Page 4 of My Girl to Ruin

Yet my heart is pounding like I’m about to step off a cliff. Four years.

Four years since everything fell apart. Since Tyler died. Since Lachlan disappeared from my life without a single word. Without a goodbye. Without even looking at me when I begged to see him. I swallow hard, curling my fingers into a fist to keep them still.

He doesn’t know I’m here. I didn’t tell him. He would have found a way to stop me. He always does.

His lawyer hadn’t wanted to give me the address at first. I practically had to beg. But I needed this. Needed to see him with my own eyes. Needed to know he was real and not just some ghost I’d built in my head over the years.

Because if I don’t do this now, I never will.

I knock. The sound carries too far in a building this quiet. Wilder House is five floors of plain brick—a coin laundry off the lobby, a wall of small mailboxes, and a manager’s office with the door propped open. The man inside had glanced up when I came in, taken in the determined look on my face, and gone back to his paperwork without asking me a single thing. I got the sense that’s how it works here. Everybody’s carrying something. Nobody asks.

My breath catches as I step back slightly, my palms damp against the sides of my jeans. For a second, nothing happens.

Then I hear movement inside. Heavy footsteps. My pulse spikes. The door opens.

And there he is.

For a moment, everything inside me just…stops.

Lachlan Green.

He fills the doorway like he was made for it, bigger than I remember, broader in a way that feels almost overwhelming. His shoulders stretch the thin fabric of his black T-shirt, muscles defined and solid beneath it.

Ink curls over his skin in intricate patterns that disappear beneath his sleeves and reappear along his forearms, dark and deliberate. His hair is still black, still thick, still messy like he doesn’t care enough to tame it. But it’s longer now, falling just far enough to brush his forehead.

His jaw is rough with scruff, as if he’s stopped bothering with things that don’t matter. Then his eyes, blue. Sharp. Cold. Cutting straight through me like ice. For a second, there’s something else there too. Surprise. Real, unfiltered surprise.

“Tatum?”

My name sounds strange coming from him. Rougher than I remember.

Heat floods my chest, my throat tightening as I take a small step forward. “Hi.”

The moment stretches. The surprise disappears as quickly as it came, replaced by something hard. Anger. His expression shuts down, his body going rigid as his gaze darkens.

“How did you find me?” The question comes out flat. Controlled. Dangerous.

“I—”

He doesn’t let me answer. “Who told you where I am?” he demands, voice tightening. “Was it my lawyer?”

I open my mouth again, but he’s already shaking his head, stepping back like he’s putting distance between us without actually moving away.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mutters. “You shouldn’t be here.”

The words hit harder than they should. Something in my chest splits open, but I force myself to stand my ground.

“I wanted to see you,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady but failing to keep my hands from trembling. “I—”

“No.” His voice sharply cuts through mine. “You need to leave.”

For a second, I just stare at him.

Leave?

After everything? After four years of silence, of being shut out, of trying and failing to reach him over and over again?

Something inside me shifts. “No,” I say quietly.