Itried to appear unshaken while internally cataloging every exit point in the gallery. There were four: the main entrance, the emergency door by the bathrooms, the staff entrance, and, if desperate enough, the skylight twelve feet above us. My money was on the emergency door. Less crowded.
I forced my face into a mask of polite disinterest, even as my pulse hammered in the hollow of my throat. This wasn’t happening. This man shouldn’t be here, in this gallery, in front of a canvas he’d painted that looked disturbingly like my dad.
“I’m Blitz.” He extended his hand toward me. “The hack artist responsible for making people want to buy more shit.”
“Neve North.” I stuck out my hand, matching his confident posture despite the storm of questions battering my mind.
His palm met mine, and the world tilted sideways.
Heat. Not a gentle kind, but a blazing shock of it racing up my arm, chasing away the perpetual chill in my fingertips. My skin tingled where our hands connected, the sensation almost electrical but impossibly pleasant.
Blitz’s eyes widened a fraction, his gaze dropping to our joined hands, then back to my face. Did he feel it too?
I yanked my hand back, curling my fingers into a fist to trap the lingering warmth.
“North.” He repeated my last name like it meant something beyond a cardinal direction. “Where are you from?”
The question felt loaded, like a test I hadn’t studied for. “Los Angeles.”
“Before that.”
My brain short-circuited. Why would he care? Why was I suddenly struggling to remember my standard answer?
“I’ve always lived here.” Why did my mouth suddenly feel so dry?
Blitz’s stare was unnerving, like he was trying to read something written on my soul.
“And your parents? Where are they from?”
“The Arctic Circle,” Mia interjected with a laugh, completely misreading the room. “Her dad studies polar ice caps or glaciers or something equally frigid. The apple couldn’t have fallen farther from the frozen tree.”
I shot her a look that could have crystallized the champagne in her glass.
Blitz tilted his head, his gaze flickering from my face to the painting, then back again. “Your parents work in the Arctic? That’s... interesting.”
The word ‘interesting’ sounded dangerous in his mouth, like a match striking against sandpaper.
I was about to deflect when a shadow shifted at the edge of my vision, and the room’s temperature seemed to drop another ten degrees.
A second man materialized beside Blitz. He was tall, solid, built like someone who could bench press a small car without breaking a sweat. He had deep brown skin, short hair, and steel-blue eyes that took in everything without revealing a damn thing. I hadn’t heard him approach, which was unsettling given his size.
He was from that night too. One of the men who’d followed Mike when he’d fled the patio.
He didn’t speak, just stood there like a wall of granite beside Blitz, studying me with the quiet focus of someone piecing together a puzzle mid-collapse.
“Cole.” Blitz acknowledged him with a nod. “This is Neve North.”
Cole inclined his head slightly, the gesture almost formal. His eyes never left mine, and something in their depths made my skin prickle with goosebumps.
“Nice to finally meet you.” His voice was deep, the words measured like he rationed them by the syllable.
Mia shifted beside me. “Right. Anyway, we should probably circulate. So many art patrons to charm, so little champagne to go around.” She hooked her elbow around mine, ready to lead me away.
“Already leaving?” Another voice wove through the crowd, warm and rich like honey.
A third man approached our increasingly uncomfortable gathering, his red curls a shockingly bright contrast to the gallery’s stark white walls and the muted tones of everyone’s cocktail attire. His smile was radiant and almost out of place among the contemplative expressions of the art crowd.
It felt like I’d inhaled the entire winter scene around us. Did I legit have nine stalkers?
