Grace stopped at the bottom of the steps.
For a heartbeat, she was back there again—keys fumbling, breath too loud in her ears, the sound of footsteps behind her.
Her breath came quicker.
Luke shifted closer. She liked that he was standing with her. He was big, solid.
“Grace,” he said quietly.
She forced herself to breathe. “Sorry. Just?—”
She didn’t finish.
Luke followed her gaze to the porch. The steps. The door. His jaw set hard. His eyes tracked the space the way hers had—but where her memory was fear, his was calculation.
Containment.
Threat.
Luke swore under his breath. Grace watched his hands curl slowly into fists at his sides. “If he comes for you again, I’ll stop him,” he bit out.
She swallowed. “He touched my hair. Just—” She lifted her hand, demonstrating the light, awful intimacy of it. “I know I shouldn’t still be thinking about it. It was only my hair. He just wanted to scare me.”
She could see that Luke was angry. It was a controlled, coiled, furious rage.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Luke told her.
It sounded like a promise.
Luke hesitated. His gaze flicked to the door.
“I know you’ve got someone staying with you,” he said. His voice was rough and he took a deep breath. “I don’t trust that he can keep you safe.”
The insult was unexpectedly painful.
Luke’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “I’m not trying to judge you. I just—” He stopped, breath rough. “I won’t pretend I’m okay leaving you with someone I don’t trust.”
My brother,she thought fiercely.You’re talking about my brother.
“You don’t know him,” she said aloud.
And that was true.
What she didn’t say—what she would never say to Luke—was that she knew Eli’s charm came with cracks. That love and loyalty didn’t cancel out bad judgment. That Eli had always brought trouble with him like static electricity, unintentional but real.
She would defend him anyway.
Luke nodded once, sharp and restrained. “I know.” But his eyes said he didn’t believe it mattered.
“But I should’ve been here,” he said.
That surprised her. Why was he doing this now? Because he was a cop?
Standing this close to him was a mistake. Luke’s presence pressed in on her—solid, familiar, entirely too easy to fall back into. Her body remembered him faster than her mind could shut it down, heat flaring where she didn’t want it, confusion stirring where resolve should have been.
Concern. Proximity. She was stupid to think he was offering something more.
She couldn’t let herself forget the truth: Luke wanted her physically. Privately. In ways that asked nothing of him and cost her everything. He wasn’t offering a future. He wasn’t choosing her. Whatever this was—whatever he thought he was doing—it wasn’t that.
