Part 2Bleeding On Your Blade

High cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and those familiar dark brown curls.

Except, her signature icy blue eyes were gone, replaced by deep brown irises. Contacts.

The scent of her—something expensive, floral, yet impossibly familiar—instantly wrapped around me, suffocating me.

She calmly pulled a sleek black credit card from her designer bag and handed it to the trembling man at the table.

"I apologize. My boy... my friend has mistaken you for someone else. There's thirty thousand dollars on this card. Consider it compensation for your emotional distress."

The man took the card, his terror instantly melting into a greedy, uncontrollable smirk. "Uh, hey, no problem at all."

Watching that exchange, I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached. How the hell did this heartless woman get so rich?

As soon as we sat down in an empty booth, my hands balled into fists. I wanted to hit her.

The only reason I hadn't grabbed a weapon was because the café manager had a strict 'no outside tools' policy.

My fist flew forward, cutting through the air, aimed straight for her face.

She didn't even flinch.

My knuckles connected with her left eye, instantly bruising the pale skin.

A few women at the adjacent tables screamed. The manager came running over, panicking.

Audrey simply covered her bruised eye with one hand, picked up her phone with the other, and started playing Santa Claus. She Venmoed the manager and the screaming customers a few thousand dollars each for the "disturbance," politely asking them to mind their own business.

That only made me angrier.

She pressed a bag of ice the manager brought her against her face, using her good eye to stare at me without blinking.

"Dean. It's been a long time."

"Fuck your 'long time,'" I spat.

Smack. I threw a left hook, catching her right eye this time.

She stumbled, caught herself on the table, and slowly sat back up. She covered her other eye, which was already swelling shut. And then, impossibly, she smiled. She actually cracked a joke.

"Well, at least it's symmetrical now. Better?"

The entire café was staring at us in stunned silence.

Is this guy insane?

How could he hit a woman that gorgeous?

And why the hell is she paying people off to let him do it?

But beneath my boiling rage, my heart gave a violent, involuntary lurch.

Because this was exactly how she used to be.

When I first met Audrey, she was a scrawny ten-year-old brat shadowing my every move around the docks. Calling me Dean, Dean, Dean, flashing that shameless, gap-toothed grin as she tried to help me haul nets that were twice her weight.

She did it all just so I would agree to let her mother learn how to gut fish at my stall.

Too bad her mother was a lost cause.

The woman didn't care about the lifeline her daughter had bled to secure for them. She was an outsider in our insular fishing town, a woman who drowned her isolation in cheap vodka, bought with the crumpled dollar bills Audrey scavenged for her.

"How is your mother?" The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Audrey's breath hitched. Her eyes instantly welled with tears.

Realizing I had stepped into territory I no longer had the right to tread, I hardened my voice and cut to the chase.

"You play dirty, Audrey."

"What? Can't find a man your own age? You had to come back and mess with my little brother?"

Her pupils dilated in sheer panic. The muscles in her jaw jumped, and her manicured fingertips began to tremble violently.

"Sam... is your brother?"

"Same father, same mother. My flesh and blood."

I leaned back against the leather booth, crossing my arms, staring her down.

"So, what is it? Is catfishing eighteen-year-old boys a fun little hobby for you? Or did you just think our family was easy prey, and you wanted to ruin the rest of us?"

She lunged across the table, desperately grabbing my hands. "Dean, it's not what you think—"

"Then what is it?" I sneered, ripping my hands away.

I didn't give her a chance to weave another lie. I snatched her phone off the table.

The screen lit up, demanding a passcode. I froze.

Her voice was entirely hoarse as she whispered, "The passcode hasn't changed."

The old numbers—the date we first kissed behind the harbor crates—flashed in my memory. I almost typed them in.

But then I looked up. I saw the desperate, hungry hope burning in Audrey's eyes. Her hands were shaking so hard she had to grip the edge of the table.

I slowly set the phone back down and slid it across the table toward her.

"Unlock it yourself. I'm going to sit right here and watch you block and delete his number."

The light in her eyes died instantly.

"You know what, forget it. I'm leaving," I said, sliding out of the booth. "Just stay the hell away from him. We're just poor, foul-smelling fishmongers. We stink of the docks. We don't deserve to breathe the same air as a VIP like you."