The knock comes at nine-thirty.

I know it's him before I open the door. Some instinct that's been dormant for five years suddenly roaring to life, recognizing the predator on my doorstep.

I consider not answering. Pretending I'm asleep. That Lily and I are already in bed, safe behind locked doors and the fiction I've built around our lives.

But Cade Mercer isn't the type to be ignored.

He'll just knock again. Louder. Until my neighbors start asking questions I can't answer.

I check Lily's room first. She's finally sleeping, fever broken, her little body curled around the stuffed elephant she's had since she was a baby. Dark curls spread across her pillow like a storm cloud.

She looks so much like him it physically hurts.

I close her door with a soft click and steel myself for whatever fresh hell is about to unfold.

When I open the front door, Cade is leaning against the frame like he owns it. Dark hair disheveled, gray eyes storm-dark in the hallway light. He's changed since the office—jeans that fit him like a sin, a black henley that does obscene things to his shoulders.

The scent of him hits me first. Cedar and smoke and something darker, something that bypasses my brain and goes straight to the part of me that remembers exactly how his hands felt on my skin.

Fuck.

"How did you get my address?" My voice is steadier than I feel.

"HR files." He doesn't look remotely apologetic. "Perks of being the acquisition lead."

"That's a violation of—"

"I don't give a fuck about protocol, Sloane." He straightens, and suddenly he's too close, crowding my doorway with all that raw male presence. "We need to talk."

"It's late. I have—"

"Five years." His voice drops, rough as gravel. "You disappeared for five years without a word. You owe me more than excuses."

"I don't owe you anything."

"Bullshit."

We stare at each other. The air between us crackles with everything unsaid, everything we've been dancing around since he walked back into my life three days ago.

Three days that feel like three lifetimes.

"Let me in, Sloane."

It's not a request.

Every survival instinct I have screams at me to slam the door in his face. To tell him to fuck off and never come back. To protect the secret sleeping thirty feet away in her bedroom with the nightlight shaped like a moon.

But there's something in his eyes. Something raw and desperate that matches the ache in my chest.

I step back.

He moves past me into my apartment, and I catch the full force of his scent—leather and motor oil beneath the cedar, something that smells like danger and bad decisions and the best mistake I ever made.

My apartment is small. Cozy, I tell myself. Not cramped. The living room barely fits a couch and an armchair, the kitchen visible through a pass-through. Lily's artwork covers the fridge—finger paintings and crayon drawings that make my heart squeeze every time I look at them.

Cade's presence makes everything feel smaller. Like the walls are closing in.

I close the door and lean against it, needing the solid wood at my back. "Say what you came to say."

He turns to face me, and the look on his face makes my breath catch.

"I've been trying to forget that night for five years."

Oh god.

"Cade—"

"Let me finish." He takes a step closer. Then another. "I've worked myself half to death trying to outrun it. Moved from city to city, job to job. Told myself it was one night, that it didn't mean anything, that leaving you in that bed was the right thing to do because you were Evan's and I was the fuck-up who couldn't keep his hands to himself."

Each word is a knife between my ribs.

"I convinced myself I did you a favor. That you woke up and realized what a mistake it was. That you went back to my brother and lived happily ever after and forgot all about me."

"Stop." My voice breaks.

"I can't." He's close enough now that I can feel his body heat. "Because it was all bullshit, Sloane. Every lie I told myself. Every excuse I made. I spent five years trying to forget you and I couldn't. Your voice. Your laugh. The way you looked at me that night like I was someone worth saving instead of someone who destroys everything he touches."

I'm shaking. Full-body tremors that have nothing to do with cold and everything to do with the man standing in front of me, ripping open wounds I thought had scarred over.

"When I heard you might be here—that you'd moved to this town after you left—I told myself I was coming back for other reasons. The job opportunity. Family obligations. Anything but the truth."

"What truth?" I whisper.

His hand comes up, fingers tracing the line of my jaw with a gentleness that destroys me.

"That leaving you was the biggest mistake of my life. That I've thought about you every goddamn day. That I came back because I needed to see you again, even if you hated me. Even if you slammed the door in my face."

I should push him away. Should tell him this is insane, that it's been five years and we're different people and that night can't mean what he's saying it means.

But I've been so lonely.

So fucking lonely, carrying this secret, raising our daughter alone, watching her grow and seeing him in every expression, every stubborn tilt of her chin.

"I don't hate you," I breathe.

Something flares in his eyes. Heat and hunger and five years of want.

"You should."

"Probably."

His thumb brushes my lower lip, and I forget how to breathe.

"Tell me to leave, Sloane. Tell me this is a mistake and you want nothing to do with me and I'll walk out that door and never bother you again."

Liar. We both know he's lying. Cade Mercer has never walked away from anything he wanted.

And the way he's looking at me right now—like I'm water and he's been dying of thirst—makes it crystal clear what he wants.

"I can't," I whisper.

"Can't what?"

"Can't tell you to leave."

The sound he makes is somewhere between a growl and a groan. His other hand finds my waist, fingers splaying across my hip, and suddenly I'm pressed between the door and six feet of solid muscle and terrible decisions.

"Five years," he murmurs, his forehead dropping to mine. "Five years I've been half-alive. And then I saw you in that office and it all came crashing back."

I should stop this. Should push him away before this goes somewhere we can't come back from.

But his scent is everywhere, cedar and smoke filling my lungs, and his hands are warm through my thin sweater, and I've been so cold for so long.

"Cade—"

He kisses me.

No warning. No gentle lead-in. Just his mouth on mine, hot and demanding and five years overdue.

I forget everything. My name. My carefully constructed walls. The secret sleeping in the next room.

All I know is the taste of him, the feel of his hands sliding into my hair, the way my body melts against his like it's been waiting for this, for him, since the moment he left me in that lake house.

I kiss him back like I'm drowning and he's air.

His tongue slides against mine and I moan, the sound swallowed by his mouth. My hands find his chest, feeling the rapid thunder of his heartbeat beneath my palms.

He's as wrecked as I am.

The thought gives me a savage satisfaction.

Cade breaks the kiss to trail his mouth down my throat, teeth scraping against my pulse point. "Tell me you felt it too. Tell me it wasn't just me going insane."

"I felt it." The confession tears out of me. "Every day. Every fucking day."

He makes that sound again, the one that's pure male satisfaction and barely leashed control. His hands slide lower, gripping my hips, pulling me flush against him.

I can feel exactly how much he wants this. Wants me.

"I should have stayed," he growls against my neck. "Should have been there when you woke up. Should have told Evan to go to hell and kept you for myself."

Reality crashes back.

Evan.

Lily.

Everything that makes this impossible.

I push against his chest, and to his credit, he steps back immediately. His breathing is ragged, eyes dark with want, but he gives me space.

"This can't happen," I say, hating how my voice shakes.

"Why not?"

"Because—" I gesture helplessly between us. "Because it's complicated. Because five years have passed. Because—"

A sound from the hallway.

Lily's bedroom door.

The soft creak of hinges that I've been meaning to oil for months.

Panic floods my system, cold and sharp.

"You need to go." I grab Cade's arm, trying to steer him toward the door. "Right now."

He doesn't budge. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just—you have to leave."

His eyes narrow. "You're scared."

"I'm not—"

"Bullshit. You're terrified." He glances past me toward the hallway, and I see the exact moment his gaze lands on something.

The fridge.

Lily's drawings covering every inch of stainless steel.

A stick-figure family—a woman and a little girl holding hands. No father.

A purple dinosaur with her name scrawled in wobbly letters across the top.

A handprint painting from daycare, dated last week.

I watch his face change. Watch realization dawn in those storm-gray eyes.

"Sloane." His voice is very, very quiet. "Do you have a kid?"

My mouth opens. Closes. No sound comes out.

The silence stretches between us like a chasm.

"Answer me."

"It's not—it's complicated—"

"That's not an answer."

Footsteps in the hallway behind me. Small feet padding across hardwood. They pause—Lily hesitating, maybe sensing the tension, the way kids always do.

And then, muffled through the door, a voice from the building hallway outside the apartment.

Oh god. Oh fuck. This can't be happening.