She’s already someone I don’t want to lose.
And I’ll be damned if I let her forget how much she matters.
Chapter Eight
SEEING RED
COLE-PRESENT
I still see red.
Not the red that comes with fists and chaos. Not the kind that explodes in a flash and then fades into bruises and regret.
This is slower. Hotter. Heavier.
The kind that simmers just beneath your skin until it’s impossible to ignore.
It crawls along my spine like wildfire, pulses behind my eyes.
When I walked into that bar and saw Kenna sitting there with her eyes darting and her body tight like a spring, and Nathan looming over her, looking at her like she owed him something?
That was enough. That was all it took.
That image hit me like a freight train. Her shoulders hunching inward, her arms crossed like she was trying to make herself smaller. And Nathan? His stance was all dominance. Not physical, not overt. But insidious. Possessive. Like he had the right to her space, her time, and her attention.
He hadn’t touched her. Not really.
But it didn’t matter.
There was something in the way he stood over her, the way her voice wavered when she said she was fine. I knew that tone. I remembered it from a hundred late-night phone calls.
She was lying.
And I knew it with the certainty that makes your breath catch. The kind that doesn’t ask questions. It just knows.
I could see it in her eyes. She was trying to hold it together, not for herself but for him, for his ego.
I saw the mask she was wearing. The brave-girl act. I saw how carefully she controlled her posture, her breath, her expression. Like she’d been here before. She knew how to survive this kind of moment by disappearing inside herself.
Something inside me snaps, and it feels like everything in me shuts off except for one thought:
Don’t you dare touch her again.
I didn’t grab him. I didn’t raise my voice. Hell, I didn’t even move fast.
Because rage like this doesn’t need to scream. It doesn’t need to flail or shout. It just moves, silent and heavy, like a storm gathering behind your ribs.
I just stepped up beside them, close enough for Nathan to feel the shift in the air.
“Everything okay here?” I asked. Not loud. Not aggressive. Just enough.
And it worked.
The second I spoke, the illusion broke. His little power trip ended.
The look Nathan gave me was one I’d seen before in guys who thought they could push people around until someone finally stood up to them.
A flicker of something passed over his face. Annoyance, maybe shame. But mostly the raw surprise of being interrupted. Of having someone say, “No, not this time.”
