Instead, I felt my chin lift a fraction higher, my spine straightening until every part of me was made of angles and quiet defiance. Lucy glanced between us like she wanted to say something, but I gave her no opening, no reaction she could grab onto.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I said, tone even, controlled, fragile in ways no one could hear if I didn’t let it slip.
“Sure, sweetheart,” Lucy said, softer this time, but I didn’t stay long enough to figure out if it was concern or curiosity.
I slipped through the crowd, keeping my shoulders squared and my pace unhurried, ignoring the way my pulse thudded in my throat, ignoring the itch under my skin that made me want to run, ignoring the heat buzzing beneath my ribs — not desire anymore, not quite — but something wounded and furious and unfamiliar. Something born from wanting something I told myself I didn’t want.
The hallway was dimmer, quieter, the music fading behind me until it sounded like it was underwater. I pushed the bathroom door open and stepped inside, closing it behind me with a soft click, and only when the latch caught did my breath leave me in a jagged rush I couldn’t hold onto any longer.
The lights hummed overhead, pale and cold, showing too much. There was a mirror above the sink. There was always a mirror.
I hated them.
Hated the way they stole truth and handed it back wrong, fragmented, distorted, the woman staring through the glass never quite matching the one inside me. I told myself not to look. I always told myself not to look. And like every time before, the promise slipped through my fingers.
My gaze lifted anyway.
Just a flicker.
A glance.
A reflex I couldn’t kill.
And there she was — the woman I’d tried so damn hard to outrun. The one with the scar carved down her cheek where a sadistic bastard had branded into her skin. The one who’d been punished for the crime of wanting a life that wasn’t silence and obedience. The one who’d learned early that beauty could be snuffed out with a match and cruelty did not require a reason.
I snatched my eyes away, jaw tight, breath jagged, hating that moment of weakness — hating how fast it stole my breath,how quickly it made me feel small, how familiar the shame felt even though shame was something I swore I’d left behind.
My fingers brushed the scar before I could stop them, an old, stubborn habit, as automatic as breathing and just as aggravating. I pressed my palm against my cheek, grounding myself, trying to remember that this mark wasn’t weakness, wasn’t shame. It was survival carved into skin.
But pressing my palm there only reminded me of the rest of it, the uneven texture of my burned hands, the rough patches that still caught against fabric, the tender spots that never fully smoothed out. Those scars didn’t show unless I reached, or touched, or held. They were quieter, but sometimes they felt louder than the one on my face.
I wore all of it because I fought. Because I lived. Because I crawled out of fire and left the ones who tried to own me standing in the smoke behind me.
But some nights, in moments like this, it was hard not to wonder if anyone else saw anything past the ruins I carried.
For a moment, the old fear whispered, the one that told me I’d never be the kind of woman a man like Chain wanted, never be the one someone reached for first, not when there were women like the brunette with perfect skin and no history written across their faces.
But I’d escaped hell, and I didn’t do it to crumble over a man or the girl clinging to him like she belonged there.
I straightened, inhaling slow, letting the breath fill every hollow space in my chest. The air tasted faintly of cleaner and old wood, not pleasant, not comforting, but real. Mine. The kind of air I got to breathe because I’d taken back my life inch by inch.
I swept my hair away from my face, tied the ends together with trembling fingers, and lifted my chin, forcing myself to look at my reflection again, not at the scar, not at the parts I hated, but at my eyes. They were sure, focused, and unbroken.
I wasn’t here for him. I wasn’t here to compete or compare or crumble. I was here to build something that belonged to me and no one else.
Tension unwound from my shoulders as I turned away from the mirror. I reached for the doorknob with a hand that no longer shook. And when I walked back out into that hallway, I did it the same way I walked into this clubhouse, chin up, spine straight, heart loud enough to remind me I was still alive.
If Chain wanted games, he could play them alone. If he wanted to look at me like I was a challenge, fine. But I wasn’t going to be the one who broke the moment.
Not anymore.
Not ever again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FUCK. WHY DIDTracy pick this exact moment to throw herself at me?
I was thirty-five years old and had never had an experience like the one I’d just had with a woman. One where no words were needed. Just our eyes, pullin’ us together. Damn, it heated my blood.
