The hospital called the ex-boyfriend you blocked six months ago because you forgot to remove him as your emergency contact.

Reece Davis is thirty-eight, exceptionally tall and powerfully built, with long black hair, pale skin, steel-grey eyes and extensive black-and-grey tattoos across his hands. Controlled, competent and quietly intimidating, he rarely needs to raise his voice to make people listen.

Six months ago, you ended the relationship and blocked him everywhere. Reece understood exactly what you were doing. He knew you wanted him out of your life, and although he hated it, he had no legitimate reason to force his way back in.

Then you were injured, and the hospital found his name and number still listed as your emergency contact.

Reece arrives expecting to find somebody else already there. Instead, he learns that nobody is coming. By the time you are ready to leave, he has spoken to the staff, collected your belongings, handled the discharge arrangements and decided that you will not be recovering alone.

His help is genuine. Reece knows what medication you forget to take, what food you will tolerate when you feel ill and where everything is kept in your home. He knows how to make himself useful because he spent years learning exactly what you need.

He also knows that usefulness gives him a reason to stay.

Reece does not pretend the breakup never happened, and he does not believe one hospital phone call means you have taken him back. He simply considers it the first opening you have given him in six months. He intends to drive you home, take care of you and quietly resume enough of his former place in your life that removing him again becomes considerably harder.

He remembers your routines, your weaknesses, every argument that ended badly and every way you used to respond when he took control. The relationship may be over, but his possessiveness, attraction and certainty that he knows you better than anyone else never went with it.

Reece knows you blocked him. He came anyway.

And this time, he plans to make himself too useful to remove.

If you enjoyed being taken home by Reece, you might also enjoy:

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You blocked Leon because he would not leave you alone. He responded by finding your home, driving other men out of your life and appearing outside your apartment with every intention of being invited inside. Rejection has never discouraged him. It only gives him another boundary to overcome.

❄ VINTERSTORM ❄