“Why are you so mad?”

Devlin’s stupid question pissed me off even more.

“I walk in and find you and your ex-wife talking about giving it another try. And you ask me why I’m mad?” I shrieked. The pitch hurt my own ears.

“She was talking about reconciling. I was not!”

“I didn’t hear a resounding ‘oh, hell no’ from your mouth,” I shot back.

He sank weakly into the plaid wingback chair and rubbed his hands over his face. “Scarlett, I’m a little overwhelmed right now.”

“Do you want to get back together with Johanna?” I asked calmly, quietly.

“No! I don’t. That’s not an option or a possibility or something I’d ever want to revisit no matter what.”

I thrust my arms into the air. “Then why in the everlasting hell didn’t you say so?”

He frowned, confused. “I was trying to explain to her—”

I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “Devlin, I understand that seeing her was a shock, and I get that you’re required to be professionally courteous in most situations, but that woman lied, cheated, and deceived you and then decided you should take her back.”

“Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “You’re not mad because she showed up here—uninvited, I might add?”

I looked up at the ceiling and prayed for patience. The etiquette was bred bone deep in this man. “No! Who could blame her? You’re a fucking catch, and she’s only just now realizing what a stupid disaster she’s made of her life because she got greedy! I’m mad because you felt like you needed to break the news to her so gently she still thought she had a chance!”

“Scarlett, not everyone is like you, and not every place is like Bootleg. There are rules to social interactions.”

“She hurt you, humiliated you, and put your career at risk. And you can’t even get a good ‘fuck you’ past your lips. I can’t send you back into the world being so vulnerable, Dev. I can’t do it!”

“What are you ranting about?”

He looked shell-shocked, like the survivor of a traumatic accident. That’s probably the way the abrupt end to his marriage had felt. Traumatic. And she’d come waltzing back in like the entitled asshole she was.

I crossed to him and knelt down in front of him. “You came here cracked, if not broken. And you need to take care not to put yourself in that position again. You opened the door to JoSkanka, and she walked right in, figuratively and literally. You can’t let her think she has a chance. You have to forget about being polite all the time and focus on being powerful.”

“I thought you were mad because I was talking to my ex-wife,” he said.

“Crap on a cracker! Catch up, McCallister. You’ve spent your whole life playing by the rules, and look where it got you. I want you to take charge just like you do in the bedroom.”

He looked around us as if worrying about an audience.

“See? That right there!” I pointed an accusing finger at him and rose to pace off my mad. “You’re concerned about how it looks, how it sounds. Why not just speak the truth and move on?”

“It’s not the way things are—”

“Done. I know. I know. Okay. But did it ever occur to you that things are done wrong?” I returned to him and put my hands on his knees. He looked dazed. “I’m not trying to be mean here, Dev. I don’t want you to ever be in the position that Johanna put you in again. And I sure as shit don’t want someone feeling like they deserve a second chance with you.”

“You’re acting like I’m some helpless child,” Devlin said, fully irritated.

Had he seen what she had when he came here? A man bent to breaking. A man alone and adrift. She wasn’t sending him back to the family that abandoned him and the woman who took advantage of him without improving his arsenal.

“I don’t think you’re a helpless child. I think you’re only willing to take what you want when you’re naked.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” Devlin announced, surging to his feet.

“I’m being ridiculous? I’m being ridiculous?” I jumped up, pushing away from him.

He stalked toward me. “Let’s get a few things straight,” he said quietly. I felt my pulse kick. He wasn’t the shell-shocked ex-husband now. He was a predator, a hunter. I loved him like this, all graceful power and single-minded desire.

The air charged between us with the change. It wasn’t just anger now. It was anger warring with want. And I could tell he liked it. This is what I wanted for him. But I needed to set him free. He needed to be able to stand on his own two feet without me.

“Why are you acting like I’m going to go back and never see you again?” Devlin demanded.

I didn’t want to say it. It felt wrong to say it.

“What are you keeping from me?”

Too many damn things. Until I knew I could prove that my father had nothing to do with Callie’s disappearance, there could be no Devlin and me.

“We aren’t going to work together,” I said quietly. My own words cut at me. He didn’t pull back, and I thanked God for tiny miracles.

“Scarlett, you and I work better together than anyone.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know how to tell him without telling him. “I’m a liability to you. I don’t operate the way you’d need me to.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Dev, when we were at that party, people were nice to my face. But behind my back? They were gleefully discussing your mid-life crisis spent slumming it with a bumpkin. I won’t help your career. The one you’ve been working toward your entire life. That’s one thing that gazelle you were married to got right.”

“Fuck them,” he snapped. “And fuck her. This is our life we’re talking about here, Scarlett.”

“But we haven’t been talking about it. Really talking about it. We have sex. We hang out. But we both know you’re not staying here. And I don’t fit there. I’m not what you need.”

“You’re what I want.” The vehemence in his voice made me feel twin pangs of hurt and a desire so fierce I didn’t think I could stand it.

I wanted to be right for him. I wanted to have his back and have him on his back. But until I knew how that sweater ended up in my father’s house, I couldn’t ask him to be mine. I couldn’t demand that kind of commitment. Not when it would mean giving up everything he’d worked his whole life for.

“I think deep down you know it,” I said, pretending his last remark didn’t mean anything to me. “Your parents know it. Your stupid, bitchy acquaintances know it. Hell, even Johanna knows it. Why do you think she was so confident you’d let her come back? They told her about me. I’ll hurt your career, and you’ll resent me. Or I’ll resent you for taking me away from my home and trying to turn me into someone I’m not.”

He’d stopped arguing, and my heart broke just a little bit.

“We don’t need to talk about this now,” he said finally. I couldn’t tell if he was resigned to the truth or regrouping.

I was relieved. “Look, the only thing we need to be discussing right this second is that when you go back to your old life, you aren’t the same polite doormat. You fought for me. You confronted my brothers for me. I expect you to do the same for yourself.”

“You want me to take what I want?” he said, low and rough.

I nodded, my eyes going wide at the change in him.

He kicked the ottoman out of his way, a show of temper I hadn’t seen from him before. Devlin exercised control in all things. And sometimes that control got in the way of real life. The only time he ever let himself off the leash was in bed with me.

“Bottling things up isn’t gonna help, Dev,” I reminded him. “You gotta let it out. You went mean on my brothers, which they deserved. Why can’t you do the same for yourself?”

“I have responsibilities,” he insisted.

“Fuck your responsibilities! Are they really your responsibilities if someone else dumps them on you?” And didn’t I know that first hand?

“You know what I want, Scarlett?” His voice was a rasp of gravel.

I nodded. I knew exactly what he needed. Release.

I reached for the waistband of his shorts.

“Get on your knees,” he hissed.