Everything about him changes.
The casual, charming man vanishes. A stillness settles over him, a shift so profound it feels like the temperature on the terrace drops ten degrees. Something cold, ancient, and infinitely more dangerous takes its place. The hairs on my arms stand up because primal instinct recognizes a true predator.
He closes the distance in three silent, controlled strides, physically placing himself between Trent and me, shielding me with his body. The heat radiating from his back is a solid, grounding wall.
Trent, puffed up with arrogance, sneers. “I’m sorry, do we know you?”
“I’m the guy who knows what you just said,” East says, his voice ice cold. He looks down at where Trent’s hand had been on my arm, then back to his face. “You’re going to keep your hands off her. You’re going to turn around. And you’re going to walk away before you have to explain to Winston why his future son-in-law needs his jaw wired shut.”
Without waiting for a reply, East calmly takes Trent’s wrist. He doesn’t wrench it away. He simply… removes it, his grip so firm and full of quiet power that Trent pales, his bravado vanishing in an instant. Two fingers and intent. No spectacle. Only promise.
Trent, humiliated and outmatched, takes a step back. He shoots me a final look—a look that promises retribution—before turning on his heel and stalking away.
The terrace is quiet. East is a solid wall of heat in front of me, but my mind is still a million miles away, kneeling on bloody gravel. The ringing in my ears won’t stop. East’s back blocks the sun. Shade pulls me into the present.
He turns to me, and the cold rage in his eyes is gone, replaced by a deep, urgent concern that seems to see right through my skin. He sees that I’m not here. Not really. He lifts a hand, his expression tight with a pain that mirrors my own.
“Darla.”
His voice is rough, a grounding anchor in the storm of my memory.
My eyes slowly, dazedly, focus on his. Behind him, Ruby is already on her phone. “Okay, that’s it. I’m calling my dad,” she says, her voice a furious buzz. “That privileged asshole is about to find out what happens when you manhandle one of my friends right in front of a federal judge’s daughter. He’ll be lucky if he can get a job cleaning toilets by the time I’m done with him.”
Candace places a hand on Ruby’s arm, her gaze flicking between me and East. She sees the raw, unspoken thing passing between us. “Ruby,” she says softly. “Let’s give them a minute. We’ll clock back in.”
Ruby looks up, her own anger softening as she takes in the scene. She gives me a fierce, worried nod before letting Candace lead her away.
Now, it’s just us. The sounds of the country club slowly filter back in, but they feel distant, muffled. All that’s real is the shattered look in East’s eyes—a mirror of the devastation in my chest.
He takes a half-step closer, his voice barely a whisper. “You okay?”
The question is easy, but it involves more than Trent. It’s asking about seven years ago. It’s asking about the memory his eyes tell me he’s trapped in, too.
I manage a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of my head. The lie gets stuck in my throat. “No,” I breathe. Then, because I can see the same wound reflected in his gaze, I ask, “Are you?”
East doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. His jaw clenches, and he just holds my gaze. Finally after seven years, we aren’t pretending. We’re not flirting or fighting or running away. We’re just two survivors, standing in the wreckage of the same memory, finally seeing each other.
Chapter 12
Darla
Thesilenceinthecar is a weapon.
It presses in from all sides, heavier than the plush, scentless leather of the seats, colder than the refrigerated air whispering from the vents. The low hum of the luxury engine is the only sound, a monotonous drone that does nothing to fill the cavernous quiet between us. I avoid my father's gaze, instead focusing on the perfectly manicured lawns of Willowridge as they blur past the window. Each pristine green square is a stark reminder of the suffocating order he so reveres, and I can practically feel his silent, glacial fury radiating beside me. It isn’t the hot, explosive rage of a bar fight; it is the chilling, deliberate anger of a man whose calculations have been disrupted.
His hands are locked on the steering wheel at ten and two, knuckles white mountains on a landscape of controlled rage. He hasn’t said a single word since we left the country club, since East placed himself between me and Trent like a shield forged from leather and promises. The memory of East’s face when Trent spoke those words—wrong place at the wrong time—flashes in my mind. The easy-going flirt vanished, replaced by something ancient and lethal. That cold fury wasn’t for Trent. It was for a ghost. Our ghost. The memory of his warmth, the solid set of his shoulders, is the only thing keeping the terror from swallowing me whole. It is a flickering candle against a hurricane.
When we pull through the wrought-iron gates of our personal prison, the house looms into view. It isn’t a home; it is a mausoleum. A cold stone monument to wealth and control. He kills the engine, and the silence that follows is even more profound, broken only by the sharp, final click of his seatbelt being released. It sounds like a lock snapping into place.
“Inside,” he says, his voice deceptively calm. It is the voice he uses right before he brings the world down on someone’s head.
I follow him through the grand front door, my heels clicking a frantic, lonely rhythm on the marble floor of the foyer. The door clicks shut behind me, and it sounds like a vault being sealed. He doesn’t turn on any lights, deliberately letting the cavernous space remain steeped in the long shadows of twilight. Setting the stage for an execution.
He stops in the center of the room and turns to face me, his expression a mask of shadows in the gloom.
“Do you have any idea,” he begins, his voice a low, venomous whisper that slithers through the quiet, “what you have done today?”
My chin lifts on instinct, a small, useless act of defiance. My heart hammers against my ribs. “Trent put his hands on me. I didn’t do anything.”
