Page 12 of They Break Beauty

He got up close, but didn’t reach out, or actually touch me at all.

“I’m back. You’re safe now.”

What the—

“Who are you?”

He flipped his hood down.

Oh. My. God.

I couldn’t… I couldn’t believe it.

Trying to process it was a whole other thing.

Those eyes of his, a rare shade of pale blue, burned into mine with an intensity that couldn’t be denied. His black, curly hair was wild and piled on top, some strands falling over the left side of his face and obscuring his eye.

And most prominent of all was that jagged scar down the left side of his neck.

A scar I knew the story of. Every disturbing detail of it.

He was just under six-foot with a boxer’s toned and muscular physique.

Levi Knight.

It was everything I could do to conceal my true shocked reaction.

More than that, to conceal the recognition.

I managed to force a frown of confusion instead.

“It’s been six years, but that shouldn’t matter,” he said, his eyes narrowing a little at my reaction, or lack thereof.

“Six years?”

“You know very well.” He shifted his weight and thumbed himself. “Levi? Levi Knight?”

“I don’t—wait—you used to go here before I showed up, right? You were a member of Hex? The disbanded secret society here at Stonewell U?”

“It wasn’t a secret society, but, yes. That’s not how you know me, though.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but that’s all I know of you.” I pushed off the wall and sidled past him. “Thanks for your help with that rape-charge-waiting-to-happen, but I need to get my friend home and—”

He dodged into my path up so close that his appetizing sandalwood scent rolled through me.

My breath hitched, a noticeable gasp escaping me.

It had his eyes darkening.

“Admit that you remember me.”

“I—”

A curse from the top of the stairs thankfully saved me from having to answer at all.

And in the next moment, rushed footsteps sounded, and I looked out to see Mason dragging somebody who looked half-dead, the guy barely able to stand. That was proven in the next second as Mason hauled him across the lobby toward the entrance doors and the guy collapsed halfway out.

Mason stilled on the last couple of steps as he noticed Levi there.

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