The question loops through my mind like a broken prayer as I slide ruby red lipstick across my lips and lean forward to kiss the mirror, leaving a perfect, bleeding print behind.
“Why do you do that?” Lola sighs from behind me, already exasperated.
“So you’ll never forget me,” I say, giving her a wink through the glass.
She arches a brow. “Why, are you going somewhere?”
“Yeah. Work.”
Her expression shifts—softens in a way that always makes my throat tighten. “Cass, I really wish you didn’t have to go there. I worry that one night you won’t make it back.”
I sympathise with her fear, truly. Because it’s not like I haven’t thought the same thing. Walking into that club every night in my tiny black dress and bunny ears and heels that should’ve snapped my ankles years ago… it’s a gamble. A stupid, exhausting gamble. But until I find something better, I go.
I always go.
“I’ll be fine,” I lie, tugging at the hem of my dress like that’ll magically make it longer. “Besides, I’m not the kind of girl bad things happen to.”
Lola doesn’t laugh. She just watches me with that look—the one that says she knows I’m full of shit but hasn’t got the strength to argue with me about it anymore.
“You know,” she says quietly, “sometimes I wish you believed that.”
I don’t answer. I just smudge my lipstick with my finger until it looks less perfect, less polished. I’m not in the mood to be perfect tonight.
I’m in the mood to forget.
The club hits colder tonight, though I can’t tell if it’s the temperature or just the absence I’ve been dragging around like a phantom. It’s like he’s still here somehow—pressed against themirror behind my eyelids, whispering down my neck, growling butterfly like he was meant to ruin me with it.
The bass vibrates through the floorboards—thick, smoky, pulse-like—and I grip the tray tighter as I weave through VIP. Hungry eyes watch me with the kind of interest that should make my skin crawl, but I barely feel it.
He ruined me.
One kiss.
One night.
One man.
Now every look feels like a violation.
Every voice that isn’t his feels wrong.
Every hand that reaches isn’t the one I want.
I slip back into the rhythm anyway; I know how to fake it. I’ve been faking it since I was fifteen.
But then it happens.
That subtle shift in the air.
That whisper down my spine.
That instinct older than logic.
He’s here.
Dax fucking Kingston.
And I’m not ready.
