God. Not now.
“And probably the other hand here.” He hovered it near my opposite shoulder.
The space around me contracted, the wall hard at my back, him solid in front of me.
A simulation. Nothing more.
But my body didn’t care about the logic. A pulse of traitorous awareness curled low in my belly. I hated that.
“She reacted fast,” Rios went on. “Probably instinct rather than training. Nothing about it would’ve been clean.”
He shifted to demonstrate, adjusting his stance, and in the process, his thigh brushed mine for the briefest second. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t anything.
Except my body lit up like I’d been plugged straight into a wall socket.
Absolutely humiliating that she’d decided now, with this man, was the perfect moment to wake back up again.
Thankfully oblivious to my plight, he continued, “She would’ve driven her knee up. Hard. Anywhere she could land it. Then shoved him off, probably wild and unbalanced.”
“Messy.” My voice came out a little too thin. “Desperate.”
“Exactly.”
He stepped back immediately, giving me space. Respectful. Controlled. It should’ve helped.
It didn’t.
Because the second he moved, the ghost of my own imagination filled that space again: a woman pinned, gasping, fighting. Gwen’s face flickering over a stranger’s. A decade of what-ifs pressing in like the heat.
I swallowed. “Being here is a lot different than looking at photos.”
Rios’s eyes softened, just barely. “I expect so.”
I wrapped my arms around myself for a beat, grounding. Trying not to think about Gwen. Trying not to remember the way my body had responded to him like an idiot hormonal teenager. Trying not to obsess about how much I wished any of this made sense.
We walked through the rest of the positions Willie described, but nothing else hit as hard as that first moment—me against the wall, him close enough to steal my breath.
And the worst part?
I couldn’t tell whether the grief or the attraction was more dangerous.
Probably both.
Reaching for logic as if it were the last life raft on the Titanic, I scanned the alley again. “There’s no reason for a woman to be back here alone. This isn’t a shortcut. It doesn’t lead anywhere except the dumpsters. So why was she here?”
Rios followed my line of sight. “Came out the back door to get away from someone inside, maybe.”
“Or something more benign. She stepped out to take a breath, a call, anything—and he followed her.”
“Exits are chokepoints,” Rios murmured. “Anyone watching would’ve waited for her to be alone at one.”
A chill crawled across my arms, despite the heat. “If she was ducking someone inside, you’d think a staff member would’ve remembered that.”
“Not necessarily,” he argued. “Packed bar, loud, drunk tourists. One guy bothering a girl isn’t memorable unless it escalates.”
“Or unless someone reports it,” I said. “Which she might not have done. Especially if she handled it herself.”
We both looked back toward where he’d bracketed me against the wall moments earlier. Hardwood siding, rough and splintered. A place to pin someone and swallow the struggle if no one happened to be walking past the mouth of the alley at exactly the right moment.
