Cam pulled away.

She didn’t want to.

Her heart was telling her one thing, her head another.

She listened to her head.

Eventually.

But not before she’d gotten a thorough taste of Alex’s lips. The heat, the tenderness, the desire—all of it had crashed over her like a tidal wave, threatening to drown her in a sea of emotions.

Standing in front of him now, her fingers touching her bruised, kiss-swollen lips, she stared at him, her eyes wide with shock.

Alex didn’t look apologetic. His dark eyes hooded, his jaw locked, he radiated an intensity that threatened to set her aflame.

She drew in a steadying breath. She needed to focus, dammit.

Focus on what she’d found out at Nate’s.

And focus on what the hell she was supposed to do next.

Her anger had gotten the best of her. She knew she had every right to be upset. The man standing in front of her was not who she thought he was. She’d had a certain impression of him based on her own experiences years ago along with the scant information he’d chosen to share with her now. She’d made educated leaps and assumptions along the way to try to put those pieces together.

With what she’d learned at Nate’s, the news had completely upended everything she thought she knew, and she found herself not only questioning just who the hell Alex Castillo was but also questioning her very skills as a detective.

How had she missed the clues? Why had she chosen to make assumptions? Why had she not dug immediately into the things he’d told her?

And the one thing that ate at her more than anything: why had she completely lost it at Nate’s?

The memory of what had happened in his house not a half hour before was already a blur in her mind. She had simply shut down, paralyzed by shock.

This was not the Camila Perez she knew. She was stronger than that, more focused, braver, sharper. The Cam she knew would have swallowed her surprise and buckled down, spitting out questions faster than Nate could answer them. And when the answers stopped coming, she would have whipped out her phone and started digging herself.

That was who she was.

Instead, she’d turned into a statue, frozen by the news, incapable of speaking, incapable of listening, incapable of doing. In fact, the only thing she’d managed to do was walk out of Nate and Sally’s bungalow and drive herself home.

And even that she couldn’t remember with any sort of clarity. She must have driven on autopilot.

Alex shifted on his feet, and she refocused on the man in front of her.

Cam felt like a deflated balloon. She wondered if Alex’s kiss had somehow sucked the anger right out of her.

It was gone.

All she felt was…defeated.

She didn’t know what to do, how to feel.

She stared at him. “You can go.” Her voice sounded as flat as she felt inside. “I won’t try to stop you.”

Surprise flickered in his eyes.

“I’m serious.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I’m exhausted. By all of this. Just…just go.”

“Just like that?” Alex’s tone was incredulous.

She nodded and stepped away from the door. She couldn’t have made it more obvious what she was doing if she’d yanked it open and waved him out with a flourish.

But he made no move to leave. Instead, he shoved his hands in his sweats pockets and just stood there.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “I just said you can go. I’m not stopping you.”

He cocked his head. “Who are you going to call when I leave?”

She frowned. “What? No one.”

“No one?” he repeated. “You have a cop who’s wanted for questioning. Someone who you remember as having a criminal record. I’m supposed to believe that you’re just gonna let me walk out the door and ride off into the sunset? That you’re going to do nothing?”

He had every right to be skeptical. Not less than five minutes earlier, she’d been singing a completely different tune.

But that was then.

This was now.

A lot could change in the course of five minutes. Big things, of course—a car accident that leaves someone paralyzed, an abduction that steals a child away from their family, a fire that burns down a home, a random act of gun violence that ends someone’s life—but little things could change, too.

And for Cam, it was simple. Her motivation, her energy, had simply dissipated.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, you should believe me.”

Alex shifted again, but he made no move toward the door.

They stood there, a face-off of sorts.

He sighed. “I’ll try to answer some of your questions,” he finally said.

She blinked. “What?”

He raked a hand through his hair. “I owe you that much.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

His jaw tightened, and she could see he was struggling with something.

“I owe you more than you’ll ever know.”