Page 24 of Bad Guys Need Love Too

When she was finally able to summon up the self-control necessary to pull her lips off his, they were both breathing like they’d just done an hour of cardio and she was lightheaded,either from lack of oxygen or the stunning power of Ren’s pheromones. She wasn’t sure which.

Neal grabbed his suit jacket off the seat next to him and stood up with stiff, angry movements. “I’m not going to sit here and watchthisfor another minute. Lark, when you come to your senses, you know where to find me.”

And with that, he stormed off, not even bothering to throw down a bill or two to cover his coffee. Typical. In the entirety of their relationship, she could count the number of times Neal paid for a meal on the fingers of one hand.

Ren rested his forehead against hers. “You did good,” he whispered. “I don’t think he’ll bother you again.”

The relief she was feeling at finally being free of Neal was currently being crushed under the weight of how horny she was for Ren. “It was easier than I thought.”

“The kiss was very…convincing.”

She swallowed the nervous spill of hyena laughter that threatened to trip off her lips. “That’s one word for it.”

There was that ridiculously hot half grin again. He shocked the hell out of her by kissing the tip of her nose oh-so-gently before pulling out his wallet, seemingly to cover the bill for Neal’s coffee. That’s when she caught a glimpse of something in his wallet that was like a cold, hard slap of brutal reality to the face.

It was a picture of her.

Right there, next to a wad of cash, was an old photo of her. Really old. Like, one that had been taken when she was nine-ish. She was posing for whoever took the photo with a wide, toothy grin that showed off the braces she wore all through middleschool. She was looking at whoever was behind the camera with complete joy, like they were her best friend in the whole world.

What. The. Fuck.

“Why do you have that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes on the photo. “Howdo you have that? That’s me, but I don’t remember ever seeing that photo before.”

He sighed and tossed a few bills down on the table. “I can explain.”

Yeah. He kept saying that, and she kept believing it. Like an idiot. “Who the fuck are you, Ren Solace? And I want the truth this time.”

“I’m the one who took that photo.”

Well. That was a bit of a record scratch in the old brain, now wasn’t it?

CHAPTER 12

23 YEARS AGO

His new neighbor was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen in his whole life.

Granted, Ren, having never been outside the state and didn’t have much of a control group to compare her beauty to. And he was only eleven. But still, looking at her was like staring at the sun.That’show bright she shined.

Her family had the misfortune of ending up in the trailer next to his about a week ago. Her father was an engineer who’d lost his job when his wife got sick and hospital bills for her treatment swallowed the family whole. The American dream, right?

Thankfully, the wife seemed OK now. She was recovering. But they’d lost their house in the suburbs, their car, and their entire savings along the way. All that had been easy to uncover with a little internet snooping.

OK, alotof internet snooping (maybe some light hacking) on the library computer. He had a genius-level IQ and was stuck in a shitty trailer park, in the shittiest school district in the state, with a family who routinely used their foster stipends for drugs instead of food. What else was he supposed to do to pass the time?

The thing that struck Ren as odd about the Shaw family, though, was how happy they seemed. Everyone else in this shithole was bitter as fuck at being stuck in a place where the crime rate was so high the cops didn’t even bother showing up in the rare instance when anyone here actually bothered calling them. Hope and joy were strangers here. But this family that had lost everything but each other? They had both. They smiled all the time.

Especiallyher.

He’d learned a lot about her in the last week, too. Her name was Lark. She was close to his age. Had gotten all A’s at her previous school, which meant she waswaytoo smart for his crappy school.

But at least she’d be able to avoid that place for another month. It was only July, after all.

Which was why he was a little surprised she wasn’t headed to the public pool today. That’s what all the other kids did when the temperature outside was roughly ten degrees hotter than Satan’s asshole like it was today.

Not Lark, though. She was sitting in the little patch of weeds behind her parents’ trailer, weaving a crown out of dandelions, humming a tune he wasn’t familiar with, smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world.

She just looked so…clean. Unburdened by life. Loved, cared for, and well-fed. Pretty much everything Ren wasn’t. By all rights, he should hate her.

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