I wasn’t supposed tofeelanything last night, and certainly not about him leaving.
But I did.
Complicated didn’t begin to cover it. Part of me wondered if I only wanted Alejandro because we were both morally bankrupt in ways decent people couldn’t imagine. As if gravitating toward him was me recognizing another man carrying the same fault lines. Another part—the part I tried to kill daily—felt something else. Something real. And that scared the hell out of me more than anything he’d ever done.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and grabbed my phone before I could talk myself out of it. Killian answered on the third ring, sounding as though I’d dragged him out of a meeting or out of bed.
“What?” he grumbled.
“Alejandro’s gone, and I’m having feelings,” I said.
A beat. Then—”Gone as in dead, or gone as in you finally stopped letting him break into your apartment?”
I rolled my eyes. “Gone as in he was here last night, and he left before I woke up.”
Silence. Then a shocked laugh. “Wait—still?It wasn’t a one-and-done?”
“No,” I admitted, heat crawling up my neck. “It’s more. Somehow… It’s more.”
Killian sighed the way he did when Jamie was doing something reckless. “Levi, we don’t know enough about him. He’s dangerous.”
I barked out a laugh. “No more than Jamie. Or Enzo if Robbie’s threatened. Or Rio on a good day. Fuck, evenyou’redangerous, Killian—only you dress better.”
He didn’t laugh. “I’m serious. Whatever this is you think you’re doing, you have to know it won’t stay simple.”
“I know.” And that was the problem. I knew exactly how deep I was in—and I still wasn’t stepping out.
Killian didn’t hang up right away. I could hear him moving around, the background noises shifting as if he were pacing.
“Levi… just tell me one thing,” he said. “Is this about Doc? Or is this about you not wanting to feel alone for once?”
The question punched straight through me. I hated how well he knew me—hated even more that he wasn’t wrong.
“His name is Alejandro,” I murmured, and dragged a hand over my face. “And I don’t know. I want to say it’s nothing. Just sex. Just… whatever this is. But last night—something shifted, and yeah, it felt good.”
Killian exhaled. “Jesus. You really did catch feelings.”
“I just—he got under my skin,” I snapped, too quickly. “And I let him. That’s on me.”
“Levi.” His voice softened in a way it rarely did. “Alejandro isn’t safe ground. You know that.”
“I’ve never liked safe,” I muttered.
“That’s the fucking problem,” he shot back. “It’s not just me who picked someone who can burn you.”
I leaned back against the counter, staring at the space beside the pillow like it held answers. “He didn’t stay.”
“And that bothers you,” Killian said quietly.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. It does.”
“That’s how it starts,” he warned.
“Killian…” I pressed my thumb to my brow, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s too late to back out clean, isn’t it?”
“It was too late the second you let him kiss you,” he replied. “The rest is just fallout.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t ready to admit how right he was.
