Page 88 of The Villain

His scar.

He faced me fully, and the ricochet of my heart exploded into silence.

“Athena.”

My jaw dropped. Too many times in the last few weeks, the ground has given way underneath me, but never like this. Never with such a sudden, sharp, deep foreboding. Even oxygen didn’t bother to enter my lungs, knowing I was a lost cause.

I didn’t stare. I blinked. Over and over again, willing each fresh look to bring me a different sight.Willing, even, for it to take me back to the darkness once more.

But it didn’t.

In the span of a second, I’d traded in my broken brain for a broken heart.

“Darius.” There were so many things I thought I’d feel in this moment, but recognition wasn’t one of them. The man who’d given me my last kiss was the same man who’d given me my first.On the same kitchen counter.

The light burned my eyes, but it was the truth that brought them to tears.

Darius Keyes stood in my kitchen. The man who’d saved me—cared for me—was the same boy who’d broken my heart.

“Athena.” He knew.He knew that I knew.He stepped forward, and I instinctively stepped back.Pain creased his face, which had only grown more handsome with the way life and experience had shaped it. “Please,” he begged, lifting a hand as though I were a wounded animal about to bolt.

“Why?”

Why hadn’t he told me?All this time, everything we’d shared…and he hadn’t told me who he was. The way he’d kissed me…touched me…I gripped my stomach, nausea hitting me like a freight train to my stomach. Last night, the way he’d…I gasped, but the invisible band around my chest made it feel impossible to breathe.

“Athena—”

I shook my head wildly, drawing away from him like a cornered, frightened animal.

I needed air. Fresh air. I spun and bolted for the front door, my feet hitting boxes and my shoulder bumping the wall along the way.

I needed a minute. Fresh oxygen and a single minute toprocess the fact that I’d let the first man I’d ever loved break my heart for the second time.

I stumbled onto the front porch when his hand found my shoulder.

“Please—”

“Don’t.” I yanked out of his reach, banding my arms over my chest as I backpedaled onto the lawn. “Tell me why.”

He stood with that familiar stillness, the one that always made me feel as though he worried his next step would be on a land mine.

And I was the land mine.

“Athena…”

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” I said, my voice cracking. “Were you trying to see how long you could fool me?”

“No—”

“Was I some sort of unfinished business?”

“Stop.”

Stop what? Stop hurting? Stop crumbling? Stop wondering if I’d just fallen in love with a man who was the best at breaking my heart?

“Please, Athena.” His voice was the most honest thing about him. Ragged with self-loathing and crackling with remorse. “Please, just let me—” He broke off suddenly, his eyes narrowing over my shoulder.

I turned to follow his line of sight. “What is it?—”

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