Climbing gradually to his feet, neck and cheeks flaming hot, he grasped the picture and stared at a spot past her shoulder. “We were kids.” He said it with a tinge of self-mockery, a smile of contempt. “We were kids, we didn’t have a clue about anything.”
She craned her neck to fully face him, her smile fading. “But you’re a man now. And I found it under your pillow.”
He set his jaw, disgusted with himself. “Here.” He nudged her arm with the photo. “You want it back?”
She recoiled when he attempted to give it to her, folding her arms back. “No.”
“Take it,” he insisted.
“I don’t want it.”
“Take it.”
“I said I don’t want it!”
He could smell her, a scent unique to her, of soap and skin and flowers. Zach inhaled her like a caveman, an animal, desperate to cling to her aroma and even more desperate to find where it came from.
Swallowing with difficulty, he lowered the picture, and with a little sound of despair, Paige wrapped her arms around herself. “But maybe you don’t want it anymore,” she said in a tattered whisper.
Her chest labored. Her breasts rose and fell, rose and fell, stretching the white fabric of her blouse, begging Zach’s starving eyes and aching hands and every living, breathing part of him to notice those perfect, perky, thrusting globes.
Wrenching his eyes away, he set the picture aside and moved to the window. He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t talk. He wanted to kiss her for hours and hours and hours until they ended up naked. Until they ended up spent.
But no. It had taken weeks— no, months— of tenderly pillaging Paige’s sensual mouth to graduate to fondling her breasts. And he’d done that slowly, too. First just grazing the firm tips with his knuckles, smiling when she blushed, chuckling when she squeaked “we shouldn’t” while eagerly pushing those nipples out for him to do more.
“Did we have sex, Zach?”
Oh Christ. He was burning under his skin. He was dying here. And she mentioned—
“Were you my boyfriend?”
Had he been? What had he been? Zach gazed out the window, automatically absorbing the moonlit landscape as he wondered. What to tell her. How to define the way they’d wanted, needed, cared for each other, all the reckless things they did just to steal a few hours to be alone.
“But if you were my boyfriend,” she continued, “you would have looked for me. You would have . . . found me.”
He planted a hand on the wall next to the window, his face hardening at the painful reminder. “I did. Find you. Ask your mom, Paige.”
“My mother isn’t here anymore.”
The fragile note in her words made him curse himself in silence. He plunged a hand into his jeans and fisted it inside his pocket. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
Silence fell. He could feel her frustration rising like a wind slapping around the room. “Please tell me something.”
Zach pinched the bridge of his nose, slowly emptying his lungs. What could he tell her? Why in Christ’s last day did you have to tell someone she’d loved you even though the world had warned her not to?
Paige felt robbed of her memories but he felt robbed of . . . damn it, of her.
He could tell her that he was tortured every day of his life, wondering if he should’ve fought harder for her. He could tell her the man whose blood ran in his veins was in prison for killing an entire family while driving intoxicated, and he could also tell her that the police force had rarely seen a man so driven to be a cop, so damned desperate to atone for what one of his had done. When he looked at Paige Avery again, he’d wanted nothing more than to have nailed her father’s killer to the ground so that he would never again be told— would never again believe— that a Rivers wasn’t fit for an Avery.
Then again. He could just tell her she’d been his girl. She’d think they’d gone for pizzas and held hands in the cafeteria and smooched at the movies.
None of which they’d done. Because he was Zach Fucking Rivers.
“Maybe I should go.” Within minutes, he heard, rather than saw, that she was wearing her shoes. Leadenly, almost grudgingly, she crossed the room. There was anger in her voice, even though it quavered. “I thought I could find some answers in Phoenix but I see I’m not getting any from you. And you’ve already gone above and beyond the call of duty.”
The front door clicked shut and Zach stiffened, ready to bolt after her, when through the farthest corner of his eye, he caught sight of the car outside. The headlights flared on, illuminating the vacant street. He saw red.
“Ahh, fuck.” He charged for his shirt, his guns, and stormed after her. “Paige!”