The thing is, our nightclub needed a face, and Colin flat out refused to do it, so it’s not like I had a lot of choice. It was supposed to be temporary. Something we did early to get people engaged—the person-to-person attachment always works better with selling a brand—and then the focus on me was supposed to stop as soon as we were doing well.

If only I’d known someone was seeing my face out there and plotting out the best way to destroy it.

I return to my office, locking it behind me so that Lars doesn’t have a fucking meltdown, and decide I might as well try to fill in this spreadsheet one more time.

The prospect of more hours in front of the screen makes me want to rip my eyes out though, so when a throat clears behind me, I’m almost relieved.

Until my brain catches up with me.

“Your ear doesn’t look too bad.”

My back locks up, and I hate that I’ve relived that night so many times that my brain recognizes his voice as familiar. “Why don’t I cut off half of your ear and see how you like it?”

When he doesn’t reply, I get the courage to slowly turn and face him.

He’s half sitting on my wet bar, skeleton mouth mask in place, hood up, one elbow propped on his knee, while the other hand holds his gun loosely between his legs.

“You pinky swore,” he says, which catches me off guard.

“Yeah, well, lucky for me, we’re not in kindergarten, and that means shit all.”

His heavy eyebrows pull tight. “It means something to me.”

“If I can get over the ear thing, you can get over that,” I throw back dryly. The fact he’s trying to make out like this is a totally normal conversation and that his gun isn’t here to make me feel threatened pisses me off enough to keep the fear away.

“You forgive me?” he asks.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he lights up, but it’s hard to tell anything when half of his face is covered. “No. This isn’t the type of thing you get to be forgiven for.”

“But technically, it was an accident.”

He’s got to be kidding me. “It was only an accident because you missed my fucking head.”

“A happy accident.” He groans and rubs his head through his hood. “I was hoping we could move on from all that.”

“Move on? Is there something wrong with you?”

“My sister would tell you there’s plenty.”

I latch onto that detail. “You have a sister.”

He twitches, realizing he’s said more than he should have. “Uh, no?”

“You just said.”

“Well, maybe I was throwing you off.” His hand twitches tighter on the gun. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why not?”