A flicker of hesitation.
She didn’t even realize she did it.
But he did.
Because he’d seen it before.
It was a habit that told him there was something she wasn’t willing to divulge.
One he hadn’t decided how to play yet.
So he waited.
And Arden, unaware she’d given herself away, shrugged. “Nothing important.”
A blink of silence.
Gideon’s jaw shifted, a flicker of tension beneath the surface.
His gaze moved across her face like he was trying to read what she wasn’t saying.
Then just as quickly, he stepped back. Let it drop.
For now.
But that second of hesitation?
That stayed with him.
From the dimglow of his study, he leaned over the screen—consuming every detail of Arden Rivers’ life with ravenous precision.
The low whir of his hard drive was a mechanical heartbeat pulsing against the darkness as he leaned closer to the screen. She wasn’t just a name anymore.
She was an obsession.
Pixel by pixel. Secret by secret.
He had stripped her bare.
Exposed her.
Silverbranch.
The word hit like a bruise. A tether she had tried to sever but could never quite escape.
Weeks of digging had peeled back her defenses, unearthing the fragile framework of her world.
A rundown bar.
A nursing career abandoned.
And Chad Dawson.
His fingers curled into a fist.
That nobody.
That pathetic excuse of a man who had once dared to call her his.
