I tell myself all of that in the span of a second.
Then, he reaches across the tiny table and takes her hand.
The stupid normalcy of that gesture—just a hand, a casual squeeze—hits me like a punch. It isn’t the grab of a jealous ex. It isn’t the claim made by someone used to getting what he wants through sheer force of will.
It’s the softer proof of the thing I cannot un-see:
Shelets himtouch her. Shelets himhold her.
For an instant I am ridiculous with fury and the kind of childish ownership that’s ugly and hot and stupid all at once.
My chest tightens. The air feels wrong. I can taste bile.
Dex sees it. Sees Chase’s hand holding hers. Sees the rage boiling within me.
“Leo?” he asks.
I should get a grip.
I should step back. I should walk away.
Instead, something in me—a possession that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the stupid human animal part of me—pushes forward.
“No,” I think. “No way. Not today.”
I take a step.
Dex squeezes my shoulder—an attempt to stop me—but the motion is meant to buy time. Meant to say,maybe think about whether you want to be that guy.
I shrug his hand off like it’s an afterthought. My strides carry me toward their table before my brain catches up.
She is nothisto touch, I think. Nothisto hold. Nothisto love.
Then, as if a current snaps something into place, the thought that makes the rest of it honest and terrible slides under everything else:
She ismine.
Not in any legal sense. Not in some ownership logic that would make me ashamed.
In the blunt, aching way of needing someone so much it rearranges your insides: that small, private corner of me that stops at the name Victoria Foster and feels like home. She has woven herself so quietly into my days that I didn’t notice until the absence of her is a room too large to stand in.
Only I can touch her. Hold her. Love her.
And I do. I fucking love her.
By the time I’m within one table of reaching them, literally five steps away from ripping his hand off of hers and telling him to back the fuck off, I hear Chase say something that makes my entire world tilt like a bad ride.
“If you’d just come home, we can fix this. Together.”
But what freezes me in place is her answer.
It’s immediate. No hesitation.
“I’ll go back with you.”
The sound of those five words hollow everything out inside me. The syllables sit between them like a promise, maybe a surrender, and the joy on his face spreads like sunlight across a wet street.
She smiles at him in the way that makes him soft and victorious and sure.
