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“Kat…” There’s no pity in his voice anymore. Only sympathy, understanding, regret. My name holds a loaded gun full of lethal emotions, waiting in the chamber to open fire.
I throw back the rest of my whiskey and debate refilling it. The internal debate is quick thanks to my less than stellar track record. I set the glass on the coffee table. The last thing I need is to be incoherent—or worse, sloppy and lax—with Blake Collins mere feet away.
I don’t want to talk about me anymore, and definitely not Marshall Cox, but if I go back to my room, I’ll lie awake, tormenting myself. So, either I drink myself into oblivion, or we continue our conversation.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to sleep. You?”
His tattooed arms stretch along the back of the couch as he relaxes. “Doubtful.”
Sirens sound in the distance. There’s something sinister about sirens at night, like evil is bolder in the darkness. When Blake looks at me, I don’t see evil. Heaven help me, I still see the boy I fell hard for. The boy I could never forget no matter who I was with, no matter how much time passed. He is a stain on my soul I’ll never be able to remove.
“I think we need to go back to the beginning of you and Scarlett. Maybe if we go in chronological order, you’ll remember something you haven’t thought of so far.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt. And we have all the time in the world, confined to your apartment, anyway.”
“All the time in the world is a bit of a stretch. If you look at it that way, you’ll be arrested before we get to the good parts.”
“Are there good parts?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“The only good parts in my life include you.”
“Blake,” I warn.
“Just being honest.”
“If only I could believe you the way I used to.”
“If only…” Blake reads me with his soul-infused stare. I don’t know how he does it. With one look, his eyes become tentacles, reaching and wrapping, adhering to my heart and squeezing until it aches.
All right, heart. Here we go.

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Mindy is the youngest of six children and grew up in San Diego, California. After graduating from Brigham Young University-Idaho, she discovered her passion for reading and writing. Mindy lives in Summerville, South Carolina with her husband and beautiful baby girl.

She is the author of the YA fantasy series, The Faylinn Novels; the adult contemporary romance series, The Willowhaven Series; as well as the coming of age standalone, The Day That Saved Us. Mindy is also the co-author of the Paper Planes series and the Backroads Duet, which was co-written with Michele G. Miller as Mindy Michele.

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