Page 6 of Scarred Heart

His jaw tightened as he nodded, looking me up and down one more time, grunting out, “Bar Nineteen12.Eight o’clock.”

And then he was gone, cutting through the crowd like a hot knife through soft butter.I reached out blindly, grabbing for the back of the closest chair to support myself now that the adrenaline that had kept me upright drained from my system.His broad back retreated, the crowd swallowing him, but I continued staring in that direction for what felt like forever.

The bastard wanted to see me tonight and according to him, it was crucial.

Had he waited more than ten years to apologize for almost killing me?Or did he want to apologize for buying my silence like the spoiled coward he was?

One thing was for sure.I wouldn’t miss this appointment for the world.

3

SPENCER

Life could be a bad fucking joke sometimes.A day might begin with doing a favor for a friend, but then it ended with a man’s past being thrown in his face.

It was a quarter to eight, and Rowan had yet to show herself, leaving me waiting in a corner booth that faced the room.When she arrived—and she would—I wanted to know.I wanted to watch her walk toward me, read her body language and expression as well as prepare myself somehow since her appearance today had knocked me off a cliff and sent me into a freefall.

I hadn’t thought about her.I was too busy thinking about Miles, about his mistakes and how they might come back to haunt us.Rowan, on the other hand?Maybe it was easier to imagine her as a ghost.The ghost she had transformed herself into with no help from me.

Of all the people to get in the way of this deal going through, I had overlooked the one who may tank my entire life, my reputation, everything I had broken my back to build over the past decade.I was supposed to be on top of this shit, a step ahead of Damian.How could I have forgotten her?

You forced yourself to forget.

I would need a hell of a lot more than a single drink to ease the pressure in my head.It had taken two years on the other side of the world, but I had eventually gotten her out of my system.The job my old man had forced me into turned out to be the best thing for me.I’d turned into a serious person, someone miles away from the arrogant, ignorant child I used to be.A trip that had started off as a way of getting me out of the country and out of the limelight had been my saving grace.

She had answered one question today, anyway—why I hadn’t been able to find her.I had only ever known her as the person she wanted to be.Rowan Leslie, ingenue, the starlet waiting in the wings for her big break.No wonder I hadn’t quite recognized her at first.It must have taken serious plastic surgery to undo the damage I’d caused.

“Spencer!”That high-pitched scream.Like something from an animal.Full of terror.Capable of freezing my guts years later.

And then everything else.The jarring crash.The shattering of glass and crunching of metal.Sirens.Flashing lights.

Silence from the passenger’s seat.

I may have been sitting in a comfortable, elegant lounge, but my memory was a different story.In my head, I was in a brightly lit, noisy hospital hallway.

Blood pounded in my ears, louder than the hiss of the fluorescent lights above, as I stood just outside the ER doors.My legs felt like jelly, the sterile scent of antiseptic clinging to my skin, suffocating me.She was in bad shape when they rushed her to the hospital, bad enough that they kept me away while they worked on her.The moment they whisked her away, the color drained from the world, replaced by an agonizing blur of whites and grays.Nurses and doctors had all but shoved me out of the way, their voices a rush of medical jargon I couldn’t decipher.

Still, after several hours, I had no answers, but Dad’s lawyer tracked me down, advising me to get the hell out of there.To go home and pretend I had nothing to do with the crash.

When dawn finally broke, I bolted through the hospital’s sliding doors, desperate.My breath caught in my throat when I saw her bed—empty.Not even the crumpled sheets were left behind.Panic clawed at my chest.The whir of wheels on linoleum blurred into a dizzying chaos as I darted around, my feet moving too fast to keep up with my frantic thoughts.

"Where is she?"My voice cracked, barely audible above the hum of machines.The nurse at the desk didn’t look up, flipping through paperwork.

“Transferred.”

Transferred?The word slammed into me, sending my heart plummeting.“To where?Where did they take her?”The faces around me blurred, a sea of blank expressions as if no one even noticed my world collapsing.

“We only know she was taken to another hospital,” one of the nurses at the desk said with a short, empty shrug.And that was it.

My thumb hovered over her name on the screen, my pulse racing in sync with the ringing.One ring.Two rings.No answer.The silence was crushing, more deafening than if she’d yelled.I stared at the phone, expecting the call to disconnect any second.Maybe she blocked me.Hell, I would’ve done the same if I were her.

I dragged a hand through my hair, the tension coiled in my chest tightening.The air felt thick as I made my way back to the car, the streetlights flickering in the early evening dusk.I got in, but even the hum of the engine couldn’t cut through the dead quiet that settled over me.It pressed in, suffocating, relentless.

Three days.Three long, silent days where the phone never lit up with her name, no angry texts, no desperate calls.Just… nothing.

When I finally worked up the nerve to go to her place, my gut twisted the moment I spotted the moving van outside.The front door stood open, the last rays of daylight casting long shadows over the boxes being carried out.I stopped, frozen at the edge of the sidewalk.Every thud of a box hitting the floor was a punch to the gut.

She was leaving.Moving on without me.And I had no one to blame but myself.

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