I feel like home.
Caught In His Net
The house feels different the next morning. Not quieter—quieter I could handle.
This is something else, something crawling, like the walls have grown ears overnight and every creak of the floorboards is a warning.
Dean left early. Said he had “business.” No explanation, no hint of where. Just that sharp look that pinned me in place and a clipped order not to leave the house.
I lasted three hours.
The air outside is cool and wet, the kind of damp that sticks to your skin and makes you feel watched even when you’re not. I told myself I just needed a walk, a breath of space, a slice of normal that doesn’t reek of secrets and lies. But the second I cut through the alley toward the coffee shop, the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.
He was there.
Leaning against the brick wall like he’d been waiting all night.
Rafe.
Dark jacket. Cigarettes burned low between his fingers. Eyes like a storm that knew exactly where to land.
“Well, well,” he drawls, the smoke curling lazily around his mouth. “The pretty little assistant Dean keeps locked up.” His gaze drags down my body slowly, like he’s unwrapping me without moving a muscle. “Didn’t think he’d let you off the leash.”
My pulse stutters hard.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper, even though I know how useless it sounds.
His smile is sharp, cruel. Hot.
“Sweetheart, I’m everywhere he isn’t. And right now…” He steps closer, the smoke and leather and danger bleeding into the air between us. “…that makes you mine.”
I try to back up, but the wall’s at my spine before I even realise it. My hands curl into fists, but my voice betrays me, cracking like glass.
“What do you want from me?”
He leans down, his mouth close enough that I can taste the smoke on his breath. His words are a rasped promise.
“Only to warn you. Dean Walker’s enemies aren’t patient. And you, little doll, are standing right in the middle of the crossfire.”
A tremor rolls through me. His hand lifts like he’s going to touch me—my face, my hair, I don’t know. But at the last second he drags his knuckles down the wall beside my head instead, leaving the skin of my cheek untouched but burning, anyway.
“You’re on borrowed time,” he murmurs. “And if you were smart, you’d run before the clock runs out.”
And then—just like that—he’s gone.
I sag against the bricks, trembling, my heart a wild, frantic drum. And all I can think is—Dean’s going to kill him.
And maybe me, too.
I don’t remember walking home.
One minute I’m pressed to the bricks, shivering in the shadow of Rafe’s warning, and the next I’m stumbling through Dean’s door with my palms scraped and my throat raw from trying not to scream. My heart hasn’t slowed. It’s still hammering like I ran all the way, though I can’t remember my feet moving.
The house feels colder than it should. Empty, even with the hum of the refrigerator and the distant tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. I press my back against the door, sliding down until my knees hit the rug, hands shaking too hard to hold still.
Borrowed time.
The words circle and circle like vultures.
