Part One
Every story starts somewhere. Mine starts with a stare across a crowded room, a booth I should’ve never sat in, and a man who already knew my name. I thought I was watching him. I didn’t realise I’d already been chosen.
Wendy
Idon’t believe in happy endings. I believe in exits. And I always keep one in sight.
The club smells like whiskey, perfume, and men who don’t know when to quit. Velvet booths. Red lights. Smoke curling like promises no one intends to keep.
The atmosphere is a humid chokehold, thick with the scent of unwashed sins and cheap gin that stings the back of my throat before I even take a sip. I don’t belong here—same way I don’t belong anywhere—but I show up anyway. Because sometimes it’s easier to drown than keep fighting for air.
I told my best friend I was going home early. I lied.
I came here instead, because it’s the one place he might show up. Her brother. The ghost I swore I’d never chase. The mistake I never stopped making.
He’s not supposed to be here tonight. He’s not supposed to be anywhere near me. That’s the deal—her family is off-limits, her rules are gospel, and I never break the rules that keep me safe. Except I do. Every time Iwalk through this door, I’m lighting a match in a room full of gasoline.
The ice runs up my spine before I even see him. That prickle, that burn—like someone’s hands are already on me even when they’re not. It’s a phantom touch, a cold blade tracing the valley of my collarbone.
I glance at the mirrors behind the bar, the silver backing peeling like dead skin, but there’s no reflection of him. Not yet. Just the weight of being watched, a pressure so heavy it makes my ribs ache.
I know it’s him before I hear his voice.
“Still drinking candy, Darling?”
My name rolls out like sin on his tongue. Low. Certain. Not a question—never a question. My glass stills halfway to my lips, the neon light catching the condensation like blood on my knuckles. I don’t turn. Not yet. I know what happens when I look. The room gets smaller, the air heavier, and my body betrays me faster than my mouth can cover it.
“Fuck off,” I murmur.
But my pulse is already sprinting, a frantic, jagged beat that echoes in my ears. He slides into the booth without asking. All broad shoulders and bruised knuckles, wearing that grin like he knows exactly how much trouble I’ll let him be. He smells like smoke and violence—a scent that tastes like cedar and the cold iron of a gun barrel—and I hate that I know it better than my own perfume.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.
“You say that every time,” he replies, lazy, dangerous. His eyes rake me slow, like he’s unwrapping something he already owns. He’s looking at me like I’m aprayer he’s about to desecrate. “And yet—here you are.”
I finally look. And just like that, I’m fucked.
Because he’s beautiful in the way bullets are beautiful—shiny, fast, fatal. Dark hair falling into eyes that have no business being that blue, that sharp. A jaw cut like it was meant to bruise my palm. Tattoos crawling up his throat like warnings I’ll never obey, black ink bleeding into the hollow of his neck where I can see the steady, mocking thrum of his heart.
He’s my best friend’s brother. The one I swore I’d never touch. The one I can’t stop craving.
“Say it,” he murmurs, leaning closer, his breath hot against my ear, a humid heat that makes the moisture between my thighs pool.
“Say what?” I snap, hating the tremor in my voice.
“That you came here hoping I’d find you.”
My thighs clench under the table. I want to laugh. To lie. To spit in his face and walk out into the rain until the scent of him is scrubbed off my skin. Instead, I tip my drink back and let the pink burn scorch my throat. Because he’s right. And we both fucking know it.
His hand doesn’t touch me, but it might as well. The static between us is thick enough to choke on. He sprawls in the booth like he owns it, like he owns the whole damn club, like he owns me just because my pulse won’t behave when he looks at me.
“You always sit here?” he asks, voice rough, careless, like he’s not actually curious. Like he already knows the answer.
I roll my eyes. “Do you always stalk your sister’s friends?”
He smirks. “Only the interesting ones.”
That grin—fuck, it’s not practiced like other men’s. It’s sharp, lopsided, dangerous. The kind that makes you want to bite it off his mouth just to wipe it away, to taste the arrogance on his tongue and swallow it whole.
