“Before you came here, I texted you. You didn’t reply.” A pause. “That’s not like you.”
I look away, fingers tightening around the phone box.
“You didn’t have to,” I say quietly. But the words feel wrong because, of course, he didn’t have to get me a new one. That’s what makes this so suffocating.
No one has ever done this for me before. No one has ever thought about me like this before. Tyler tries his best, but he also has his own demons to fight with.
The attention, care, and weight that Alex is giving me feel so foreign. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what to do with him, and I hate it.
More importantly, I hate that I’m not mad at it, or at him. It makes something deep inside me ache. Makes me feel seen in a way I’ve spent years trying to avoid.
“Lucas.”
His voice snaps me out of my thoughts.
“What happened to your phone?”
There’s something different in his tone now—a quiet and unyielding kind of authority. I force myself to meet his gaze.
“I…” My fingers clench around the box.
“I mistakenly… smashed it,” I mumble, voice weak.
It’s a shitty lie.
Alex doesn’t even blink. He knows, of course, he knows. He probably knew I was lying before I even opened my mouth. His silence is heavier than words. Then, after a beat, he exhales, slow and controlled, then stands.
And when he speaks, it’s not gentle.
“This is the last time I’ll tell you to quit that job, Lucas.”
My stomach twists.
Alex’s voice is cold. Not necessarily angry, just absolute.
“You work there again,” he continues, “and I swear I’ll burn the place down.”
My breath catches.
The way he says it, so steady and sure, he means it.
He is not threatening me. He’s stating a fact.
I look up at him, my body rigid, the expression on his face—the sharp, merciless glint in his eyes, it’s the same one he had that night in the alley the first time I saw him, and it’s also the first time I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape this man.
I remember the blood on his knuckles, the way his eyes burned as he looked at me through the darkness, the way he didn’t flinch when I saw him for exactly what he was.
How can someone look so cold, so utterly dangerous, and still somehow beautiful like a fallen angel, untouchable and unreal? Why do my insides flutter whenever he looks at me?
What scares me the most is that I’m not terrified of him.
No.
I’m terrified that if I don’t quit that job—
Alexander might actually burn the place down.
***
