He pushes off the lockers and crosses the space between us in just a few steps. He’s taller than me by more than I care to admit, in fact I barely reach his shoulder, and now he’s towering overme. And even though he’s tall anyway, he seems even taller now. More intimidating.
I want to step back, to leave, to doanything, but I can’t. My feet won’t move and my breath catches in my throat as he leans in closer, his dark eyes scanning my face as if searching for something. And then, just as quickly, something flickers across his expression —
guilt? Disgust? Whatever it is, it’s gone before I can make sense of it.
He quickly averts his gaze, as if angry with himself. Then without another word, Kai Steele turns and begins walking off.
But just before he disappears, I find my voice.
“There was a moment,” I say, my voice soft, “on the bus.”
He stops.
“When you went completely still.”
Kai Steele doesn’t turn around, but his shoulders shift—tense. It’s a subtle motion, like a breath caught between inhale and exhale.
“It was like… everything in you just froze. Like you weren’t even there for a second.” I hesitate, then add, “Does that happen a lot?”
The silence that follows is heavy. Tense. I can hear my own heartbeat in the space between us.
“Pardon?” he asks, turning slowly, and that same charm is back in full force, painted across his face. His eyes, though—his eyes are colder than before.
“A moment?” he repeats coolly. “How poetic of you to notice.”
I swallow. “It didn’t look—normal. You just… froze. Like something was wrong… I—is there?”
Kai Steele tilts his head, a curious smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Let me clarify something for you, Adeline, since we’ve apparently arrived at the stage where you feel entitled to ask me personal questions.”
His voice drops, all velvet and poison. “Don’t presume,” he says,
“that your vocabulary is large enough to define what I feel.”
His eyes linger on mine, unblinking.
“And pity,” he says, almost thoughtfully, as if tasting the word on his tongue, “is a clumsy thing on you.”
I feel the flush again, creeping back up my neck.
“But you looked —”
“Human?” he finishes for me, brows lifting slightly. “God
forbid.”
And then he steps back, just enough to let the chill return between us.
“I’d be careful with assumptions, Adeline,” he says, straightening his cuffs, already halfway to gone. “They have a charming way of turning on you when you least expect it.”
I feel heat rise to my face, the same flush as before, but this time it’s coloured with something else. Embarrassment. Maybe a little shame.
Then, with that same graceful disdain, he offers a final look over his shoulder.
“Forgive me, if I’ve embarrassed you,” he says calmly, almost intimately, yet his face remains frightfully blank. “That was never my intention.”
And before I can speak—before I can evenbreatheproperly—Kai Steele turns on his heel and walks away without looking back.
***
