Page 115 of Legacy

Lincoln stands beside the desk, fixing his gaze on me as I freeze in the doorway. His salt and pepper hair is longer than it was the last time I saw him, and he’s a bit thinner, but he still wears a confident grin on his chiseled face. His charming mask is magnetic, which is how he lured me into a date before I knew better.

“Lincoln.” His name is a whisper.

“Reagan, finally.” He smiles, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been worried sick since you didn’t show up to start the school year with the rest of us.”

“Why are you—”

“You need to come back to Glendale. It’s not the same without you.”

I don’t miss that he isn’t sayingthe schoolisn’t the same. Because this has nothing to do with the school. His sick obsession has drawn him to Vegas, and he’s using Bea’s school as a way to get close to me.

Principal Grandy steps forward as tension thickens in the air. “Like I was saying… I see you’re already indispensable. I assured Lincoln we wouldn’t stand in the way of him trying to get you to come back, but he was insistent on pleading the case to you himself.”

Of course he did. It’s one more way he’s manipulating the situation.

How did I not see this side of him when we first met?

It was uneventful in a way that I didn’t think anything of it. We caught gazes from across the store and then conveniently found ourselves picking out coffee creamer at the same time. He casually mentioned working for a school when I said I was in the middle of a job hunt. He said he could look for openings, and I thought he was being friendly.

I should have known better. I should have questioned when he got insistent to the point of being almost pushy. I should have seen through his lies when he said we were meeting coworkers, but then no one else showed up, and it turned into a date.

It wasn’t until he tried to force a second date that I sensed something deeper was wrong. His mask started to slip, and he began to threaten me if I refused to go out with him again. He spread rumors at school to isolate me from the people I was beginning to call friends. He showed up uninvited at my house and left gifts on my doorstep.

Once I saw what was happening, it had already gone too far to stop it. I should have known coming to Vegas wouldn’t solve the problem.

“I’m not interested in going back.”

“Reagan, please—”

“Thank you for your time, Principal Grandy. I need to get going.” I spin on my heels and hurry out of the office.

The bell rang a few minutes ago so the halls are already empty, which makes the echo of Lincoln’s footsteps clear behind me. I pull my phone out of my pocket, fumbling for Venom’s phone number, but a hand snatches it from me before I have a chance to make the call.

“Don’t.” Lincoln throws my phone in a trash can beside us, slamming a hand over my mouth as he drags me to a deserted hall. “Your biker boyfriend isn’t here today, Reagan. It’s just you and me.”

He releases my mouth, and I’m breathing hard through my panic.

“It’s never been you and me,” I whisper.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Reagan. It was only ever going to be us.”

My eyebrows pinch. “It was one date.”

“One date?” His smile is unnerving as he brushes a hand down my cheek. “Is that what you tell yourself?”

“That’s what it was.” I swallow hard, the hair on the back of my neck standing tall.

“You don’t remember?” His question makes my stomach plummet because I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Remember what?”

“When we met.” He brushes his fingers down my cheek again, trailing an icy path down my neck and collarbone. “It was a blur for me, too, so I shouldn’t blame you. I didn’t see you coming either. But then you were there, crashinginto my life quite literally when your father introduced us at that retreat, and I couldn’t see anything else.”

My eyebrows pinch in confusion.

What does this have to do with my father?

He died when I was seventeen.

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