Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(12)

That first crude image snapped with a cheap old camera soon developed into my passion. A representation of who I wanted to be.

Creative and bold. Positive and accepting. Sincere and honest and brave. Without skepticism or the deep-rooted chip now firmly embedded in my shoulder.

I’d captured my last at age twenty.

I’d thought they’d been an expression of what I found burning from within.

They were nothing but a lie.

After I’d come here? I’d convinced myself I wasn’t the crying type. Tears were evidence of weakness. So I’d dried them and put on this bravado I found wasn’t entirely false, tapped into this part of myself that I’d never known was there.

It was hard and brash and impenetrable.

Unbreakable.

Not like the unassuming girl who’d snapped these pictures.

Those tears I’d long denied pricked at my eyes, and a lump grew in my throat. It was a welling of emotion that my first response was to swallow down. But just for tonight, after the commotion of rioting emotions that had been stirred in me, I needed to set them free.

Just for a little while, I let myself remember who I once wanted to be.




I awoke resolved.

Last night had been a steppingstone instead of a stumbling block. A reminder I had to be careful or everything I’d worked so hard for would all have been in vain.

It was bad enough they’d tracked me down, asking questions about Cameron. Threatening the asylum I’d found in my new home. I refused to allow them to rip me from it.

I brushed my teeth and changed into my running clothes.

I picked the loudest, angriest playlist I could find and began to shimmy the same headphones that had transported me to the dark haven of his voice into my ears as I swung open my front door.

And I almost fell flat on my face.

It might have been better if I had. Maybe then it would have concealed the horrified expression that took me over in the two heart-wrenching seconds it took before the shock wore off.

I composed myself and plastered the sneer I’d mastered back onto my mouth.

Stumbling out the other apartment door were the two girls who’d been hanging all over Lyrik last night. Clothes wrinkled. Makeup smeared. Hair sexed up as they embarked on a walk of shame they obviously felt nothing of.

They actually looked rather proud.

And satisfied.

Jealousy flared.

That was the part I didn’t want him to catch as his gaze ensnared mine.

But it was there, as obvious as the pang I felt in my chest as he stretched his arms above his head and held on to the top of the doorframe, all of his attention suddenly locked on me.

Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

It chanted like a plea as my eyes did exactly what I didn’t want them to do. They swept down his bare chest. Like they were drawn and starving and without an ounce of the willpower I’d bolstered myself with just before I’d stepped out the door.

For a fleeting second, I gave in. Surrendered. Allowed myself the bittersweet treat of ogling the flesh covered in ink, the designs so intricate and intertwined I couldn’t tell where one image ended and another began, although the really foolish part of me was dying to take the time to decipher them.

The jeans he wore hung so low I was certain there was no chance he had anything on underneath.

But it was more. More than that beautiful body. More than that face. It was as if he compelled me to look closer. Deeper. My self-preservation warned I wasn’t going to like what I would see.

I ended my stare with a disoriented jerk of my eyes. Of course they had zero control and jumped right back to his too-perfect face, this guy so unbearably gorgeous I felt the magnitude of it shake me like an earthquake.

But this time there was none of that mischief glinting in his eyes.

They swam with pure, oppressive heat, a danger and lust that came with an undercurrent of desperation.

My skin prickled, and I shifted on my bright pink Nike’s. I felt naked. Exposed. It didn’t help I was standing there in nothing but a sports bra, my breasts squeezed and amplified where they swelled over the top, my belly bare and shorts short.

But it was my face that brought on the wave of insecurity. I didn’t have on a lick of the makeup I usually wore and my red hair was wound in a haphazard pile on the top of my head.

Slowly, the smirk reemerged on his mouth, but where it normally bordered on aloof, this morning it trembled with an edge of hostility never before present. “Well, look it there, if it isn’t my favorite bartender. Aren’t you a clever, clever girl?”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

Dark eyes narrowed. “I could ask the same question.”

“I live here.”

“So do I,” he shot back.

“God, are you kidding me?” Shaking my head, I rubbed my temples between my thumb and middle finger as I took a single step out onto the landing.

A dry chuckle rolled from him. “It seems we run in the same circles. Charlie owns this building, remember? Considering my best friend and his niece went and got hitched, that practically makes us family.”

I wanted to fume. Charlie was my family.

“And you just had to pick this apartment?” I accused.

Shrugging, he leaned against the doorframe, for the briefest flash of a second distracting me from my anger when he crossed those strong arms over that strong chest.