Then he growls. Not a soft, irritated sound. A deep one. It doesn’t just vibrate in the air… it hits the ground. It hits me.
“We hate her,” he says, voice rough and unguarded.
And for a second, I forget everything. My brain short-circuits, and all that’s left is the heat of him standing too close.
I can barely think, but my brain still registers that something has just happened between us. Something has shifted.
I let out a breath, a mix of frost and expectation escaping my lungs. “Okay then, Bear,” I breathe. “We hate her.”
Hiccup.
Damn Shame What They Did to that Dog
Eli
Max is quiet.
Completely silent.
It’s the quietest she’s been since the moment she crash-landed into my life, and I hate how much I notice it. How much Ifeelit.
Because the silence isn't peaceful. It’s loaded.
I haven’t known her long but I know quiet is not her default setting. She begins and ends with…MUCH.
I don’t know why or even what it is about her, really, but I like her. She’s the quirky kind of chaos that suggests you might end up in a jail cell if you let her take the reins. She’s not afraid to sexually harass me, even though I’m essentially a stranger to her. And she’s loud. Annoyingly loud.
Like I said, I don’t know why, but I like her.
Then, throwing Vanessa into the mix? That wasn’t just a spark, it was a damn match in a room full of gasoline. And because I am, admittedly, a troubled man, pride stirred in my chest as I watched Max square up to her like they’d been rivals for years. Iguess a few hours was long enough for her to decide I was worth defending.
I didn't ask for it, and I certainly didn’t need it, but seeing how fiercely she claimed space on my behalf made my curiosity sharpen into something else entirely. It told me this woman wasn’t just chaos wrapped in confidence. She was something much more dangerous.
Max is trouble.
The good trouble. The type of trouble that makes a man lean in instead of backing away. And that’s exactly what I did.
I’m sure I scared her—grabbing her like that, pressing her up against the truck.
But this woman is testing every nerve I’ve got, and instead of keeping my distance like I know I should, I snapped. I pulled into her.
Now I’m sitting here with her silent beside me and my own thoughts screaming louder than ever.
Vanessa and I… we have history. We used to run in the same circles and eventually became partners. As a sustainable housing developer, I design and build homes for the future—projects that actually benefit the environment. She manages the kind of high-end architectural firm that handles the projects I despise: the ones that gentrify established communities and drop redundant mansions where they aren’t needed.
Our partnership was built on a calculated exchange. She introduced me to billionaires looking for “sustainable” vanity projects, and in return, I gave her access to clients who cared only about obscene profit margins. It was a symbiosis that worked until it didn’t. These days, she’s moved beyond collaboration; she’s developed a rival firm specifically designed to dismantle everything I’ve built.
When we were working together, we began to clash over the direction of our projects. The company she kept—oligarchs andpower brokers living in the shadows—forced me to start playing my cards close to my vest. When she realized I was shutting her out, she found a different way in: my brother. She exploited our relationship, using his knowledge of my inner workings to steal trade secrets and build a rival firm. A sustainable construction firm that mirrors my own but serves all the wrong interests.
My resentment toward her isn’t about a broken heart. We were never that kind of couple. I despise her for what she did to my family in the fallout—for the way she fractured us. My mom hasn't been able to have her sons over for a real family dinner in two years because my brother, Elliot, refuses to believe she used him. He can’t see that she’s still using him just to get to me.
But Max has no idea about any of this, and it’s unfair of me to take it out on her—even if she was the one who pushed into my space and tested me. As long as she doesn't do it again or try to pry into what happened, I'm good. I have zero interest in talking about Vanessa or the firm any further, and I don’t need Max testing my limits. I’m honestly more interested in whatever insane thing my dark chocolate passenger might say next.
“You hungry or something?” I ask, not exactly out of kindness. The sound that just came from Max’s stomach was not human. It sounded like a damn grizzly stowed away under her dress.
“I could eat, I guess,” she shrugs, like her stomach didn’t just growl loud enough to rattle the dashboard.
I shake my head, already steering us toward the answer. “I know a place. You want to stop before we get to my house?”
