And then there’s him.
Dean doesn’t move. He doesn’t need to. Just standing there in the doorway, he eats the air, makes the room feel smaller, hotter, dangerous in a way that’s nothing like Rafe’s warning but just as lethal. His voice cuts through the static in my skull.
“What did she say?”
I can’t answer. My throat’s torn raw.
He steps closer. The scent of his cologne—darker, smokier tonight—wraps around me like it knows it belongs in my lungs. His eyes don’t soften. They burn, sharp and unrelenting, like he already knows the answer but wants to hear me choke on it.
I shake my head, words spilling anyway, broken and too loud.
“She knows something’s wrong. She sees it, Dean—she sees me. And I can’t lie to her anymore. I can’t look her in the face when?—”
“Stop.” The command lands like a hand to my throat. He crosses the last distance and tilts my chin up with a rough finger, forcing my eyes to meet his.
“She doesn’t know. Not unless you hand it to her.” His jaw clenches, the muscles shifting like steel under skin. “You think I’ll let this blow up because you’re scared of a little guilt?”
“A little guilt?” My laugh is hollow, hysterical. Tears blur everything into streaks of shadow and heat. “She’s my best friend. She trusts me. She?—”
“She’s not the one in my bed.” His words snap like a whip, cutting straight through the storm inside me. His thumb presses harder under my chin, forcing my lips to part. “You are. And that means you deal with the weight of it like a good girl, not like a coward.”
My tears spill harder, betraying me, because even when his voice carves me open, some traitorous part of me wants nothing more than to obey. Wants him to keep me pinned in place, wants him to tell me I belong to him and not to the girl whose heart I’m shredding.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper, chest heaving. “She’ll hate me if she ever finds out.”
His face dips closer, his mouth grazing mine like a threat.
“She’ll never find out.” His tone is pure darkness. “Because I’ll burn the truth to ash before I let it touch you.”
I break then—not all the way, but enough for my knees to buckle. He catches me before I hit the floor, his arms locking around me like prison bars. My sobs soak into his shirt, and still he doesn’t loosen his grip, doesn’t soften—he holds me tighter, like he’s daring me to escape.
“You’re mine,” he murmurs against my hair. “And if you think my daughter, or Rafe, or anyone else gets a say in that—you haven’t been paying attention.”
And I believe him. That’s the worst part. I believe every word.
Never Let Go
The scarf is still lying there.
Kate’s perfume clings to it, soft and floral, nothing like me, nothing like this house, nothing like the dark edges I’ve let coil around me. I press it into my face until it burns my nose, until the tears sting, until I can’t pretend anymore.
It feels like holding my old life in my hands — the version of me that laughed too loud, that thought she had plans, that believed she could want something without it destroying her. Now it’s just silk and memory and the ache of everything I’ve let slip through my fingers.
Kate. My apartment. My career. My freedom.
Pieces of myself traded away every time I said yes to him, every time I stayed when I should have run.
And God help me, I don’t regret it. That’s the worst part.
The tears don’t stop; they come harder. My chest heaves, my throat raw as I choke back sobs that taste like guilt, like longing, like everything I can’t admit out loud. I press my forehead into the scarf and whisper to the empty room, “What’s wrong with me?”
The door creaks. My body locks.
I swipe at my face too late, too messy, and then he’s there — Dean — filling the doorway like a shadow I can’t escape.
“Brooklyn.”
Just my name, low and sharp, and I swear it slices me open.
