Look up, baby, look into my eyes and know who I am.

And then she turned. Her gaze was like a spear slammed straight through his heart. There was nothing on her face. No fear. No excitement. No smile of welcome. Nothing at all.

She stored away her phone in a small brown purse, and her eyes ventured down his body, skimming the T-shirt, the jeans, lingering slightly on the gun, and at last returning to meet his gaze.

He held his breath, waiting for … just waiting. For a smile perhaps. A whisper that said all he craved to know. His name, God, let her say Zachary.

But still she stared.

And he stared.

Sucker punched by those eyes. A light, worn blue, no longer shining with innocence, but wide and lost and killing him.

“Paige.” His throat closed around his words. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

She sat up straighter, her eyes flaring wider, shoulders tensing. As if he were a giant mastiff without a leash, she warily watched as he pulled up a chair across from hers and lowered his body onto the seat.

A thousand questions tumbled inside him, questions from the cop and questions from the man and questions from the boy who’d loved her.

He propped his elbows on his knees, leaning forward, gentling his voice. “Where were you when this happened?”

She stared at his lips, then seemed to catch herself and went rigid. “I was out,” she said, her voice a bare wisp. “Buying boxes to pack some of my mom’s belongings.”

“You were alone?”

She nodded.

He told himself he wouldn’t remember, not now, dammit. But he could still taste Paige inside his mouth. He could feel the weight of those little breasts in his hands, could hear her gasps as she suckled hungrily on his tongue and he sucked on hers.

Paige Avery had come home … and Zach was dying to come home to her.

She used to pass him with her eyes downcast in the school halls, and would not glance across the cafeteria, and when her friends talked to her she smiled and very rarely stole a glance at him. But when no one was looking, Zachary would touch her with his shoulders or his elbows or his hands or his fingers, and she would shyly touch back. And they would find a nook or a closet or a place to kiss and kiss and kiss each other’s heart out. Then the twenty-four hours before Zach had her lips on his again he spent replaying Paige’s gasps and how they tumbled down his throat and he would moan every night at the sheer agony of wanting her like he did.

“Detective … ?”

Zachary’s brows rose the moment he registered her softly spoken words.

“Your name. It’s …” She trailed off and signaled at his clothes. “You’re not wearing a tag. Your colleagues call you ‘Stalker’?”

He watched her carefully as he told her. “Rivers. Zachary Rivers.”