She has a right to hate me. I know that.

We were in love until I fucked us all up, but Kara also isn’t an innocent bystander in our downfall either. The one person I loved more than anything on this earth, the person I trusted implicitly, turned her back on me the minute things got hard.

Fury, rage, misplaced loyalty … I’d never felt those stings of emotions from that beautiful black-haired girl until it had been too late. The seed of doubt had been planted all those years ago, and it led to our ultimate crash and burn. I’ve never forgotten that explosion, the arson leaving burn marks on my heart that still to this day can’t be rubbed out.

No matter how many women I’ve fucked, and trust me there have been plenty, I could never get her out of my head. There has never been another female to own my heart as completely as Kara had, and now that I’m back within reaching distance of her, my body buzzes like a live wire.

“You motherfucker!”

Loud bangs from a fist pounding on the rickety ranch door have me smiling, because I know she’s seen the articles. Slowly I walk to the front door, hoping her anger turns up from a simmer to full-on boiling over.

Her fist keeps slamming against the door, and she almost punches me in the nose when I swing it open.

“Hi, gorgeous, long time no see.” The smarmy grin feels good on my lips.

Kara dons professional clothes, and it occurs to me that I don’t fully know what she does. Something in medicine, I gained that much from the file that the private investigator gave Patrick before I okayed his idea. Her long hair has been twirled up at the nape of her neck, and God do I want to suck on the soft skin there.

Her face however, is anything but graceful and gentle. A shade of deep red, her violet eyes sparkling, she looks like she could spit nails if she tried hard enough.

She storms into the house without an invitation, waving her finger in my face. “Spouting all of this bullshit about ‘protecting’ me last night … what a crock of shit! They showed up at my work, Dean! The place I do my residency … I was being chased down in the parking lot by human vultures with cameras. Now they know where I live? Who I am? You never could make anything easy for me. You’re a fucking disaster zone, and you bring the demolition wherever you go.”

Shit. My conscience grimaces for just a brief second as I realize that I didn’t quite prepare for how this was all going to go down. The two sides of me, the one that needed her salvation and the other that got sick pleasure from seeing her as hurt as I still was, war over each cell in my body.

“Come on in. Want a beer?” I motion for her to sit on the couch, knowing there was probably piss stains all over it.

Kara looks at me like I’ve lost an eye or just said that I prefer to fuck clowns, and then her gaze falls to the house. A quick inhale tells me that she forgot about this place, forgot where I came from. The filth of my past sits under our feet, and the quick flit of sympathy that passes through her irises doesn’t escape my notice.

“I’d better not take a drink from a stranger. First rule of college. But then, you wouldn’t know that.” Her backhanded comment has no effect on me.

I’d known from the start that college wasn’t going to be for me, but it was always her dream. The bitterness tinging her voice also comes from the fact that I didn’t visit her in the two years we were dating while she attended. I guess that was still going to be a point of contention between the two of us.

“Suit yourself.” I shrug and walk to the kitchen, grabbing an IPA from the fridge. Who knows how old these are, since no one has occupied the house in about eight months.

Cracking it open, and walking back to the living room, I take a long gulp and sit, eyeing her. “We should talk.”

“Psh, literally the last thing I want to do in the world is talk to you. Why are you back here, Dean?”

Should I be up front? Lie? My options are few and I need her to listen, to really grasp everything that I’m saying.

With Kara, you should always be direct. If not, I’d land myself in the choppy water that had led directly to us drowning in the sea of our breakup.

“Have you seen the news stories about me lately?” I tick my finger against the beer bottle, nervous to know if she thinks the rumors are true or not.

She crosses her arms over her chest, and her tits smash together in that little librarian sweater she has on. “You mean the ones claiming that you’re dating me? The ambush of pictures that those photographers got at the wedding? Because yeah, I just had to sneak out of my workplace and drive an extra forty minutes out of the way to make sure no one followed me here.”

Welcome to my life, Kara. “Not those … although we’ll get to that. The ones about me and Hannah Lockwood, have you seen those?”

Her nose turns up and she won’t look at me. “Believe it or not, I try to stay as far away from anything concerning you as possible. I don’t want to know you, Dean. And I was doing a fine job of that.”

That one stings. My ego and my heart take the punch, because as one of the most famous musicians in the world, I’m used to people knowing my business before even I do. The fact that the one girl I’d hoped was stalking me behind a computer screen all these years actually wasn’t … it’s kind of humbling.

“Well, if you did, you’d know that there is a woman accusing me of rape.”

Just saying the word sends chills down my spine, the revolting, nauseous sensation taking over my throat. The first time Patrick had come to me, telling me that Hannah Lockwood was coming out with these allegations, I actually puked. Rape? To ever have a word so disgusting associated with me … I still couldn’t even fathom it.

Kara’s eyes almost bug out of her head. But by the furious, sad expression in them, I can tell that she knows outright that it’s not true.

Except, her eyes shutter closed, cutting off any emotion from me. “I haven’t known you for seven years. I don’t know who you are anymore, Dean.”