Exclusive Excerpt – Respect by Jay Crownover

In my life, I’d been shot, stabbed, beaten, and tortured. I couldn’t remember any of those things hurting as much as seeing the damage I did to Karsen up close and personal. I knew I was going to break her heart. I didn’t have a choice. But seeing the long-term effects of my actions still clinging to her, lingering with her, it burned somewhere deep inside of me. I felt it right next to the place that had been empty and hollow the second she left.

I lifted a hand and ran my fingers over my scar. It was a bad habit, one I mostly controlled, unless I was extremely anxious over something. There wasn’t much in this world that pushed me toward my nervous twitch. The young blonde in front of me was—and would always be—the exception to the rule. Even when she was way too young to make me nervous, I still found myself touching my face as a reminder there were some mistakes that stuck with you forever.

Realizing I needed to rein in this situation, I dropped back a step so she wasn’t as crowded and tried to relax my always rigid and alert stance. When you were nearly six-and-a-half-feet tall and built to take beatings and bullets, looking nonthreatening wasn’t exactly an option. The slender young woman watching me like a hawk was the only one who ever acted like she saw something beyond the battle scars and armor I showed to the rest of the world.

“I know I hurt you…” It was lame. Weak. But it was also true. I knew I hurt her. I meant to. It was the only way to get her to go. It was the only way to give Race what he wanted. It was the only way to keep my ass out of jail. But she’d had time—four years, to be exact—she’d had space, she lived a whole life without me or the Point in it. I was hoping the distance may have brought clarity, the realization I would never have done what I did without a damn good reason. But looking at her furious face, I understood I’d been existing on wishful thinking and false hope for far too long.

Karsen’s pale eyebrows shot up and her pretty, pink mouth dropped open like the hinges on her jaw had suddenly stopped working. Another one of those ugly laughs that shouldn’t come from such a pretty girl shot out of her mouth. Slowly, her head shook back and forth as if she couldn’t believe I not only had the audacity to sneak into her home, but to speak of our shared history in such simple terms.

“You did not hurt me, Booker.” She pointed a shaking finger at my stinging face. I was going to have a bruise and probably a partial shiner. I was proud of her for defending herself. I was glad living in a place where she could breathe without choking on pollution and corruption hadn’t made her soft or complacent. “You annihilated me. The girl I was before doesn’t exist anymore, and that sucks, because she was pretty damn special.”

I blinked at her in confusion.

She looked the same. Older, slightly more polished and pulled together, but she was still the same stunning girl I’d been carefully dancing my way around since she was sixteen. “Who are you now?

She scoffed at me and rolled her eyes. “I’m a girl who’s homesick—and a woman who’s sick of my home—all because you’re there. I’ve wished every day for the past four years that I’d never met you.”

Ouch. Direct hit.