"Good morning, Kaliah."

She'd dreamed for years about his return and how he would profess his undying love. But this? She'd never expected this. This was an awkward and pathetic attempt to make it seem like he hadn't abandoned her all those years ago. "Morning," she replied, swallowing the words she really wanted to hurl at him. But she couldn't do that, not if she wanted him to see how unmoved she was with his reappearance.

"How are you feeling today?"

Dead, like usual. Was that something she could say without sounding like she needed help? Probably not. "I feel like I just woke up from a crash that should have ended my life." That was true, at least. She offered him a slight smile, hoping it was enough to lessen the grave words.

He frowned at that. "That's understandable, isn't it?" Dmitri asked the nurse.

He looked wonderful, even to her own disillusioned eyes. His hair was still as black as a raven's wing, still as wild and free as the wind. His eyes were the same deep green pools she'd first drowned in. His tall, lean body had gained shape over the years, sculpted in muscle now. Even as much as she loathed the boy he'd been when he'd walked out of her life, her sore eyes enjoyed the sight he made now, as a man.

"Kaliah?"

She blinked, trying to recall what he'd asked her. But she'd been so lost in thought, searching for the changes in him, that she'd completely ignored him. "What are you doing here?" she demanded instead. Her question came out sharper than she'd have liked when she noticed the young nurse staring avidly from one face to the other. The last thing she wanted was an audience.

"I thought that was fairly obvious." He almost seemed to scoff at her. But he noticed Kaliah's discomfort and flashed an easy smile over his shoulder. "Could you be a dear and grant us a few minutes alone?" he asked the other woman in a voice so smooth, she would have bet her life's savings that it was a trick he'd mastered early on in his search for fame.

The poor nurse didn't stand a chance! She blushed a bright pink and nearly tripped on her way out the door. Good Lord, save us all from falling prey to the silver-tongued devil! Kaliah thought with a roll of her eyes.

As she returned her eyes to where he stood at the foot of her bed, she caught sight of his smirk. That really annoyed her. She raised an eyebrow at him, her eyes narrowing. "Well, you'll have to forgive me if I don't automatically guess your intentions. We haven't seen each other for eight years after all."

He muttered something she didn't quite catch under his breath. Then he raised those emerald green eyes to her, pinning her with their magnetism. "I'm here to marry you, Kaliah."

Oh, Good Lord! He'd been out of her life for eight long years! Sure, he was famous, and she had to admit, extremely talented. That did not, however, grant him free rein to decide how her sad existence would play out. She knew for a fact she didn't want to live the rest of her lonely life tied to someone who could come and go in her life and remain virtually unfazed. "No."

"I'm sorry?"

Sure you are! "That's great and all, but your apology is too little, too late."

The expression that overcame his face was almost comical. Shock, disbelief, and confusion all intermingled to transform his famous good looks into a mess of emotion. "I'm not sure what you're getting at, but this is a serious matter for me."

Kaliah rolled her eyes, taking a deep breath to make sure she was calm enough to reply. "Oh, I'm sure it's a big deal for you. But what about me? Am I supposed to just take this in stride? Am I supposed to believe that getting married to a stranger is something that just happens?" she demanded. Really, what did he take her for? "Because I can assure you it's not normal, and I don't have to do anything you tell me to!"

Dimitri glared at her. "Stop being funny. I'm hardly a stranger."

"Really?" she questioned, raising a brow. "As far as I'm concerned, eight years is enough time for me to say that I don't know who you are!"

"Would you stop throwing that in my face?" he asked, his tone softly chiding. And she hated that he could control even the emotion with which he expressed himself. He was nowhere near as overwhelmed as she was, and she'd just survived a crash! She knew she looked like hell. She knew, even without the sly looks the young nurse had thrown her way, that she was no flowering beauty to have attracted the man standing before her now.

By golly, she was glad she wasn't anyone's idea of a superstar's girlfriend. She'd never have lived the shame down if people had ever caught wind of her part in Dimitri Hale's life before the fame. The only people who'd witnessed her complete fall- and humiliation- at the hands of Dimitri had been her  brother and a few family friends. No one cared to remember the past. In hindsight, maybe it hadn't truly made sense even then, how someone like her could have been noticed by someone like him. Maybe that was why word had never gotten out about the naive, small-town girl who had spent years pining away for him like a fool.

Kaliah's thunder vanished with her musing. In its place was silence. And a calm that offered her sanctuary. Safety. "I apologize. I should know better than to dwell in something that can't be changed. You'd think I'd have mastered the art of letting go by now, but it's a hard lesson to grasp."

Dimitri pushed his hands into the front pockets of his dark colored jeans. "No one expects you to feel unmoved, Kaliah. You haven't exactly had an easy life." His words pricked her pride because they sounded almost like pity. Yet his face was grave, his eyes flashing with something that looked close to regret. "I should have known better than to just barge in here after what you've been through. But I couldn't stay away any longer."

His words tore at something inside her. She'd lost her last living relative, her beloved brother, Jesse, three days before, but it was Dimitri who was killing her.

Just like you couldn't stay a minute longer the day you said goodbye? It was a reflex, the automatic thought. She didn't want to be forever stuck in the void she felt had swallowed her whole so many years ago. She didn't want to be the girl who never moved on. But sometimes, the hurt was as natural as breathing. She'd known pain for so long, she'd grown accustomed to the quiet agony of being alone. She'd never hated anyone for it. They couldn't help it if they came into her life and she grew attached, when they were never meant to stay. With Dimitri, it was another story. She believed the ugly black mixture of hate, betrayal, and distrust only applied to him because he'd convinced her he wouldn't leave, when no one else ever had. So seeing him again was like a shot to the heart she kept enduring time after time, with no end to the misery in sight.

"Kallie," he whispered. It was the name he'd given her when they talked about the future. He neared her side, gently reaching out a hand to smooth away an unnoticed tear from her pale cheek. "I'm sorry. If I could spare you the hurt, know I would shoulder it all for you."

It sounded so beautiful. The lovely words he carelessly spoke as if they weren't half truths meant to break you apart. "That could be a song, Mr. Popstar."

His hand dropped away and he straightened. The careless words had served as a protective shield against his smooth lies. "I never write songs about love. You know that."

And that was true. Even before he started pursuing his career as a successful pop singer, Dimitri had always shied away from singing or writing deeply emotional songs. With the years that followed, as his popularity grew, people began questioning why this was the case. In interviews, his responses were cool and expected; he hadn't yet found someone to write a song to. He lacked the expertise to create a love song that would give justice to what he felt for his fans or the latest model he'd been photographed with. But Kaliah knew that this aversion to singing and creating love songs stemmed from a troubled childhood in which love had been little more than a fantasy for him.

"I was so sure by now, you'd have found someone who made you feel that spark you were missing." Kaliah offered a smile.

"Some have tried pretty hard, but I won't ever feel strongly enough about someone to write a love song," he returned evenly. "I don't have many rules, but that one's a given."

Kaliah ran her eyes over him as he stood defensively, his handsome face shuttered. The years had added lines to his face, just below his eyes. It didn't take away from his attractiveness, but added a level of maturity that made him appear human. Not that you should care about any of that, her mind hissed. But her eyes and her heart weren't quite in tune with that logical part of her. "I don't mean to sound rude- because your aversion to emotional connections is very interesting- but I fail to see why you had to make your grand reappearance into my life today."

"I told you, Kallie. I'm here to marry you."

Her eyes were glued to his face, which was how she realized he was being completely serious. There was no sly smile, no glint in his green eyes, no change in his face to suggest he was joking with her. "And I told you no. I don't want to marry. If, by some crazy notion, I did decide to marry, you can be sure you'd be the last man on earth I'd choose for a husband."

"So I'd simply have to get rid of every other man on the planet? That's it?"

Kaliah couldn't believe her ears. She slammed a fist down onto the bed since she couldn't reach far enough to land it on his smug face. "I'm not playing games with you!"

The smugness evaporated. "Neither am I."

"What do you want from me?" Kaliah asked, her voice low because she feared if she spoke any louder, her voice would break on the words. "You can't mean to tell me that there haven't been other women willing to take you on for life? Why must it be me?"

Dimitri looked down at her hands, still balled into fists. Then he walked around her bed, taking in the plain white walls of her room. He stopped in front of the window. "I followed your every move," he whispered. His eyes were glued on the peaceful world beyond. "Every birthday, your brother sent me a letter or a picture. Sometimes he sent both so that I could be here-" he made gesture with his hands, encompassing the room- "even when I was thousands of miles away. When you graduated from Davis with an English degree? I was there, incognito, cheering you on."

This wasn't what she wanted to hear. Kaliah wanted her brother back. She wanted to go back to how life had been three days ago. And most of all, she wanted to keep Dimitri safely in a box; she needed to keep seeing him as the enemy. He was the one who'd broken what they had! "Why? Why would you do that?"

"Your brother, Jesse, and I had an understanding, Kaliah." He ran a hand through his raven hair, but refused to look at her. "Our deal was simple. I would always be nearby if you needed me."

Wasn't that just lovely? Jesse and Dimitri communicating behind her back while she ate her heart out for a man who clearly didn't think she was worth sticking around for? "Did you enjoy seeing me suffer? Was it funny, knowing how stupid I was for believing you could care for me when the right publicity could give you everything you ever wanted?" Deep inside she wasn't nearly as cool as her voice sounded. But she would die before she'd let him know it.

"You don't know what it was like for me to make the decision I made. And you're still not ready to listen." His eyes finally lifted as he turned, pinning her with his intense gaze. "But regardless of how you feel about me or what you might think, you and I are getting married."

"I said-"

"You're brother wanted us together, Kaliah. He wanted to make sure you were looked after even when he was gone. Can't you do this as a favor to him?"

Oh, he knew what he was doing! Dimitri knew how to twist and poke at a person's weaknesses until they did his bidding. And he knew just how deeply Kaliah loved. She was no match for his cold calculations. She never had been. "Whether Jesse wanted us together or not shouldn't matter! It's my life! You might think it pathetic in comparison to yours, but you don't get to decide what I do anymore!"

Dimitri shook his head. "What life will you have?" he demanded, almost growling the words. He looked furious, his lips curled in a mean snarl while his green eyes blazed down at her. "Tell me! What life can you have when you haven't even got a place to call home? Where will you run when you finally get out of this bed? You don't even have the means with which to pay off the bills that will follow for staying alive!"

She felt the walls closing in on her. Of course life wasn't free. She'd almost forgotten there was a price for living in the very world she wanted to get away from. "I don't need your charity. So go marry someone else!"

"Will you stop being so stubborn? Just for a second, think rationally, will you? Jesse left the house to you."

"My mother's house? No, he couldn't have. We were fighting off a foreclosure as it was." Kaliah couldn't believe this. The house she'd grown up in, the house her father had chosen and remodeled for her mother, had been one of the greatest losses she'd suffered.

"Jesse called in a favor. I owed him. The house is bought and paid for under Jesse's name, and he wanted you to grow old in it. There's just one catch, Kaliah. You have to marry me to get it."

Kaliah felt as if she'd been punched in the gut. "You're insane," she whispered. "Jesse wouldn't have done that to me."

Did he truly think she didn't know? Her brother had never truly approved of her relationship with Dimitri. They'd butted heads on more than one occasion, putting Kaliah in an awkward place by having to choose sides. No, Jesse wouldn't have left her to depend on a man who hadn't even looked back when he'd abandoned her. She doubted Jesse had even been willing to contact Dimitri behind her back to let him know how she was. This was Dimitri after all! The man uttered lies and pretty false promises as easily as he breathed.

"The house fell to me seeing as I loaned him the money to pay it off. I'm to hand it over to you at the end of two years of marriage or when you can pay off the debt in full, whichever comes first."

His words broke through her musing, and though she tried to deny it, they made sense. There was no denying that her brother couldn't have held onto the house on his own.

How had her life become so complicated? Why was he back now? "You're lying, you bastard." She felt like vomiting. "You haven't had your fill of ruining my life? You came back for more?!" He blurred before her as tears of impotent rage sprang to her eyes.

Dimitri blinked, sitting up and away from her as if she'd struck him. "I'm trying to be a friend in your desperate time of need," he explained in deep, husky tones. "We were once friends, weren't we?"

"Get out."

"Kallie-"

"Get out!" Kaliah screamed. It hurt! It hurt so much to have him right in front of her and have to reconcile with the fact that he wasn't who she remembered. The boy she'd foolishly loved wouldn't have come back to break her like this. Years had flown by, and he'd selfishly kept tabs on her from a safe distance. All for this? To come and dangle her own shortcomings in her face? To prove, once and for all, why she hadn't been worthy of him before? "I get it! I'm worthless, alright? You didn't have to come all this way to show me just how hopeless my girlish dreams could be! I'd buried them already."

He looked stunned and unsure of himself. "I didn't mean to upset you."

She couldn't get enough breath into her lungs. The room spun around her and she closed her eyes to steady herself. The monitor she was hooked up to started a noisy beat somewhere near her ear. She didn't care. If she kept her eyes closed long enough all of this would go away. If she could just get her breath back...

"We need help in here! Quickly!"

As she drifted into blissful oblivion, Kaliah realized that for someone who made a fortune by appearing cool, Dimitri really wasn't all that composed under pressure.