Stone. The name doesn’t sound familiar, but I hardly know the names of all the rich people in New York. I’ve crossed paths with a lot of them, but they were all Mr. Smiths and Mr. Joneses. No one gave a real name on the island.
I bite my lip. Why am I having a hard time throwing the card away? Doesn’t make any sense. I’m in love with Luke. As attractive as Lance Stone was, I didn’t feel a tingle.
Throw it away, Katelyn.
But I don’t. I open my top dresser drawer and slide the card under my underwear.
Then I go downstairs and hail a cab to take me to Luke’s.
Luke opens the door for me. “Hey, baby.”
“Hi.”
“You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Luke looks devastating, of course. He’s wearing jeans and a black button-down. His eyes are as dark and memorizing as ever.
Except they’re not his eyes. Chills hit me like a gust of wind.
The colored contacts.
“Luke?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“What color are your eyes?”
“They’re brown.”
“Are they? Truly?”
“Why are you asking me this, Katelyn?”
“You’re forgetting that you left me here this morning. You also left something in your mirrored cabinet above the sink.”
He drops his gaze to the floor.
“I saw the contacts, Luke. The colored contacts.”
“Katelyn, I—”
“You were going to leave me early this morning. Without saying goodbye. But there’s a lot of other stuff you’re not saying too, isn’t there?”
“Baby…”
I inhale. I must stay strong. Although even now, I’m getting the tingles that I always get in Luke’s presence.
“Please don’t,” I say. “Please… No more lies.”
“Katelyn—”
“No. No. Just… No.”
My mind is blurred. Words fly around inside my head, but I can’t make any cogent sense of them. What color are Luke’s eyes? Maybe they are brown. Maybe there’s a reason he wears the brown contacts. I don’t know anything about optometry or ophthalmology. There could be a good reason, right?
Except I already know I’m grasping at straws.
“Katelyn,” Luke says, “are you all right?”
No, I’m not all right. But I don’t say the words. I can’t make them come out of my throat. I’m in a daze. A daze or haze or just a mess. Am I concussing? Having a stroke?
Something is going on in my mind and I—
I gasp as my legs crumple beneath me, and I fall to the floor.
15
LUKE
“Baby!” I lift her into my arms. “Fuck, what have I done to you?”
My heart beats rapidly. Katelyn, my Katelyn. I place her on my bed, which is still unmade from when she was here this morning.
“What have I done?” I say again.
A soft sigh escapes her lips, and her eyes open slowly.
“Katelyn?”
She doesn’t speak. I brush my lips over her softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are your eyes really brown?” she whispers.
I know better. I know better than to tell her anything about my disguise.
I have to get to LA safely. If I don’t, I won’t be able to right the wrongs.
I hold back a scoff. It would take three lifetimes to right all of my wrongs. I knew this going in.
Is it even worth trying?
I have to now. I told Pollack who I was, and I called my father.
I already have my flight booked to LA tomorrow morning.
I don’t have a choice.
And I know I can’t be what Katelyn needs unless I fix as much as I can.
It’s a done deal.
“I’ll be right back, baby.” I push her hair off her forehead.
I rise slowly, so as not to nudge her. I want to keep her comfortable. Then I go to the bathroom, and I remove my colored contact lenses. My vision is perfect. I’ve never needed correction, so these contact lenses are for nothing more than cosmetic purposes.
To change my stark blue eyes to brown.
My naturally blond hair is covered by the hair dye. Nothing can be done about that. It will have to grow out. For now it stays short and brown.
As I stare at myself in the mirror, my actual reflection stares back at me, as if the mirror only shows what I truly am.
Long blond hair. Blue eyes. Scruffy blond stubble.
I’ve remained closely shaven since I started this charade. Sandy blond stubble wouldn’t really jibe with the dark brown hair.
The shirt I’m wearing seems to dissolve in front of my eyes, showing more accuracy in my reflection. My bare chest—no dark hair, since I’m not dark-haired. The scar from my stab wound to the stomach, and then my most recent scar—the bullet to my shoulder.
And, of course, the tattoo that begins on my left hand and winds all the way up my left arm to my shoulder.
The Raven with flaming wings.
Lucifer Raven.
My dark side.
Funny. I’m a blond and blue-eyed man, but the name Raven stuck.
I remember when I got it.
“Tell me something, rich boy,” King says.
King is actually his real name. Short for Kingsford Winston. His goons jumped me when I was walking around a seedy part of LA. A place where I had no business being, but I was a rebel in those days.
I was rebelling against my old man.
Even against my mother.
I was twenty-one and rebelling against anything.
But unlike James Dean, I was not a rebel without a cause. My old man threatened to cut me off if I didn’t get my shit together.
Since I didn’t give a rat’s ass about him, I told him to go for it.
But not before pocketing as much cash as I could and getting it into my own name.
Still…I needed to make a living. I needed to find some way to make money.
Which is how I got involved with King.
“You think you’re worthy?” he asks me.
“I can handle a gun like nobody’s business,” I say. “And I’m a third-degree black belt in judo.”
“How’d that happen, rich boy?”
“How do you think? My old man paid for all of it. I had the best lessons money could buy.”
“And how am I supposed to trust that you aren’t going to go running back to that world?”
“That world turned its back on me.”
“I hear you, rich boy. The world turned its back on me a long time ago.”
Interesting. Seems I have something in common with this drug lord.
“This is not an easy life, rich boy,” he says.
“I’m not looking for easy.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I want to make more money than my old man can ever dream of.”
“Your old man’s a multimillionaire. Close to a billion, I hear. Drugs aren’t a billion-dollar industry, at least not for any one person. But…you can make in the hundreds of millions if you play your cards right.”
“How do I play my cards right?” I ask.
“First, you become indispensable to me.”