Chapter 4

The disdain on his face reminded me of why I had let him in, in the first place.

It was because of another man. My first love, a boy from my neighborhood who promised forever and delivered nothing. We were at a party, a bad one in a rough part of town. A fight broke out. He ran. He left me there, surrounded by angry, drunk men.

I thought I was done for.

Then, out of nowhere, Liam Sterling appeared. He had been looking for me, relentlessly tracking me down after I had stood him up for a date.

He didn't hesitate. He walked straight into the middle of the chaos and pulled me behind him.

"Touch her and you're dead," he told the biggest guy in the room.

They laughed. A bottle was thrown. Liam shoved me out of the way and took the hit himself. It shattered across his back. He didn't even flinch. He just fought. He wasn't a polished brawler, but he was fierce, protecting me with a desperation I had never seen.

He got a broken arm and three cracked ribs for his trouble.

Later, sitting in the emergency room, I was crying. Not from fear, but from shame. I was about to call my stepmother, to beg her for help, to humiliate myself.

Liam, his arm in a fresh cast, reached over with his good hand and took the phone from me.

"Don't," he said, his voice soft. "You don't have to beg them for anything. Ever again."

He looked me straight in the eye, his own face bruised and swollen.

"Let me take care of you, Chloe," he had said, his voice deadly serious. "Be with me. I'll never run."

And he didn't. For ten years, he was my protector, my partner. He stood up to my father, he shielded me from my stepmother, he gave me a family when his own mother, the formidable Mrs. Sterling, finally, grudgingly, accepted me. We built a life.

That was the man I fell in love with. The man who would take a bottle for me.

The man standing in front of me now was not that man.

The memory faded, leaving only the harsh reality of the present.

Liam's eyes flickered from my face to the cigarette, then back again. His anger was palpable.

"Put it out," he commanded.

I took another slow drag, deliberately disobeying.

He strode forward, snatched the cigarette from my fingers, and threw it to the ground, crushing it with his expensive shoe. The same way I had crushed mine ten years ago.

"I said, put it out," he repeated, his voice low and dangerous. "Sarah's allergic to smoke."

Of course. It was all about Sarah. Always about Sarah.

The man who took a broken bottle for me wouldn't even let me have a cigarette because it might offend the woman who had broken us.

The last flicker of warmth I held for our past died right there on the pavement, extinguished just like the cigarette.