Most women looked at me like I was a red flag wrapped around a live wire. They flirted, then flinched.
Not her.
Kennedy stared like she was trying to disassemble me. Like if she found the right cracks, she could pull me apart and understand how the hell I worked.
Good luck with that, sweetheart.
I held her gaze and dropped it straight.
“I play the way I live—reckless. No leash. No filter. No fucks given. People don’t like what they can’t control.”
Her lips pressed together. She felt that. “So instead, you make them fear you?”
“Damn right I do.” I stepped in closer, just enough to watch her pupils shift. “Fear gets respect a hell of a lot faster than kissing the right rings. What about you?” I let my tone sharpen, twist into something surgical. “You do everything right, yeah? Say the right things. Wear what he tells you. Smile when it’s expected.”
Her fingers tightened around her glass—tight enough to break it if she kept going.
Bullseye.
I pushed further. I wanted her cracked open. “He tell you how to walk? How to fucking breathe?”
Her silence hit harder than a scream.
It dropped between us, heavy as a body. The truth sat right there, raw and ugly.
And for a second, I didn’t want to smirk.
I wanted to break her free.
But I couldn’t say that out loud—not yet.
So I leaned in, voice quiet and lethal. “You’re not some doll on a shelf, Kennedy. So why the hell are you letting him treat you like one?”
She blinked once, but she didn’t deny it.
She couldn’t.
And now that I’d seen the cracks, I wasn’t done.
I leaned against the bar, eyes locked on her. That fire in her gaze? It flickered—not out, just dimmed. Like she’d taken a punch and wasn’t sure if she’d swing back or walk away.
“Tell me something about you that’s real.”
My first instinct was to scoff. Shut her down.
I didn’t do real. I did rage. Hits. Wins. Pain.
Everything else? That shit stayed buried.
“I don’t like small talk,” I muttered, tone clipped.
She narrowed her eyes, jaw tightening like she wasn’t about to back off.
“I’m not asking for small talk,” she said, voice steady. “I want to know something no one else does.”
That pissed me off a little.
Not because she was wrong.
