Cam stared at the man sprawled out on her floor.

“Because you need me?” she repeated, her voice laced with disbelief.

Alex didn’t respond.

Her heart began to pound once again. Because she realized he had passed out.

Against her better judgment, Cam pressed closer to him. She touched his neck with her free hand, checking for a pulse and exhaling a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding when she finally located it.

She glanced at his leg, where the hilt of the knife protruded from his jeans. She knew she had to pull it out, had to find a way to staunch the bleeding. Part of her was horrified with what she’d done. What if she’d somehow severed an important artery? What if he was bleeding internally or something, all because of her attack?

Cam shook her head. Now was not the time to mull those things over.

She knew what she needed to do right then.

Get him medical help.

And then turn him over to her fellow officers at AFPD.

But the thought made her chest tighten, her throat constrict.

She shook her head, trying to focus on the things that mattered.

Alex might have been her first love, but she knew exactly what he had become. He’d started on his path of destruction long before he abandoned her. Even though she’d pleaded with him back then, begged him to change course, he’d refused. She’d threatened to leave him, but ultimately he was the one who had walked away from her. He’d chosen the streets—his gang—over her. His actions hadn’t just broken her heart; it was as if he’d ripped the organ from her chest and deliberately stomped it into the ground, grinding his heel into every chamber, ensuring every tender feeling she’d ever had for him was completely obliterated.

It had taken Cam years to recover, not just from the heartbreak but also from the simmering anger she’d felt toward him. She knew he’d thrown away their relationship, but he’d also thrown away his chance for a normal life, too.

That anger was what fueled her during those first post-break-up years, propelling her to stay in school and graduate with honors, to be the first person in her family to go to college, to get her degree in criminal justice and join the first police force that would hire her, to move to Aspen Falls as a cop and work her ass off to make detective.

She was determined to make something of herself, dammit. To prove to herself—to everyone—that she was better than the streets she’d come from. That she was going to beat the odds, that she wouldn’t become a statistic. No unplanned pregnancies for her. No succumbing to drugs or alcohol. No letting herself get pimped out on the streets like so many of the girls she’d gone to school with. And absolutely no making excuses for a man whose existence relied on stealing from and hurting other people.

There had been days early in her career as a young, naïve cop when she’d fantasized about returning to her old neighborhood in uniform. Of looking for a certain someone and hunting him down for the crimes she was sure he was committing.

She could imagine the satisfying click of handcuffs around those wrists, the power that would surge through her as she shoved him into the back of her cruiser.

It wouldn’t happen, of course. She knew she didn’t have it in her to go back to her old neighborhood and patrol there.

But she could dream about it.

About putting Alex Castillo behind bars.

Locking him up, throwing away the key, and walking away from him the way he’d walked away from her.

A soft moan grabbed Cam’s attention, forcing her back to the present moment. Her gaze flew to Alex’s closed eyes.

He groaned again, his brow furrowing.

“Alex?” Her voice came out softer than she expected. Softer than she’d wanted.

His eyes fluttered open. They were a rich brown, the color of polished oak.

Exactly what she remembered.

“I’m okay,” he whispered.

He didn’t sound okay. And judging from the pained expression on his face, his cracked lip, and the knife she’d plunged into his leg, he didn’t look very okay, either.

“You are not okay,” she said flatly. “You need a doctor.”

It was beginning to sound like some sort of mantra, even to her own ears.

“No doctor,” he said. “I just…” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I just need a place to stay for tonight. Just tonight.”

She almost laughed. “You want to stay here?”

His nod was almost imperceptible.

A million retorts were on the tip of her tongue, but there was a single word she kept coming back to.

Why?

Why was Alex Castillo at her house after all these years?

And not just at her house but breaking in, obviously injured, definitely desperate.

It made no sense.

They’d had zero contact for twelve years.

She didn’t think he had any idea what she did for a living.

If he had, he probably wouldn’t have shown up on her doorstep.

Scratch that: at her back door, picking her lock.

Come to think of it, how the hell had he found her? The only person she was in contact with from the old neighborhood was Miguel, and that was because he was her brother.

But he’d left, too. Gotten out years ago, just like she had.

They’d beaten the odds together. Different paths, but the end result was the same.

They weren’t destined to become a statistic.

“Please.”

She stilled. The single word was poignant, a plaintive cry for help.

“Why should I help you?”

He shifted, trying to push himself into more of a sitting position. Cam shrank back, immediately on the defensive.

He stared at her with dark, haunted eyes. “You shouldn’t,” he said bluntly.

He spoke the truth.

She knew she shouldn’t help him.

“But just because you shouldn’t doesn’t mean I don’t want you to.” A slow, pained smile appeared, and her breath caught in her throat.

It was the same smile that had disarmed her the first time she’d laid eyes on him. She was fifteen again, sitting in the back booth at their local McDonald’s, sucking down cupfuls of Coke because it only cost a dollar and would go further in filling an empty stomach than a bag of fries, and would keep her caffeinated enough to plow through the homework she had from all of her advanced classes.

The same smile that melted her heart after their first fight, when he’d skipped studying with her to troll the streets with Rico and Sergio.

The same smile he’d given her under the stars along the banks of Minnehaha Creek, his body keeping her warm, shielding her nakedness as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms.

The same smile he’d offered the day before he’d broken up with her…after he’d told her he loved her.

“One night,” he said. “Just let me stay one night. And then I’ll go. I promise.”

The word she was supposed to say was poised on her lips.

Cam’s lips rounded…

And no sound came out.

Frustration welled inside of her.

She was behaving like a smitten teenager. Soft words and a tender smile and heavy-lidded eyes shouldn’t have the ability to disarm her. She was a seasoned cop, a hardened detective, for crying out loud.

And yet there she was, her stomach twisting in knots, her heart galloping like a runaway horse.

There was no good reason to say yes.

And a million reasons to say no.

She blew out a breath and Alex watched her carefully, his expression as neutral as he could make it despite the pain he must be feeling.

“I’m only letting you stay so I can keep an eye on you,” she finally said.

His shoulders sagged, his relief almost palpable.

It was a good compromise, she told herself. A good reason.

She shook her head in disgust. Oh, who was she kidding?

The cop in her would have handed Alex his ass on a silver platter. Called the station and had a cruiser out there in five minutes flat to take him in for medical treatment and then off to jail. Even if he’d cleaned up his act, walked away from his checkered past, he would still face charges of breaking and entering…if she filed them.

It was a big if.

The woman in her, the cop, knew it was the only path forward.

But the girl in her?

The girl in her wanted nothing more than to bask in his smile one more time, to lean in close and see if the connection between them was still there.

Cam sucked in another breath.

Yeah.

It was a good compromise.

For now.