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And this was mine.

I wasn’t prepared.

Nothing could have prepared me for when the girl I’d met in the Gin Blossoms T-shirt and bright-berry lipstick spun around, her honeyed hair tossing over her shoulder as she looked right at me.

Our eyes locked together.

My heart pounded as my fists clenched at both sides. I fumbled for something to say before the moment spanned too long and Whitney interrogated me as to why I was paling before her eyes, every muscle locking up.

I cleared the soot from my throat. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Halley forced a weak smile and turned back around to face the stove. It was like she’d already known it would be me walking through the front door tonight and had come to terms with this fucked-up twist of fate.

Whitney pressed a hand to my corded bicep. “Do you two know each other?”

I could have lied, could have said no, no, we’d never met before, and the seventeen-year-old girl in her kitchen who often trickled into my mind only reminded me of someone else.

But I knew that even the smallest white lie could grow teeth and I’d end up burying myself deeper than I already was.

I loosened my fists and chewed on my tongue. “Yeah, actually. We ran into each other at a party last summer.”

“A party? You always hated parties.” Curiosity flickered in her dark-chocolate eyes as she gazed up at me. “Small world, I guess.”

Yeah.

Small fucking world.

I scrubbed a hand over my face, forehead to jaw, hoping to erase my ashen look of disbelief. “It was that night in June when you said Tara had snuck out. You were worried. You thought she was going to Jay’s, so I went over there looking for her.”

She nodded slowly. “I remember that. She ended up sleeping over at Marissa’s.”

“Right. Halley was there and we chatted for a bit.”

My gaze lifted to the source of my turmoil, but she kept her attention on the saucepan, refusing to meet my stare.

Halley’s name hadn’t come up, or, if it had, I hadn’t noticed. Nothing could have ever led me to believe that she was the girl Whit had taken in.

What were the goddamn odds?

Probably the same odds as running into her at the grocery store on Christmas Eve, a cruel reminder of that maddening connection that had seeped in when my guard was down, her eyes were soft and vulnerable, and her full, wine-stained lips looked like they were made for kissing mine.

Shit.

This was a nightmare.

She was seventeen, completely out of the question by default, and now she was the temporary foster kid of my ex—and my daughter’s new best friend.

I was a serial killer in a past life.

That had to be it.

Halley continued to ignore me, stirring some kind of marinara in the pan. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, tucking a golden strand of hair behind her ear. “I set the table already.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” Whitney dropped her hand from my arm, then guided me to the dining room. When we were out of earshot, she looked up at me, her eyes narrowing with scrutiny. “You were being weird. Did something happen?”

Happen?

Yeah, something fucking happened, and I was damn lucky it hadn’t turned into more.

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