Declan Gates never did know how to play nice….

His gaze drifted over the sun-glazed stone of the house, so different from the menacing blackened visage he remembered from his childhood.

The power of the place still moved him. The dark ocean sprawled beneath the wide gray sky; the high granite cliffs; the wheeling, crying seagulls. The sharp, salt tang of the air scratched at a raw place inside him.

He hadn’t been here for...what, ten years?

He heard Lily’s car engine as she pulled down the drive. She’d brought him back.

She always did have that kind of power over him.

Blackrock High’s most likely to succeed, Lily Wharton was used to getting what she wanted.

Once, long ago, he’d have given her anything.

But this time lovely Lily Wharton wouldn’t get her way.