Brick went absolutely still.
“Tessa,” he rasped, but it came out like a warning and a plea all at once.
“It’s a thank-you,” she whispered, breath brushing his skin.“For coming for me.For being here.”
He exhaled shakily, the restraint in his body wound tight enough to snap.Every instinct screamed to pull her closer, to kiss her properly, to wipe the fear of tonight from her mind with something better, something real.
But she’d already been scared once today.She didn’t need a man like him pushing boundaries, even if both of them seemed to want more.
Brick forced himself to step back, barely an inch, but it felt like tearing himself out of quicksand.
“Tessa,” he said again, quieter this time.“Not tonight.”
She didn’t look embarrassed.Hell, she didn’t apologize.She just looked at him like she understood.
“Okay,” she said softly.
He nodded, jaw tight, turning away before the look in her eyes made him lose every bit of discipline he had.“Get inside.Lock the door,” Brick ordered.
She obeyed, slipping into the guest room King had set up for her.Brick stood there in the hallway for a long moment, breathing slowly, fighting the urge to go after her.
Finally, he forced himself to move, retreating into his own room before his expression betrayed him.He closed the door behind him and leaned his forehead against the wood, hands braced on either side.
“Christ, she’s gonna break me,” Brick muttered to himself.
Brick took a cold shower, cold enough to make his skin prickle and his pulse ease from a dangerous roar to something he could halfway control.It didn’t help much.Nothing would’ve, not after the way Tessa had looked at him and kissed him.
He dried off, threw on a pair of sweats, and plopped down hard on his bed.Exhaustion dragged at every bone, but sleep?Nowhere close.His mind was a war zone, and she was the cause of every detonation.
Then he heard her.She wasn’t crying or pacing, she was humming.
A soft, wandering melody floated through the thin walls, barely there, almost shy.But to Brick, it may as well have been sung directly into his damn bloodstream.The sound brushed along the edges of his control, gentle but persistent, unraveling knots he didn’t even realize he had.
It didn’t belong in a place like this.This clubhouse full of scars and ghosts and men who’d forgotten softness a long time ago.Maybe that was why it hit him so hard.Because her voice, quiet as it was, softened everything it touched.Even him, especially him.
He lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling, every nerve tuned to the woman just a dozen feet away.
Twelve feet.Two doors.One bad decision away.
Her room was just across from his.Close enough that he could imagine her curled under the spare blankets King had thrown together for her, hair still smelling like her goddamn vanilla shampoo, lips that had brushed his still swollen from the cold night air.
He dragged a hand over his face, cursing under his breath.He hated forced proximity and how it stripped him bare.Hated how the walls he’d built for years felt thinner tonight than they ever had.
Worst of all, he hated how much he wanted it.
Because in the silence between her hummed notes, he could feel a pull.A promise.That fleeting kiss wasn’t enough.It had opened something inside him, something reckless and starving in a way he didn’t recognize.A man like him didn’t get soft, didn’t get affected.He could take a punch, take a bullet, take any hit the world threw at him ...but he couldn’t take her.
If she opened her door right now, stepped into the hallway and whispered his name, he would go to her.No hesitation or second thoughts.He’d cross the space between them like it was nothing, haul her close, taste her lips for real this time.
He’d lose every bit of discipline he’d built his life on.
Because the truth was simple and terrifying.
Brick wanted her, deeply and desperately.More than was smart or safe.
But wanting her meant walking a line he couldn’t step back from.Once he made a move, once he touched her the way he wanted, there would be no turning around.No pretending he didn’t need her.
Tessa deserved better than a man carved out of scars and violence.
