Blue eyes gleam like struck metal.
Then he shifts his gaze to Harper.
Something in him softens, not kindly, not warmly, but with a dark fascination that feels far too familiar.
“It has been my pleasure, Harper.”
Her name leaves his tongue like a promise and a warning woven together.
Before I can throw another punch, shadows coil around his boots. The air bends. A ripple of distortion climbs his frame like a living tide. He steps back, not into the room, but out of it, vanishing into a dissipation so smooth it barely disturbs the air he leaves behind.
Silence drops heavy in the aftermath.
Only then do I realize my hands are shaking.
Harper stands a few feet away, her ragged palm pressed over the binding wound, her chest rising with shallow breaths. The room feels smaller than it did moments before, the space between us crackling with a tension neither of us knows how to name.
“Harper…” My voice comes out too rough, too close to breaking.
She doesn’t look up.
Her fingers tighten around the blood-soaked cloth. Violet light flickers faintly under her skin, rage, grief, power, but her expression is painfully calm.
“There’s no sense getting angry,” she says, almost softly. “No sense trying to protect me from a deal I already made.”
Her throat works as she swallows, the words dragging themselves out of a place carved deep.
“I am a Whitlock,” she whispers. “There are never happy endings for us.”
The room seems to exhale with her, trembling beneath the truth she’s carried alone for far too long.
And for the first time since finding her again, I don’t know how to pull her away from the cliff she’s standing on
29
LIAM
The flower fields stretch around us in a haze of color, petals nodding in the soft breeze like they’re listening. We’re hidden, tucked between tall grass and golden blooms, the hills folding over us like a secret. No one can see us out here. No one knows where we’ve gone. The whole world feels far away.
Theo sits beside me on the old patchwork blanket, his fingers moving with quiet purpose. I watch him unpack each item from the woven basket, laying things out with care he’ll never get to see, sandwiches cut with charming awkwardness, fruit arranged by feel, mismatched cups filled with chilled tea. His mouth is set in a small line of concentration, brow pinched slightly as he smooths a cloth that doesn’t need smoothing.
I watch his hands more than anything. They’re elegant. Confident. Always knowing where they are even when he can’t see where they land.
My gaze trails over him, slower than it should, catching on the curve of his jaw, the flush high on his cheeks from the walk, the soft rise and fall of his chest under his open shirt. He’s rolled the sleeves up, and there’s something disarming about how at ease he is like this. Like we’re just two boys in a field with sunlight in our hair and nothing pressing on our shoulders.
“You’re awfully quiet over there,” he says suddenly, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth as he brings a strawberry to his lips.
The fruit bursts between his teeth. A drop of red juice rolls down the side of his mouth and disappears into the stubble on his jaw.
Without thinking, I reach for him.
My thumb brushes the juice away, trailing slowly along his skin. His breath hitches, barely noticeable, butInotice. He leans into the touch like it’s instinct, like hewantsit.
And I don’t pull away.
“I was just watching you work your magic,” I say, my voice quieter than I mean for it to be. “Are you sure you’ve never done this before? You’re suspiciously good at it.”
He chuckles softly, the sound vibrating through him. “You’re the first,” he says, his head tilting in my direction. “The first to get unsymmetrical sandwiches on a stolen school blanket and call it magic.”
