“Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”
Didn’t matter that my chest still burned, or that my hands remembered the shape of her waist, or that she’d walked away leavin’ me undone in ways I hadn’t expected.
Devil rose from his chair, givin’ my shoulder a firm pat. “Then keep your eyes open. Both of ’em.”
Mystic grabbed his beer and headed for the back door. Bolt moved toward the front windows.
I stayed seated, scanning the room again, makin’ myself breathe even.
Somewhere between her heat and the cold shadow of threat, my world felt like it was shifting under my boots.
And hell… I wasn’t sure which part of it scared me more.
CHAPTER THIRTY
MORNING LIGHT CAMEearly, a merciless bladeslipping through the thin curtains and cutting across the room as if determined to expose every hour I hadn’t slept. It spilled over the bed, warmed the tangled blanket, traced the pillow I’d buried my face in sometime around dawn, and still managed to feel too loud for the quiet ache thrumming in my chest. I rolled over, dragging the blanket with me, but the light wasn’t what made me wince. The fault belonged to last night.
Every time I’d shut my eyes, Chain appeared behind my eyelids, standing in that crowded room with shadows and smoke curling around him as though even the air knew where its centerof gravity was. He’d watched me with eyes that didn’t waver, that held a warmth and hunger I wasn’t prepared for, not when my ribs already felt cracked from the way he’d touched me. The weight of his hand on my waist still burned along my skin. The rasp of his voice at my ear—You got a dangerous kind of maybe—still pressed heat into places I didn’t know how to unlock. And the look on his face when I whispered slow… that look was the one that had followed me into the dark.
I’d stopped things before they crossed a line I wasn’t ready to name. I’d walked away. I’d done the sensible, safe, sure thing. But my body hadn’t believed a word of it.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, chasing clarity that kept slipping between my fingers. “Get a grip,” I muttered, though the truth pulsed low and steady inside me. Last night felt like stepping over a boundary I didn’t know how to rebuild. I’d wanted him to see me, truly see me, and he had, with a focus so fierce it stripped the noise from my head. And the power twisted inside that moment, the wanting and being wanted, scared me far more than his hands ever could.
Not because I didn’t want him. Because I did. With a longing that felt reckless.
For so much of my life, touch had been a cage, punishment, control, a reminder that I belonged to anyone but myself. But with Chain, touch carried a different meaning. Choice lived in it. Heat. Freedom. The stunning, terrifying possibility that someone could reach for me without taking something from me.
A knock broke the quiet, hard enough to jolt my heart into my throat.
“You up?” Chain’s voice seeped through the door, deep and warm and rough around the edges like he’d only been awake a few minutes. My stomach flipped. Of course he was here. We had a driving lesson this morning. He’d promised to teach me, constant and patient.
I sat up too fast, the blanket pooling at my waist as I forced my breath into something almost normal. “Yeah,” I called, voice thin. “I’m up.”
“This mornin’ you’re gonna taste the best damn biscuits of your life,” he said, a grin audible even through the wood. “So hurry, they’ll go fast.”
A reluctant smile tugged toward my mouth, blooming despite the storm inside me. “I’m coming.”
For a moment, his footsteps didn’t move. The quiet on the other side of the door stretched and hummed, leaving me with the ridiculous feeling he was waiting—maybe hoping—for me to open it, to step into whatever waited between us instead of pretending I didn’t feel it.
For one breathless second, I almost did.
Then his boots shifted, slow and solid, each step sounding like restraint, like he didn’t trust himself to linger or look back.
I exhaled, my pulse stumbling through the space he left behind.
Part of me wanted to call him back, wanted to watch his face soften in that way it did only for me, wanted to stop gripping every boundary like it was the last guardrail keeping me upright. But the other part—the one that still twitched at shadows, still carried smoke in its lungs from the compound—told me to keep the door closed.
So I dressed instead, pulling on jeans and a tank top, my hands trembling as I dragged my fingers through my hair. When I finally glanced at the mirror, the sight startled me enough to make me still.
There was color in my cheeks. A faint lift at the edges of my mouth. A light in my eyes that hadn’t existed yesterday. Maybe this was freedom. Or maybe it was danger in its most seductive form: feeling something worth risking myself for.
Falling for Chain was dangerous. Falling toward him felt like stepping into flame with the wild hope it wouldn’t burn.
But as I stepped into the hallway and the sound of the clubhouse swept over me—voices low, dishes clattering, laughter drifting from somewhere near the kitchen, his laugh rumbling deep as a storm—I realized something that loosened the last cold threads inside me.
For the first time since the fire. Since the compound. Since Jasper.
I didn’t feel haunted.
