Not a blink.
Not a twitch.
Just an icily perfect statue of a man I’m supposed to love.
A coil of dread tightens in my stomach.
Maybe he’s mad about the argument.
Maybe he’s mad I walked away from him.
Maybe he’s mad I didn’t apologise properly.
Maybe he’s just… Noah.
And this is who he is when no one else is watching.
My mouth feels dry.
I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, the movement slow, measured, the kind of cautious gesture prey uses when the predator is already too close to outrun.
The water tastes faintly metallic.
Or maybe that’s just the taste of panic rising up my throat.
“The blindfold was a nice touch, though…” I murmur, forcing a lightness I don’t feel at all. “Unexpected. But… creative.”
The air in the room changes.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
Just a small, subtle shift — like someone pressed a thumb to the pulse of the atmosphere and stopped the beat mid-drum.
Noah’s expression doesn’t move.
But something behind his eyes does.
Very slowly, like molasses poured over ice, his head tilts.
A fraction.
Just enough to make my heart lurch painfully against my ribs.
“Blindfold?” he says, voice a slow, dangerous murmur, as if tasting the word and finding poison in it.
I freeze.
He keeps looking at me with that same surgical expression — blank, polite, almost gentle — but now his eyes gleam with something sharp and venomous humming beneath the surface.
“Yes,” I say, too fast. “Last night. You were… intense.” A weak laugh. “You really didn’t need to blindfold me, but?—”
“What blindfold?”
My breath stops inside my lungs like it hit a wall.
He says it again, slower this time, each syllable sharpened to a point:
