“I’m so sorry, Brent. Please don’t mind him.” I kept moving, my eye on the entrance door ahead.

Brent quirked an eyebrow but thankfully didn’t say whatever was on his mind at that moment.

Vicious chased us, his long strides catching up with our hurried steps with ease. “I don’t care who this fucker is. We need to talk.”

“Please turn around and walk away before this evening ends with a restraining order. I’d hate for it to ruin your glowing finance career.” My face was dead serious and my voice so cold I wasn’t even sure it belonged to me.

We were power-walking on the sidewalk as he jogged beside us on the street, his hands tucked into his wet coat. I refused to glance at him because I knew I’d surely cave if I did.

“It’s important,” he said, ignoring my threat.

“Not as important as my career.”

“I’m not leaving this spot until you talk to me.”

Brent was looking all kinds of uncomfortable beside me, his expression begging for cues about how to respond: Did I need help? Did I want some time alone with this guy?

Sleet slashed down angrily and blew icy needles in my face, each like a sharp slap.

I narrowed my eyes at Vicious. “Stand here if you like. Turn into an icicle. I’m going inside to work.”

I let the doors swallow Brent and me and even managed not to look back once as I tramped into the gallery. Over the next two hours, I downed three glasses of champagne and discussed art with avid collectors. But not even my new job and Brent’s animated nods at everything I’d said made me feel better. My mind kept drifting back to Vicious and the fact that he had returned to New York.

The evening dragged. I was so angry—furious, to be exact—that he’d managed to ruin this for me too, that I spent the majority of my time plotting how to strangle him in my head as I patiently mingled with strangers and chatted about the merits of the paintings up for sale.

When it was time to leave, I called a taxi to pick up Brent and me. Twenty minutes later, the driver texted to inform us he was waiting outside. We waltzed through the doors—I was able to see the yellow car from the across the street—when a big shadow appeared in my peripheral vision.

Vicious.

He was soaked, wet to the bone, standing in the blowing sleet, glaring at the entrance door to the gallery, rubbing his palm over his ice-covered hair.

I sucked in a breath and wheezed. Had he been standing there the whole time? His clothes were heavy with water and his cheeks no longer tinged pink from the cold. He looked blue. Shivering. Freezing.

“Go.” I nodded to Brent, pointing at the cab. “I’ll catch another one. I have to deal with this.”

“You sure?” Brent pulled up his coat hood to shield his head from the sleet. He didn’t appear too eager to discuss my love life with me in this weather. Rightly so.

I used my hand as a visor to shade the sleet from my eyes and nodded. “Absolutely. He’s just a high school…friend.” The lie felt sour in my mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Brent gave Vicious another curious look. He must’ve looked like a complete loon to him. After a brief beat, Brent disappeared inside the taxi and it drove away, red lights dancing as they chased the night traffic of New York.

The sleet was stabbing at our faces as we stood in front of each other, but I didn’t say a word. He looked at me helplessly, a lost puppy, and I wondered how I hadn’t seen it earlier. The complete and utter nakedness of his feelings. The pain. The ache. All the things that made Vicious vicious.

“You waited here the whole time?” I swallowed a sob. Because it really was sad, underneath all the anger I had for him.

He shrugged, but didn’t answer. He still looked a little perplexed. Like he, himself, couldn’t believe he’d done what he just did. Waiting for me in a winter storm.

“I don’t want to help you with Jo,” I said. I didn’t, but I still wanted him to get justice. I tried to convince myself that Vicious had other options to explore. His ex-psychiatrist…Eli Cole…

“Not what I’m here for. She’s inherited every single penny my dad had.” His voice was as detached as always. I barely had time to process this new information before he dropped another bomb. “Don’t quit.”

“I already have. Sent my resignation letter in the mail. Thought it’d be better this way, seeing as Dean is back and everything.” I watched as he squeezed his eyes shut, like this was another blow he wasn’t expecting.

I knew Dean was back in town because he’d left me a Post-It note on my door, informing me that my “steady dick” was out of town, but that I could still go up to the penthouse and ride another rodeo if I was feeling lonely.

Disgusting prick.

“Why?” Vicious asked.

“Why?” I almost laughed. The real question was why I’d agreed to work for him in the first place. “Because you have issues, Vicious. You treat everyone around you like crap. You had sex with me in my ex-boyfriend’s bed and then you take Georgia up to your hotel room, the night before your father’s funeral.”

You know, in a nutshell.

“I don’t give a shit about my father. You know what he let Jo do to me.”

“So you rushed home for the money? You disappeared without a word to me. I thought you were hurt or sick when you didn’t show up on Christmas Eve for dinner and didn’t answer my calls.”

“I was out of it when I got the call about my Dad,” he seethed, barely moving his mouth as he took a step closer. Our chests brushed, shivering against one another. “You were right, okay? I do have insomnia, and I sometimes lose a grip on things. Then my phone was dead, and I forgot my charger. Happens to people all the time. And Dean’s place? Yeah, it was a shitty thing to do, but was it really the end of the world? Did you fucking die?” He crooked one eyebrow.

I almost laughed. He looked so dead serious. Like I was the one making a big deal out of nothing.

“And about Georgia…” he continued. “You and I aren’t exclusive. We established that long before I touched you.”

My heart sank. Pain filled the space between us like a black hole we were both scared to fall into. “You did. And now I’m telling you that I don’t do non-exclusive relationships. I’m asking you to accept that, respect that, and leave me alone. You made it perfectly clear that I’m not your girlfriend. And that’s fine. But I don’t think we should keep in touch. We’re bad for each other. Always have been.”

I took a deep breath, thinking about my eighteen-year-old self. Alone and scared, staring at the world through wide-eyes and erratic heartbeats, with no one to look after me but myself. The bus rides from city to city. The “I’m-okay” letters to my family. The hurt, the shame, the pain. All Vicious’s fault.

“You know…” I smiled sadly, ignoring the sleet that threatened to freeze us to the sidewalk. “I used to think of you as a villain, but you’re not my villain. You’re your own villain. To me, you were a lesson. An important brutal lesson, nothing more and nothing less.”

I lied, because I wanted him gone. Because I wasn’t a good person at that particular moment. Visions of him clawing Georgia’s dress, the same one she wore ten years ago, assaulted my imagination. After he touched me. After he marked me.

“I’ve already secured myself a job at the gallery. This time, you don’t get to make the rules. This time, Vicious, you lose.”

That night, I did something I hadn’t done since the day I moved out of my parents’ house. I pulled out The Shoebox. Everyone had that shoebox with their little sentimental secrets. Mine was different, because it wasn’t full of things I wanted to remember. It was full of things I wanted to forget. Still, I’d carried it everywhere with me. Even to New York. I tried to convince myself that I’d taken it with me because I didn’t want anyone to find out about it, but the truth was, it was hard to let go of what we were.

Of what we could have been.

In a small and tattered Chucks shoebox lay the reason why I fell in love with Baron “Vicious” Spencer in high school.

It was a tradition at All Saints High to have an anonymous pen pal from the same school and same grade for the whole year. Participation was mandatory and the rules were simple:

No foul language.

No dropping hints about who you were.

And absolutely no switching pen pals.

Principal Followhill, Jaime’s mother, thought it would inspire students to be nicer to one another because you could never be sure that you weren’t actually talking to the pen pal you’d established a written friendship with. It was surprising how such an old-school, dated game stuck. People didn’t actually mind writing to their pen pals, it appeared. I saw the looks on people’s faces when the designated teacher for that day slid envelopes into their lockers, wishing they could pounce on said teacher and ask them who the heck their pen pal was. It was useless, though.

Principal Followhill was the only one who knew who was writing to whom.

But the students never did. The letters were always printed, not handwritten, and we were supposed to sign with fake names to keep our identities hidden.