“Just tonight.”
“Just tonight.”
I stand. He rises a moment later—tall, composed, powerful.
“Your place or mine?” I ask.
“Strangers, remember?”
“Lead the way, stranger.”
***
A black Bugatti waits at the curb. He opens the door like it’s no big deal.
“Fancy,” I murmur, sliding into the best leather seats I’ve ever sat on.
“It gets me where I need to go.”
The city blurs by. I should be nervous, but all I feel is a wild, reckless kind of freedom. For the first time in years, I’m not Derek’s girlfriend. I’m not Trevor’s little sister. I’m just Bailey—a girl running toward something instead of away.
The hotel we pull up to gleams with glass. A doorman nods as we pass and I catch glimpses of us inside the mirrored elevator as we rise.
The penthouse suite. Of course it is.
“Drink?” he asks, shrugging out of his jacket.
“I think I’ve had enough.”
“Water, then.”
He hands me a glass. Watches me drink.
“Second thoughts?” he asks.
“Are you giving me an out?”
“Always.”
I set the glass down. “I don’t want an out.”
“What do you want?”
“To not think,” I whisper. “To not feel. Just for tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, I’ll go back to being me. But tonight… I want to forget he ever existed.”
“I can’t make you forget,” he says, brushing a finger along my jaw.
“No?”
“But I can make you not care.”
He kisses me.
The first brush of his mouth is gentle, careful—giving me space to change my mind. I don’t. I rise into him, fisting his shirt, letting the heat swallow me whole.
