What Grace Hart did in Crystal Lake was not his business.
Not his responsibility. Not his to check on. Not his to protect.
Not his.
The words rang hollow, sharp-edged and useless.
He slowed automatically as he passed the elementary school. The parking lot was empty now, the building quiet, but he could picture it anyway—Grace’s classroom.
Everyone loved her. The students, the parents, the teachers.
Luke blew out a breath and rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the tension buzzing under his skin.
The grocery store replayed in his head on a loop. The way she’d walked away from him. Like he didn’t know exactly how to make her come undone. Like he didn’t know the taste of her.
Like he couldn’t still feel the echo of her under his hands, his mouth, his body. Like he hadn’t worked at her until she reached her climax—again and again—soft and breathless and trusting.
God. He shifted in his seat.
He swore under his breath and turned down Maple, then Elm, then another side street.
The sex had been good. That was the point.
She’d wanted him. He knew that. He’d felt it—felt her body respond, felt the way she’d clutched at him like he was exactly where she needed him to be.
You don’t end something like that, he told himself, jaw clenching, unless something else is going on.
Unless she’d met someone else.
The thought sparked hot and ugly in his gut.
Luke gripped the wheel harder.
He shouldn’t even care. They weren’t exclusive. They weren’t anything.
He didn’t want complications. Didn’t want questions. Didn’t want to deal with the town’s bullshit.
Grace had always understood exactly what Luke needed. And she’d always given it to him.
So why hadn’t she this time?
Luke replayed her words from the grocery store, each one landing like a bruise.
There is just my life. And I decide who has access to it.
It shouldn’t have rattled him.
He’d assumed his access to her was permanent. That whatever arrangement they’d fallen into would always be there when he reached for it.
Luke dragged a hand down his face, exhaustion settling deep in his bones.
He didn’t missher.
He missed the sex.
The release. The familiarity. The way everything else went quiet when he was inside her orbit.
That was all.
