Desperate Measures (An Aspen Falls Novel) Read online

  She’d only stabbed him in the leg.

  Which meant he was already injured.

  This seemed to be confirmed when he made no move to get to his feet. In fact, he went positively still, and Cam wondered if he’d gone unconscious.

  Or worse.

  “Stay where you are,” she ordered.

  He moaned softly in response.

  A flutter of relief washed over her. Not because she had any sympathy for the man who’d just broken into her house but because the last thing she wanted to deal with was his untimely death. In her house.

  “Don’t move,” she reiterated. “I’m calling the police.”

  She palmed the phone so the screen was facing her and swiped her finger across it.

  “No.” It was a whisper, at best. “Please. No.”

  Cam shook her head. As if this asshole had any right to make demands of her. She pressed the buttons on her screen.

  “No.” The voice was more forceful.

  The man shifted slightly, and Cam immediately went on the defensive. She raised her foot, intending to kick him back to the floor if he made a move toward her.

  “Cam.”

  She froze when she heard her name.

  The man turned toward her and her heart dropped to her stomach.

  The dark eyes staring into hers were hauntingly familiar. Her throat tightened and her heart vibrated like a jackhammer inside of her.

  This can’t be, she thought. No. How?

  She blinked, as if the physical act of opening and closing her eyes would make the apparition disappear.

  But the man was still there when she reopened her eyes.

  Not just any man.

  Alex Castillo.

  The man who had broken her heart more than a decade ago.

  The man she swore she’d hate for the rest of her life.

  2

  Friday, September 7th

  10:00 pm

  Alex tried to ignore the searing pain in his thigh.

  His attention was glued to the woman standing in front of him.

  Camila Perez.

  He swallowed thickly, drinking her in like a parched man wandering the desert might eye a fountain of fresh water.

  He stared at her long dark hair, her dark eyes, her brows arched in both disbelief and confusion. It had been twelve years since he’d last seen her, and yet it felt as if not a single day had passed.

  But it had been more than a day, and more than a decade.

  A lifetime had gone by.

  A lifetime filled with poor decisions and unfathomable regret.

  “Alex?” Her voice was filled with as much uncertainty as her expression conveyed.

  He gave a weak nod. The wound in his thigh throbbed, but he could already tell it would be superficial. Despite her solid thrust, the jeans he was wearing had slowed the momentum and thus the force with which it pierced his skin. It would definitely leave a scar, and would probably need stitches, but he knew he wasn’t in any immediate danger from it. His other wounds might be another story, though.

  He tried taking a deep breath, grimacing as a piercing pain ricocheted through his rib cage.

  Cam noticed.

  “Are you alright?” she asked in a halting voice.

  Weakly, he shook his head.

  No, he wasn’t alright. Not in any way.

  That was why he was there, slumped on the floor of his ex-girlfriend’s house. A woman he’d last seen when she was a teenager, so bright and beautiful that the sight of her always managed to take his breath away.

  Hell, it still did, he realized.

  Camila Perez was the type of woman dreams were made of. Gorgeous, lithe, but with brains and guts and determination to match. He’d seen all of that back then, when he’d made one foolish decision after another, decisions that had dictated the direction his life had taken. Decisions that had led him right to this very moment, with him on the cool wood laminate floor, struggling to take in air, fighting the waves of nausea roiling through him.

  He was pretty sure the only smart decision he’d ever made was walking away from her. Even if it had been the worst decision of his life.

  Funny how it could be both.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He could hear the incredulity, the outright shock, in her voice.

  Alex couldn’t blame her.

  He was hard-pressed himself to explain what had convinced him that coming to the small town of Aspen Falls was a good idea.

  It was his first time in this town, despite the fact that he was born and raised in Minnesota. But he’d grown up in the cities, on the rough streets in south Minneapolis, with its pre-World War II homes planted on tiny slivers of lots. Most of the houses had bars on the windows and doors, junked cars in the driveway, yards filled with dandelions and clover and stubborn Canadian thistle, whose thorny leaves easily pierced the tender feet of shoeless kids chasing after the ice cream truck, hoping this time it would stop in their neighborhood as it traveled up Lake Street, heading to the nicer parts of town.

  It was the same neighborhood Cam had grown up in.

  The same neighborhood he’d last seen her in.

  She cleared her throat and he refocused his gaze, his eyes locking on hers.

  “What are you doing here?” she repeated. She was firmer this time, more in control of her tone, her inflection. She sounded like a cop.

  Which she was.

  Alex knew this.

  He knew a lot about her, all things considered.

  Just because he’d removed himself from her life all those years ago didn’t mean he’d erased her from existence. At first, he had. The memories had been too painful. But then, slowly, he’d started looking. He knew when she graduated college. When she got her first job at a police station down near Mankato. When she’d transferred to Aspen Falls. And when she’d made detective.

  It wasn’t stalking. He’d never intended to do anything with the information.

  He just wanted to know she was okay.

  That she’d done something with her life. What she’s wanted to do.

  And that nothing had come along to screw things up for her.

  It was the reason Alex had walked away, despite the fact that every fiber of his being had screamed at him to stay put, to fight for her, to turn his life around so he could be all the things she needed him to be.

  Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned, and he remembered that she was waiting for an answer. An answer to a question she’d now asked twice.

  He licked his lips, his tongue running over the bloodied crack that had split his lower lip in two. He still tasted blood, and he wondered if it looked as swollen as it felt.

  “I…” His voice was hoarse. He tried to clear his throat but the motion was too painful, sending a stabbing pain through his rib cage.

  He groaned, slumping to his side.

  His eyes left hers, focusing instead on the detailed pattern of the wood flooring. Anything so he wouldn’t pass out from the pain.

  Something in his peripheral vision shifted and Cam appeared, crouched cautiously on her haunches. She was still holding her phone.

  “Please,” he rasped.

  “You’re hurt.”

  He didn’t think she was talking about the knife still stuck in his leg.

  He managed a weak nod.

  “You need an ambulance. A doctor.”

  He shook his head. “No. No doctor.”

  Her face came into view and he saw the frown darkening her pretty features. She still looked beautiful. So damn beautiful.

  “This is ridiculous.” She shook her head. “You break into my house after I haven’t seen you in God knows how long—”

  “Twelve years,” he whispered, closing his eyes as he struggled to breathe through the pain.

  She continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “You’re clearly injured, and not just because I shoved a knife in your leg.” She sighed. “What the hell is going on?”

  It would be s
o easy to tell her. To just spill his guts and tell her everything that had happened since he’d last seen her.

  But doing that would put her in danger, and that was a risk Alex wasn’t willing to take.

  Hell, he was already beginning to realize that he’d made a piss-poor decision in coming to her house in the first place.

  What had he been thinking?

  He was injured. He was being pursued.

  And what did he do?

  He’d gone running to the one person he cared about most in the world.

  The one person he had moved heaven and earth to protect.

  The woman he’d vowed to walk away from so she could live the life she deserved. The life she wanted.

  So why was he curled up on her living room floor with cracked ribs and a split lip and maybe a concussion, and now a knife protruding from his thigh?

  He knew exactly why.

  Because hours earlier, his life had flashed before his eyes.

  He’d thought he was a goner.

  And all of the regrets, all of the what-ifs had hit him like a freight train barreling down the tracks.

  He knew, even in his dazed, almost delusional state—maybe because of it—that he needed to see her one last time.

  “This is ridiculous,” she muttered for a second time, mostly to herself. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  It took a concerted effort, but Alex managed to reach out a hand to stop her. His fingers gripped the long-sleeve T-shirt she was wearing. “Please,” he mumbled. “Please.”

  “Please what?” She pulled her arm out of his grasp and shifted away from him, her expression instantly wary. Her eyes drifted to the knife, and Alex wondered if she would pull it out so she could use it as a weapon for a second time.

  Her eyes flashed. “Why are you here? After all these years, why are you at my house? In my house?”

  His vision blurred, a blanket of silver and black descending over him. He tried to fight it, tried his best to stay lucid. He couldn’t black out now. Not when he didn’t know what her next move might be.

  Not when what she did next could literally be the difference between life and death.

  For both of them.

  “Camila.” He relished the sound of her full name, the way it rolled off his tongue. He’d spoken it over the years, but here she was in front of him. The living, breathing Camila.

  “Tell me,” she commanded.

  He could feel himself slipping into the darkness.

  But not before he managed to tell her one thing.

  “Because I need you.”

  3

  Friday, September 7th

  10:45 pm

  Cam stared at the man sprawled out on her floor.

  “Because you need me?” she repeated, her voice laced with disbelief.

  Alex didn’t respond.

  Her heart began to pound once again. Because she realized he had passed out.

  Against her better judgment, Cam pressed closer to him. She touched his neck with her free hand, checking for a pulse and exhaling a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding when she finally located it.

  She glanced at his leg, where the hilt of the knife protruded from his jeans. She knew she had to pull it out, had to find a way to staunch the bleeding. Part of her was horrified with what she’d done. What if she’d somehow severed an important artery? What if he was bleeding internally or something, all because of her attack?

  Cam shook her head. Now was not the time to mull those things over.

  She knew what she needed to do right then.

  Get him medical help.

  And then turn him over to her fellow officers at AFPD.

  But the thought made her chest tighten, her throat constrict.

  She shook her head, trying to focus on the things that mattered.

  Alex might have been her first love, but she knew exactly what he had become. He’d started on his path of destruction long before he abandoned her. Even though she’d pleaded with him back then, begged him to change course, he’d refused. She’d threatened to leave him, but ultimately he was the one who had walked away from her. He’d chosen the streets—his gang—over her. His actions hadn’t just broken her heart; it was as if he’d ripped the organ from her chest and deliberately stomped it into the ground, grinding his heel into every chamber, ensuring every tender feeling she’d ever had for him was completely obliterated.

  It had taken Cam years to recover, not just from the heartbreak but also from the simmering anger she’d felt toward him. She knew he’d thrown away their relationship, but he’d also thrown away his chance for a normal life, too.

  That anger was what fueled her during those first post-break-up years, propelling her to stay in school and graduate with honors, to be the first person in her family to go to college, to get her degree in criminal justice and join the first police force that would hire her, to move to Aspen Falls as a cop and work her ass off to make detective.

  She was determined to make something of herself, dammit. To prove to herself—to everyone—that she was better than the streets she’d come from. That she was going to beat the odds, that she wouldn’t become a statistic. No unplanned pregnancies for her. No succumbing to drugs or alcohol. No letting herself get pimped out on the streets like so many of the girls she’d gone to school with. And absolutely no making excuses for a man whose existence relied on stealing from and hurting other people.

  There had been days early in her career as a young, naïve cop when she’d fantasized about returning to her old neighborhood in uniform. Of looking for a certain someone and hunting him down for the crimes she was sure he was committing.

  She could imagine the satisfying click of handcuffs around those wrists, the power that would surge through her as she shoved him into the back of her cruiser.

  It wouldn’t happen, of course. She knew she didn’t have it in her to go back to her old neighborhood and patrol there.

  But she could dream about it.

  About putting Alex Castillo behind bars.

  Locking him up, throwing away the key, and walking away from him the way he’d walked away from her.

  A soft moan grabbed Cam’s attention, forcing her back to the present moment. Her gaze flew to Alex’s closed eyes.

  He groaned again, his brow furrowing.

  “Alex?” Her voice came out softer than she expected. Softer than she’d wanted.

  His eyes fluttered open. They were a rich brown, the color of polished oak.

  Exactly what she remembered.

  “I’m okay,” he whispered.

  He didn’t sound okay. And judging from the pained expression on his face, his cracked lip, and the knife she’d plunged into his leg, he didn’t look very okay, either.

  “You are not okay,” she said flatly. “You need a doctor.”

  It was beginning to sound like some sort of mantra, even to her own ears.

  “No doctor,” he said. “I just…” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I just need a place to stay for tonight. Just tonight.”

  She almost laughed. “You want to stay here?”

  His nod was almost imperceptible.

  A million retorts were on the tip of her tongue, but there was a single word she kept coming back to.

  Why?

  Why was Alex Castillo at her house after all these years?

  And not just at her house but breaking in, obviously injured, definitely desperate.

  It made no sense.

  They’d had zero contact for twelve years.

  She didn’t think he had any idea what she did for a living.

  If he had, he probably wouldn’t have shown up on her doorstep.

  Scratch that: at her back door, picking her lock.

  Come to think of it, how the hell had he found her? The only person she was in contact with from the old neighborhood was Miguel, and that was because he was her brother.

  But he’d left, too. Gotten out years ago, just like she had.
/>   They’d beaten the odds together. Different paths, but the end result was the same.

  They weren’t destined to become a statistic.

  “Please.”

  She stilled. The single word was poignant, a plaintive cry for help.

  “Why should I help you?”

  He shifted, trying to push himself into more of a sitting position. Cam shrank back, immediately on the defensive.

  He stared at her with dark, haunted eyes. “You shouldn’t,” he said bluntly.

  He spoke the truth.

  She knew she shouldn’t help him.

  “But just because you shouldn’t doesn’t mean I don’t want you to.” A slow, pained smile appeared, and her breath caught in her throat.

  It was the same smile that had disarmed her the first time she’d laid eyes on him. She was fifteen again, sitting in the back booth at their local McDonald’s, sucking down cupfuls of Coke because it only cost a dollar and would go further in filling an empty stomach than a bag of fries, and would keep her caffeinated enough to plow through the homework she had from all of her advanced classes.

  The same smile that melted her heart after their first fight, when he’d skipped studying with her to troll the streets with Rico and Sergio.

  The same smile he’d given her under the stars along the banks of Minnehaha Creek, his body keeping her warm, shielding her nakedness as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms.

  The same smile he’d offered the day before he’d broken up with her…after he’d told her he loved her.

  “One night,” he said. “Just let me stay one night. And then I’ll go. I promise.”

  The word she was supposed to say was poised on her lips.

  Cam’s lips rounded…

  And no sound came out.

  Frustration welled inside of her.

  She was behaving like a smitten teenager. Soft words and a tender smile and heavy-lidded eyes shouldn’t have the ability to disarm her. She was a seasoned cop, a hardened detective, for crying out loud.