I pulled away from my newest dance partner, a guy with more tattoos than uninked skin. He didn’t protest, just turned and started dancing with someone else.

I pushed through the throng and leaned against the back wall, trying to control my breathing. I couldn’t see Brooks. I only hoped he was still around somewhere. I couldn’t imagine him leaving me behind, but when I pulled my phone out of my pocket I was shocked to see that it was already one-thirty in the morning.

This place seemed to suck you into a void, and before you knew it, you’d lost all sense of time.

A girl wearing barely any clothing came up next to me. “You lookin’ for anything?” she asked, yelling into my ear.

“What?” I asked, not understanding what she was asking.

The girl rolled her eyes and pressed a small bag in my hand. I held it up in front of my face and saw that it held a tiny pill. The girl pushed my hand down. “Don’t be so obvious about it,” she said in irritation.

I tried to hand it back to her with a shake of my head. “I’m not interested in this stuff.”

The girl shoved my hand back. “It’s a free sample. You want more, you’ll have to find it yourself. Don’t be a narc; just enjoy the ride,” she said, her head bobbing in time to the beat. With a final pointed glance in my direction, she disappeared into the crowd.

I didn’t want the drugs. But I didn’t know what to do with them, either.

I shook the small plastic bag, wondering what exactly the girl had given me. I was intrigued, despite my better judgment.

I shook the pill onto my palm and stared at it as though it would give me the answer. But I knew one thing: This stuff was bad. I knew this was the kind of crap that had killed my sister.

Yet I was curious.

What was it about being in this place that made me want to indulge in the scary and unknown? It was nuts. It was completely illogical.

And I was smarter than that.

I had to be.

I hastily put the pill back in the baggie and dropped it on the floor, smashing it under my boot.

I felt jittery. The brush with a temptation I didn’t entirely understand rattled me, but I felt proud of myself for not giving in.

And then I saw him.

The guy with the baseball cap. The one who had stopped me from becoming a ra**st’s plaything. The man who had prevented me from being trampled to death my first night at the club.

The guy whose face was still a mystery.

He was talking to a man not twelve feet from me. They were partially hidden in a dark corner. Their discussion appeared heated, but it was definitely my faceless guy. I recognized the broad width of his shoulders and the telltale cap pulled low over his eyes.

I started to walk toward him. It was as though I was being pulled toward him.

I watched as he took some money, tucking the wad in his back pocket. I noticed my mystery man put something in the other guy’s outstretched palm. The subtle exchange was carried out in less than thirty seconds, but it was obvious what was happening.

My mystery guy was a drug dealer.

Remembering the baggie I had discarded on the floor, I had to wonder if he was the one circulating that shit in the crowd. Considering the steady flow of “customers,” it was an easy association to make.

Nice guy, my ass. It was obvious he was like every other predator looking for an easy mark. I was devastated by the new assumption that perhaps our encounters had been nothing more than a chance for him to acquire a new customer. And here I was thinking I was special.

After another guy secured a pocketful of something that clearly made him very happy, a girl took his place and pressed into mystery dude, her br**sts brushing his arm. She opened her mouth, and he dropped something onto her tongue. She rolled her head back, her barely concealed br**sts popping out of her shirt.

The girl wrapped her arms around mystery guy’s neck and rubbed against him provocatively. I couldn’t see his eyes, but his mouth was grinning. He put something in his mouth and continued to allow the girl to move against him.

The girl reached up and pulled his cap off, and for the first time I could see his hair. It was blond and curled around his ears in a very familiar way.

I pushed through the crowd, getting closer. And then I stopped, frozen in place.

The guy turned, his hands resting on the girl’s hips while she writhed against him. His cap had been discarded on the floor, and I could see his face in the red light that hung above him.

It was Maxx.

Suddenly something dark and ugly unfurled in my belly—something that was possessive and territorial and that pierced with the sting of betrayal.

Only a few hours ago he had been pressed intimately against me. A few hours ago, I thought that we had connected, that I had meant something to him.

But watching him here, in the flickering shadows, wearing the face I recognized but didn’t yet understand, I felt like a complete and total idiot. How did I not recognize Maxx in the broad set of the mystery guy’s shoulders? How had I missed the soft curls that I had felt with my fingers just a few hours ago?

I watched as he popped another pill in his mouth and then pulled away from the girl, who reached after him. He gave her a less than gentle shove, and she stumbled back, almost losing her balance. He bent down to pick up his cap and set it back on his head. He pulled it low over his eyes, hiding his face again.

But there was no more hiding who he was. He wasn’t a mystery. He wasn’t a hidden savior.

He was something else entirely.

I desperately tried to ignore the twinge inside me that screamed, Wait, there has to be more to him than this.