Lets her come to me.
My little fire doesn’t hesitate. She steps forward, chin tilted up, and my chest tightens with something sweet. There’s no mistaking it—her scent wraps around me, silk and heat. Peaches and cream, laced with tension and something that smells a hell of a lot like want. It has to be pouring from her for me to smell her so clearly. I might not be able to pick up the softer notes, but the ability to pick up on the alpha musks in my life before saved me more times than I can count. It heightened my senses, and right now I’m so glad for all of that, if only to smell her.
The city noise fades into the background, and I see only her.
“I read your file,” she says, soft but clear.
The words hit hard. I don’t flinch, but everything inside me locks up.
My file.
A clinical breakdown of everything they think I am—unstable, obsessive, too dangerous to ignore, too broken to trust. A killer.
I lick my lips, force my gaze to hold hers even as something inside me twists. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she repeats.
There’s no fear in her voice. No pity, either. Just truth. And fuck me, it undoes something in my chest.
I want to look away. Want to scoff and brush it off, act as though I don’t care.
But she read my file—the one that paints me as a monster. And she’s still standing here. Her expression unchanged, pretending the file isn’t right.
Her scent thickens. Desire and confusion tangled so tightly together that I can taste it on the back of my tongue. Carson’s watching from just a step away, but he’s not moving. Not yet.
“You know that file…” I say quietly, “It’s not the whole truth.”
“I know,” she whispers.
Two simple words. And they fucking gut me. No one’s ever said that to me before.
Not once.
The streetlights hum. A breeze lifts the ends of her hair, and I breathe her in because it’s the only thing keeping me alive. I take a step closer—close enough to brush my fingers against hers if I wanted to.
“I’d never hurt you, Willow.”
Her lips part, and her breath catches just enough to make my pulse spike.
I don’t touch her. But if she reaches for me? I’ll burn the world down to make sure no one ever takes her from me again.
“I know.”
Those two words again.
Soft. Unflinching. Certain.
She knows.
The corners of my mouth pull up, a smile threatening to take over. But I hold it back. We’re not done. Not yet. She knows the file, but not the why.
“I was left in the dark so long…” I swallow, eyes flicking away for just a second, needing space to breathe. “I forgot what the sun felt like.”
The weight of those words drags across my ribs, pressing down the chains that never really came off. I feel them even now. Cold. Heavy. Familiar.
“I did what I had to do to survive.”
It’s the closest I’ve ever come to explaining—to anyone. The barest truth, scraped raw and trembling between us. She doesn’t flinch.
