She stood up from the table, grabbing her empty mug.
"Breakfast is on you," she said.
She started walking away. Then she paused, glanced back over her shoulder.
"I'm in room 481."
Fuck.
Every muscle in my body screamed at me to follow her. To run after her. To not waste another second.
But the waitress was already heading my way with the bill, and I forced myself to stay seated, to wait, to not look like a man who was about to lose his goddamn mind.
I signed the receipt, left cash on the table, and stood.
Room 481.
I was already moving.
7
AMELIA
Ishould have locked the door.
I knew it the second I heard the knock—one, two, three steady hits that vibrated through the cheap hotel wood and into my bones.
I stood there in the middle of the room, barefoot on carpet, heart pounding hard enough to make the lamp shade tremble in my peripheral vision.
I could’ve ignored it. Pretended I was asleep. Pretended I wasn’t the idiot who’d just told Levi Dane my room number like I was handing a lit match to a man soaked in gasoline.
The knock came again.
I crossed the room.
Every step felt like an argument I was losing with myself.
When I opened the door, he was there—broad shoulders filling the frame, T-shirt clinging to his chest, eyes darker than they’d been in the lobby. He smelled like coffee and the faintest hint of jet fuel, like he’d carried the morning with him.
We stared at each other for a beat that stretched too long.
“You took your time,” I said.
“You ran,” he replied. “I gave you a head start.”
I should’ve slammed the door.
Instead, I stepped back.
“Get in or get out,” I said. “The hallway isn’t my preferred place for bad decisions.”
His mouth ticked, just once. Then he stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind him with a soft finality that made my skin prickle. Suddenly, the room felt smaller—king bed, generic art, window framing a slice of Charleston sky—and all of it crowded by him.
We were close. Too close. Not touching, but almost. The air between us pulsed with everything we hadn’t said and everything we’d done before.
“This is stupid,” I said.
