name is Dave.”
I nodded. “Dave. Got it.”
“Him and I went to high school together.”
“Sweethearts?”
“He wanted to be. But I didn’t want to date him back then. I was dating the quarterback of the football team, so things never really happened between us.”
“How did you guys get together, then?”
She shrugged. “People grow up, I guess. I don’t really know how it happened. It just did one night. I was out at the bar celebrating my twenty-first birthday and suddenly, there’s Dave. He’s buying me a birthday drink and we’re reliving the horrible times we had in high school. Then, he’s at my place and we’re hooking up.”
“And you didn’t stop hooking up.”
She nodded. “Right. It kind of became this thing we did a couple of times a week. We got together, had drinks, got food, then went back to my place. And it continued for a while until the town talked about us ‘being together.’ And that was that.”
“How long were you two together?”
“Uh… just shy of a year, I’d say? I mean, it wasn’t like an ugly break-up either or anything. I sat him down, we had a talk, and by the end of it we were both in agreement that we needed to end whatever it was that was between us.”
“But he still ended up stalking you?”
She sighed. “I don’t really know how it happened. I mean, first he’d come over to talk. I mean, he’d come over a lot. And then it got to a point where I’d come up with excuses just so he wouldn't come over. Then one day, on a day I told him he couldn't come over, I caught him sitting in his car outside of my place. And before I can walk up to him and ask him if he’s okay, he takes off.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Yeah. Then, he starts popping up everywhere: the grocery store, the bar, my place. Just watching. It creeped me out, so that’s when I moved the first time. But when he found me at my new place, I quickly moved overnight into another apartment in that same complex until I could find another, totally different complex to move my ass to.”
“I take it something else happened.”
She swallowed hard. “I was moving in late at night into that new apartment in the old complex, you know? And I drag the last of my things up the stairs and boom! I run straight into him.”
“You’re kidding.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not one damn bit. He asked if I needed any help and I told him I didn’t need any help from a guy who was stalking me, and that started an argument.”
“What happened with the argument?”
Her eyes fell to her food. “He, uh…”
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end. “What did he do to you, Hannah?”
She shook her head. “Just—took something that wasn’t his. That’s all.”
I wanted to choke that boy on his own entrails. “I’m so sorry, Hannah.”
She shrugged. “My mistake.”
“Look at me.”
“What?”
“I said, look at me, Hannah.”
She slowly lifted her eyes to mine. “Yeah?”
I gripped her chin. “It is never the victim’s fault. Ever. You hear me?”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“Good.”
I stroked my thumb along her skin, reveling in how soft it was. I had to force myself to release her before I buried the instinct to pull her in for a kiss. Damn it, she had the most kissable pair of lips I’d ever seen on a girl. And I wanted nothing more than to see how they looked wrapped around my cock. I wanted to make this woman mine. I wanted to take her in every way and make sure she was safe for all eternity. She strummed something inside of me no one had ever touched in my life. Not a woman, not a girl, not a high school sweetheart… no one. And I never wanted it to end.
Until the doors of the bar burst open.
“Hannah! Are you in here!?”
She gasped. “Slash?”
I turned around. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Slash put her hand in my face as she charged up to Hannah.
“We have to go. We have to talk, now,” she said.
“What’s going on, Slash? What’s happening?”
I narrowed my eyes. “The fuck are you doing here? You’ve got no right—”
Slash held her finger up to me. “Dave knows you’re not in Hillridge Springs anymore.”
My stomach dropped to my toes as Hannah’s face paled.
“What?”
Slash shook her head. “The second I got word, I hopped on my bike. He