Chapter 2 THEY CAME TO MY RESCUE

NOVA'S POV

My hands were shaking as I opened up my transaction history. The withdrawals had been going on for three months. Small amounts at first, then bigger and bigger. All going to an account I didn't recognize.

Marcus's account. It had to be.

He'd been stealing from me for three months while kissing me goodbye every morning.

My phone started ringing and I answered it automatically.

"Hello?"

"Miss Sinclair? This is Donald Perry, your landlord. I'm standing outside your apartment door right now and you need to let me in."

I walked to the door like a zombie and opened it. Mr. Perry was standing there with two garbage bags in his hands and a piece of paper in the other.

"What's going on, Mr. Perry?"

"What's going on is you haven't paid your rent in three months and I'm done waiting." He shoved the paper at me. "That's your eviction notice. You've got twenty minutes to pack up whatever you can carry and get out of my building."

"There has to be some kind of mistake. I have automatic payments set up. I've never missed rent, not once in two years—"

"Well your automatic payments haven't been going through and I've sent you multiple warnings that you've been ignoring. Twenty minutes, Miss Sinclair. I'm not kidding around. If you're not out of here by then, I'm calling the police."

Twenty minutes later I was sitting on the curb outside my building with two garbage bags full of whatever I'd managed to grab in my panic.

Then the rain started. Just went from cloudy to pouring in about thirty seconds flat.

I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and scrolled through my contacts. Looking for anyone, literally anyone who might let me crash on their couch.

There was nobody. Just a few people from work I barely knew and some old college friends I hadn't talked to in forever.

And then I saw it. The one contact I'd saved six years ago when I left, just in case. The one I swore I'd never use.

Blackthorn Estate.

I remembered the last night I'd spent there. Callum finding me in the library around midnight.

"You need to stop doing this, Nova. Stop pretending you don't feel what's happening between us."

"I don't know what you think is happening, but you're wrong."

"Am I? Then why do you look at me the way you do? Why does your breath catch every time I get too close?"

"Because you're scaring me. This whole thing scares me. You're supposed to be my stepbrother—"

"My father was married to your mother for six months before she died. That's it. That doesn't make us related. That doesn't make this wrong."

"It doesn't make it right either. I just want a normal life, Callum. I want normal relationships and normal problems. Not whatever complicated mess this is turning into."

"Then go. Leave. Have your normal boring life. But don't expect us to be sitting here waiting around when you finally figure out that normal isn't what you really want."

I'd run from the library straight to the garden, needing air. That's where Elias found me.

"Callum told me you want to leave."

"I have to. I can't stay here feeling like this."

"Feeling like what?"

"Like I want things I'm not supposed to want. Like I'm going crazy."

"What if the only thing stopping you is you? What if you just let yourself have what you want?"

Then he'd kissed me and I'd kissed him back like I was drowning. Let him pull me closer, let his hands slide under my shirt, made sounds I didn't even know I could make.

Until I came back to reality and pushed him away and ran.

I had did something really terrible, something I was not going to look back at or even say it.

I'd packed a bag and left before the sun came up. Hadn't looked back once in six years.

But now I was out of options.

I pressed the call button.

"Blackthorn Estate, how may I assist you?"

"Hi, this is Nova Sinclair. I need to speak with either Callum or Elias Blackthorn if they're available. Please. It's really important."

There was a long pause. "Miss Sinclair. Please hold for just one moment."

Then classical music started playing. Then it cut off.

"Nova."

Callum's voice. Low and controlled like always.

"I know I don't have any right to call you. I know you probably hate me and you should. But something really bad happened and I don't have anywhere else to go and I'm sitting here in the rain and I just—"

"Stop talking and tell me where you are."

I gave him my address.

"Don't move from that spot. We're coming to get you right now."

"We? Callum, you don't need to come yourself, you could just send—"

But he'd already hung up.

I sat there for twenty-five minutes getting soaked.

Then I heard them. Not a car engine. Footsteps on the sidewalk.

I looked up.

Callum and Elias. Both of them walking toward me through the rain.

Callum was in an expensive suit that was getting ruined. Elias was in dark jeans and a leather jacket. They both looked older, harder, more dangerous than I remembered.

Callum reached me first. He stopped right in front of me and I had to tilt my head way back to look at him.

His gray eyes looked me over slowly. Taking in every pathetic detail.

When he finally spoke, his voice could have frozen hell over.

"Six years, Nova. Six years without a single word from you. Not a text, not a call. Not even a fucking email to let us know you were still alive somewhere."

He crouched down so we were at eye level, and the expression on his face made something crack inside my chest. "And now you call us up because you need something. Because you're in trouble and you've got nobody else left to turn to. Do you really think we're going to take you back?

The question hung in the air between us like a bomb waiting to explode.

Do you really think we're going to take you back?