!”
The way he said that reinforced her feeling that he’d only been cosplaying a good boyfriend. He truly didn’t understand how she’d seen through his act. It set her teeth on edge.
But she couldn’t tell him that. Not when he looked like he was hanging on to sanity by the thinnest of fraying threads.
“I never said you did anything wrong,” she said carefully. “You didn’t. This is about me. I just don’t feel a spark.”
Unlike the flaming, white-hot, blinding spark she felt when she stared through her bird watching binoculars at her new neighbor.
She’d been so excited when he moved in. Living on a tiny country road in the middle of nowhere had its perks, but it occasionally got a little lonely.
And the only other house on the street, the one directly across from hers, had been up for sale for years with no interest. She’d started thinking she’d never have a real neighbor, which was a shame, because she was pretty sure she’d be great at it.
Then she saw him.
Her neighbor showed up out of the blue one day, stripped the sale sign off the front lawn, and moved in with absolutely no fanfare.
No moving truck, no friends helping him heft boxes into the house, no housewarming party or anything.
He hauled his own boxes out of his big F-350 and had a minimal amount of furniture delivered.
She wasn’t good at guessing ages, but she figured he was in his late thirties, probably only a few years older than her.
He never had visitors, kept to himself, mowed his lawn every week without fail, and put zero effort into getting to know her (or even making eye contact with her at the mailbox, for that matter).
And he was stunningly, shockingly, painfully hot. Muscly, dark-haired, ruggedly handsome features, looked like he could bench press an SUV…yep. He was beyond impressive.
He was so hot, in fact, that even after a month with him living right across the street, she still hadn’t worked up the nerve to go over and introduce herself. Especially when he seemed so supremely uninterested in being neighborly with her.
So, she periodically watched him through her binoculars (God bless the man for never closing his curtains) like a lame-ass loser and wished he’d just come over and ask to borrow some flour or something so she’d have an excuse to talk to him.
After all, how the hell was he supposed to fall in love with her if they never even officially got around to meeting?
Which, now that she thought about, made her empathize a little with Darren. Being on the losing end of a one-way spark sucked ass.
Not relevant at the moment. Get your shit together, woman!
His eyes narrowed on her. “A spark? What does that even mean?”
Her heart rate kicked up a little. How was he going to sit there and pretend he had no idea what a spark was? She cleared her throat. “I mean a romantic connection. We could still be friends, of course.”
She didn’t mean it. After tonight, she was going to block his ass on every platform. But again, telling him that didn’t seem prudent while she was trapped in a car with him. With the child locks on, apparently, she thought as she gave the handle at her back a little tug.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. The whole idea of a spark was just something women made up to reject nice guys who aren’t over six feet and working in finance.”
As someone who was only 5’5”, she could say with all honesty that she couldn’t possibly care any less that Darren was 5’9”.
To her, that was tall. And finance dudes bored the fuck out of her.
Darren being a corporate IT guy had never concerned her.
But he didn’t seem like he was in the state of mind to accept those particular truths. So, she decided to try another tactic.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Why don’t we call it a night and talk about this tomorrow?”
And by talk about this tomorrow she, of course, meant she’d escape and pray he never darkened her doorstep again.
He shook his head furiously. “No way. I’m not falling for that again. I won’t let you shut me out without giving me the real reason why you don’t want to see me anymore.”
The word again was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Just how many other women had he creeped out like this? Had he hurt any of them? Shit, were any of them the subject of horrific unsolved mysteries with Lifetime movies made about them??
She swallowed hard. “I’m not lying, Darren. We can talk tomorrow. Now, will you please unlock the door and let me out?”
“You’re just scared,” he said through clenched teeth.
You’re damned right I am!
“You’re terrified of opening yourself up to everything I make you feel,” he went on.
Well…that sentence had certainly taken an unexpected turn. She blinked at him a couple times before deciding to go with it. “May…be,” she croaked, practically choking on the lie.
He snagged her wrist in a grip so hard she felt her bones shift. Son of a bitch! She was going to die in front of her house, wasn’t she? How sad was that? Killed by a bad date because she didn’t want to invite him into her house for what was sure to be the most mediocre wiener-ing ever.
“We belong together, Hadley,” he said with a fervor she’d never felt for anyone or anything in her whole life. “I can prove it.”
Then he yanked her by her poor bruised wrist over the center console of his ancient Mercedes and slammed his mouth down on hers.
She tried to shove him off her, but he shifted his grip from her wrist to the back of her head and grabbed a fistful of her hair. Ugh, he was so freakin’ strong! And he tasted like the garlicky marinara he’d had on his pasta at dinner. Gross!
Her disgust quickly turned to panic when his hand in her hair tightened, pulling the strands hard enough to bring tears to her eyes and wrench a pained cry from her throat—a cry he muffled by shoving his tongue into her mouth.
She took a few kickboxing classes when she was in college. Her instructor always told her how great she was doing. But everything she’d ever learned evaporated in her panic. Especially when he shoved his free hand between her knees and started trying to pry them apart.
Maybe she could bite his tongue! Although she was just as likely to bite a hole in her cheek. Trying to shove him off her wasn’t doing a damn thing. Maybe if she just—
She didn’t have time to finish that fragment of a thought, though. Because that’s when the driver’s side window exploded into a million pieces and a dinner-plate sized hand (possibly the hand of God Himself, as far as Hadley knew) grabbed Darren by the hair and dragged him through the wreckage.