Last Chance Hero. Melinda Di Lorenzo

with the unusual presence of a man in her house, and sending her back ten years. Because Donovan was a skinny kid in too-baggy pants. He had an easy smile and no rough edges. This man was huge, and he wore fitted jeans and a white T-shirt, stained with dirt and what looked like blood.

      “Jordynn?”

      She blinked, and the dulled edges of him came into focus. He’d taken off his hat and his sandy hair sat matted to his head in a tangle she knew well. A mess she’d run her hands through a thousand times. She blinked a second time. He didn’t disappear. His hazel eyes—framed by thick, familiar lashes—were tinged with concern, their corners crinkled up. She’d stared into them enough times to be able to pinpoint each fleck. To know what they looked like sad, happy, scared...all of it.

      Impossible.

      She squished backward onto the overstuffed arm of the couch as an enormous, terrified lump filled her throat.

      “Dono.” His name was barely more than a choked sob.

      “Yes.”

      “You’re dead.”

      “I can explain, honey. But I’ll need more time than we’ve got right this second.”

      Jordynn blinked, watching his mouth work as he continued to talk, but not hearing a word. He could explain? How? She’d attended his funeral. Comforted his grieving father. Lost herself in a year-long despair she never thought she’d crawl out of. She’d blamed herself for what happened. Blamed himself for his death. No explanation could erase that, or the accompanying dark moments. The pain and loss were too great.

      But somehow that didn’t stop her from wanting to reach out. From having an incredible need to run her fingers along that stubble on his face. To touch him, just to make sure—really sure—he was there.

      Oh, God.

      She tightened her hands into fists, steadying herself to stop from actually following through on the desire.

      His hand landed on her shoulder, and when she flinched, he drew it away again quickly, hurt touching his eyes before he covered it again in an impassive mask.

      “Hey. Did you hear me?” he asked gently.

      She shook her head. “No.”

      “I said it’s not safe for us to stay here much longer.”

      “Safe?”

      “Not safe,” he corrected.

      “So...what?” She blinked again. “You want me to go somewhere else?”

      “I need us to go somewhere else.”

      “I can’t go anywhere with you, Dono.” This time, saying his name hurt.

      “If you come with me, I can give you at least a bit of an explanation,” he told her again.

      “You already said that.”

      “I know.”

      “I’m not—” She paused, took a breath, tried again. “I won’t leave this—” God, why can’t I just complete a sentence? Why does it all seem so inadequate? “No. Not with—No.”

      He leaned back, looking frustrated. And something else, too. Maybe a bit disappointed. Or even surprised. Had he thought that after ten years away, she’d jump into his arms? Be so relieved he was alive she’d forget the rest?

      Are you relieved?

      She bit her lip and told herself it was an awful thing to wonder. And she wasn’t even going to answer the silent, self-directed question.

      He leaned forward again, his face tense now. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I saw another way. I wouldn’t even have...”

      Even though he trailed off, Jordynn heard what came next. If he’d seen another way, he wouldn’t have come back at all. And it took away a tiny bit of her guilt, making it a little easier to focus on the here and now rather than the past. Easier to find the words and string them together.

      “I can’t even begin to guess what happened to you,” she said. “Or why you would let everyone who loved you think you were dead. But you have to know that you can’t expect to walk in here and tell me I’m not safe and think I’ll just go with you.”

      Donovan lifted his hand to tug on his ear. A heart-wrenching gesture—a habit that meant he was truly worried—that Jordynn had all but forgotten about it. It made her wonder what else she’d forgotten about. How many memories had faded away with the years? How many of them had she deliberately buried? It hurt to think about it. Like a freshly closed wound threatening to open all over again.

      This was just too hard.

      “I can’t do this,” she whispered.

      “You have to, honey. Trust me when I say this wasn’t a random attack.”

      “Trust you?” The concept seemed utterly foreign.

      “Just in this. Please.” There was a note of desperation in his voice. “That man over there? He has some friends waiting for him, and I have no idea how long it’s gonna be before they show up.”

      Her blood went cold. “Over where?”

      He nodded his head toward a space behind him, and Jordynn forced her eyes away from his face. On the other side of the room, bound to one of her mother’s antique dining chairs with some kind of wire, sat the birdlike man from outside. Somehow, she’d almost put him out of her mind. Now the sight of him made her stomach roil, both because of his attack and because of his appearance. The man’s head hung to one side, a mottled bruise already fanning out along his jaw. He’d been gagged. Far more efficiently than Jordynn herself had been, she noted. A strip of sheeting had been wound around his mouth—multiple times—and knotted securely behind one ear.

      Jordynn swallowed. “Did you do that?”

      Donovan nodded shortly. “Yes.”

      “Is he...?”

      “He’s alive.”

      “So...you’re just going to leave him there?”

      “I couldn’t exactly leave him in the front yard.”

      “Who is he?”

      “The less you know, the better.”

      She met his gaze, noting the resignation there.

      Resignation, she thought. But no regret.

      Not for the man tied up, anyway. It made her heart ache even more than it already did. The Donovan she knew was protective, but loving. A little hotheaded and maybe even impetuous, but always compassionate and kind. Reverent of life. Maybe that had all changed when he’d feigned the end of his own. Which was what he must’ve done, she surmised.

      “He would’ve killed you, Jordynn,” he stated then, far too matter-of-factly.

      She suppressed a shiver, because now she wasn’t wondering what she’d forgotten—she was wondering what she’d missed. What parts of him had been irrevocably altered, and how he’d become this larger, darker version of himself.

      Abruptly, like he couldn’t take her scrutiny, he stood and began to pace the room.

      “You should pack a bag,” he said. “Clothes. Toothbrush. That kinda stuff. Enough for a few days, maybe longer. We can always figure out exactly what needs to be done when we get where we’re going.”

      “I have a simpler solution.”

      Donovan paused, tugged his ear again and shook his head. “No.”

      “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

      “The police aren’t an option.”

      She ignored the way it felt so normal to have him practically read her thoughts. “But your dad—”

      “Was