Chapter Fifteen
Molly
I wake to sound, not to sensation. Not the dreamy, soft kind of sound that means the world is safe and small, but a metallic, percussive clinking that’s wrong for the hour. It slices through the thick velvet of my sleep with surgical precision.
My eyes snap open.
My body, slow on the uptake, is still in the soft afterglow of last night, skin tingling, pulse low and lazy and satisfied. For a stupid, traitorous second I let myself savor it — the sweet ache between my thighs, soft bruises on my ass. I’m naked and tangled in my sheets, and for a single, suspended moment my only thought isgoddamn.
Then the metallic echo comes again, louder now, and the rest of me catches up.
Adrenaline surges. I pull the sheet tight to my chest and listen, every cell straining. There’s a faint scrape; a grunt; the clinging thud of metal on metal. It’s coming from my kitchen.
“What the hell?”
I swing my legs off the bed and pad down the hall, bare feet silent on the cheap carpet. My apartment is sunlit and bright, as if nothing bad could happen in a place this ordinary.
And then I see him.
Evan Wilder is on his knees in front of the water heater panel, toolbox open beside him, sleeves shoved up, forearms flexedas he twists something with a wrench like he owns the damn building.
Like he owns me.
My hands tighten on the edge of the sheet until my knuckles go numb. I want to scream. I want to throw something. Instead, I take a slow, measured breath and let the rage melt into something icy and controlled.
“What the hell are you doing?” My voice is low, but it carries.
He doesn’t even jump.
He pauses — slow — then turns his head over his shoulder with the lazy confidence of a man who expects the world to make room for him.
His gaze drops.
Not to my face. To what’s barely concealed beneath the thread-thin bedsheet I’m clutching to my chest.
His mouth turns up on one side. “Morning.”
I take two steps forward, fury pushing me. “What the hell are you doing?”
He lifts the wrench, and the metal catches the sun. “Fixing your hot water.”
“I didn’t ask you to fix my hot water.”
“I know,” he says, and there’s something in his tone that makes my chest hitch — like he heard the need under my anger and decided he didn’t care what I wanted.
I hate that it affects me; I hate that my throat tightens when he looks at me with that smirk.
He glances at me again, eyes lingering on my bare shoulder where the sheet slips, then returns to the water heater with a quiet little hum. “You’ve been showering in ice water.”
“I’m fine.”
He snorts. “Sure.”
“I don’t need you fixing my life,” I say.
“Good. Because that’s a little bit beyond me. All I’m doing is fixing your water heater.”
He says it as if it’s not the most invasive thing he could possibly be doing. I glare at him, but he just goes back to his task, sleeves slipping higher as he works. His forearms are roped with muscle and, fuck me for noticing, but I do.
