I shove past her, fury burning through me.
Because she’s right.
And if Elias saw, if anyone in this place saw, then they would know the truth.
Brooklyn isn’t just a weakness.
She’s the end of me.
I push through the doors into the night like the club’s about to collapse on my head. And maybe it already has.
All I can think of now is how fast I can get back to her.
The air outside is damp, heavy, laced with the stink of cigarettes and exhaust, but it’s still cleaner than the poison inside. I stand there for a long moment, knuckles flexing, jaw tight enough to crack teeth, waiting for the fury to bleed out of me. It doesn’t.
I should go home.
Straight back. Straight to bed. Straight into silence.
But the second the thought forms, I’m already moving.
Not home—her.
Brooklyn.
The city passes in a blur of neon and shadow, but when I kill the engine in the driveway, I don’t go in through the front. I can’t—not like this. Not with her scent already haunting me, clinging to the inside of my skull.
I circle the side of the house instead, footsteps slow, careful, a predator stalking his own territory. The lights are still on upstairs—Kate’s room, Brooklyn’s. My gaze drags upward, locking on the thin crack of curtain that isn’t quite shut.
And there she is.
Not naked this time. Not even dressed to taunt me. Just… her. Perched on the edge of the bed with a notebook in her lap, hair spilling over one shoulder, chewing absently at the end of her pen. A normal girl doing a normal thing.
And yet it wrecks me more than the sight of that woman in red bending herself into temptation.
I stay there in the shadows, hidden, watching her shift, stretch, tuck one leg under her body like she’s trying to fold herself into the page. She doesn’t even know I’m here, and still my blood runs hotter for her than anything Club Z could shove in my face.
My hand fists at my side. I tell myself to walk away, to get back in my car, to put distance between me and the disaster upstairs but then she laughs. Quiet, to herself, at something she’s written. And it’s not the sound of Kate’s friend. Not the sound of an employee.
It’s a sound meant to be devoured.
I grip the edge of the stone wall so hard the skin across my knuckles splits.
She has no fucking idea that every move she makes up there is a dare, and if I climb those stairs tonight, I won’t stop at watching.
Not again.
The night presses damp against my skin, the faint throb of bass from inside the club still pulsing in my veins, but here—out here—it’s quiet enough that I can hear her window creak when she shifts.
Brooklyn.
She’s still in that pool of lamplight, scribbling something across the page. Her brows pinch when she writes, like every word costs her, then she bites her lip and erases it, only to write it again slower. I shouldn’t know this about her. I shouldn’t know the tiny ways her mouth moves when she’s thinking or how often she tucks the hair behind her ear only for it to fall loose again.
But I do.
And it’s dangerous.
She leans back on her hands, stretching, spine arching, the hem of her shirt riding up just enough to tease a slice of bare stomach into view. I grit my teeth, drag my nails down the stone wall, feel grit embed under them just to stop myself from climbing up right now.
