And soon, she wouldn’t just see it, she’d feel it.
Some fires don’t go out. They come home.
And he’d be waiting.
CHAPTER 25
Cracks in the Foundation
Ablack car rolled through the mist, headlights brushing the cobblestones with a faint glow. It eased to a stop beneath the awning, engine barely audible, a steady, restrained hum that mirrored the tension tightening in her chest.
Arden lingered under the canopy beside Penny, fine droplets catching the streetlight overhead. Penny grumbled about wet shoes and frizzed hair, but Arden barely registered the sound. Her attention was elsewhere.
Her gaze had found him.
Gideon stepped through the fog with quiet intent, every movement deliberate and grounded. Light from the streetlamp struck him mid-step, brushing over the cut of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the weight in how he moved. His coat stirred slightly in the breeze—no flourish, just real. Unreal all the same.
Mist clung to him as he passed, curling around his shoulders like it hadn’t finished with him yet. It wasn’t magic, but it had the shape of it.
At the car, he opened the door with casual confidence. No show. No rush. Just quiet certainty that didn’t need to prove itself.
“Ladies first,” he said, voice low and steady. It wasn’t simply polite—it carried weight, like a quiet echo off stone, impossible to ignore.
Penny slipped past with a playful bow, smirking at Arden on her way to the car. “Try not to keep him waiting.”
But the words barely registered.
Arden’s focus locked on him, the way his eyes met hers and didn’t flinch. The space between them held, stretched thin with everything they hadn’t said.Overhead, the light flickered once, shadows shifting across the angles of his face. His features didn’t soften, but sharpened.
As if restraint itself had teeth.
The harsh lines of his jaw. The unreadable set of his mouth. The clean, sharp cut of his cheekbones. He was striking in a way that stopped her breath—like lightning held just long enough to admire, right before it hit.
But it was his eyes that undid her. Molten gray, threaded with silver, full of heat and history, and… deadly serious.
They weren’t just looking at her.
They were consuming her.
His stare felt like pressure, like gravity. A touch without contact. A promise without words.
Arden’s skin prickled, her lungs tightening against the weight of his presence. It wasn’t fair. How he could look at her like that, and still want everything she tried to hide.
Their gazes held. And in that single breathless stretch of silence, something broke open. Not loudly. Not with sound. But with clarity.
This wasn’t a moment. This wasthemoment—the edge of the edge. The one that decided what came next.
If she stepped forward, even an inch, nothing between them would stay the same.
The mist kissed her cheeks, cool and soft. A contrast to the heat blooming low, rising with every heartbeat.
Penny’s car door clicked shut behind her, muffled and distant.
And they were alone.
His eyes traced over her, slow and deliberate, lingering at her mouth, her throat, the place where damp hair clung to her collarbone. Not hurried. Not disguised. Just… taking her in. His expression didn’t change. But the air between them did.
It thrummed. It dared.
