Not while he stood breathing.
Not while he could put himself between her and the storm.
Even if it meant becoming the monster he was trying to fight.
From the shadows,he waited.
She moved like the world bent to her will. Even the streetlight existed just to catch her—the glint of her dark brown hair, the cut of her blue eyes through the dark.
Every detail, a gift.
Every motion, a scripture to be memorized.
Her scent lingered in the air. A whisper he could almost taste.
Her confidence wasn’t armor. He knew better.
Every precise step, every deliberate gesture came from someone who’d forged strength from broken edges.
He’d traced those fractures. Memorized them.
The hesitation when someone moved too fast. The way she clocked exits before faces.
Beautiful. Telling.
But Gideon? Gideon was one of those cracks.
The way she softened around him, how her guarded edges dulled into something intimate, something infuriating. It clawed at him, hot and visceral.
Her laugh, light and genuine in Gideon’s presence, was a blade sliding between his ribs.
She was giving Gideon parts of herself that didn’t belong to him.
Each smile, each lingering look—stolen moments. Not hers to give.
She didn’t see it yet. Couldn’t understand.
Every piece of her belonged to him.
He knewher rhythms better than she knew herself.
7:43 PM—almost always.
The way she packed her trunk. The way her fingers gripped her keys before she even closed the door behind her.
His breath quickenedas she vanished into the club’s gleaming façade.
For a moment, she was gone.
Absorbed into a world that didn’t deserve her.
Polished perfection could never reflect her truth.
Arden wasn’t made for their shallow kingdom of false smiles and hidden knives.
She needed something real.
Someone who saw straight to her soul and never looked away.
