He was still watching me.
“Night,” I said.
Then I made myself keep walking into my bedroom.
I lay on my bed and climbed under my covers.
I turned onto my back carefully, wincing at my shoulder before finding a position that didn’t make it scream.
Then I stared at the ceiling.
And stared.
And stared some more.
Did I make the right choice?That was the question, wasn’t it?
Had I done the smart thing by stopping it before it started?
Or had I just blown my chance with Swift because I got scared that one kiss would mean too much?
I groaned softly and covered my face with both hands.“Fantastic,” I muttered into the dark.
Because now, in addition to being shot, stalked, overprotected, exhausted, and maybe accidentally involved in biker club war bullshit… I was lying in bed, wondering if I had just talked myself out of kissing the hottest man I’d ever met.
Life was so annoying sometimes.
Chapter Twelve
Swift
The city didn’t sleep, not really.
It slowed down, sure.The chaos dulled, and the drunk college kids thinned out; the noise dropped from a roar to a steady hum, but Madison never really shut off.
Not on State Street.
I leaned against the window with it cracked open just enough to let the smoke out and the cool night air in.The cigarette burned slowly between my fingers, the orange tip flaring every time I took a drag.
A couple walked too close together, laughing like the world wasn’t trying to kill people two blocks over.
A guy on a bike wove through traffic like he had somewhere better to be.
A group of students stumbled past, loud and careless, the kind of oblivious that came with being young and not knowing how bad things could get.
I exhaled a slow stream of smoke out into the night and watched it disappear.
Everything looked normal.
That was the thing about danger.
It didn’t change the way the world looked, just the way you saw it.
My eyes tracked every movement automatically now.
Every person.Every car that slowed too much or lingered too long.Every shadow that didn’t quite match where it should be.
The black SUV from earlier kept replaying in my head and the way the window rolled down.The way the gun appeared and how time stretched just enough for me to know exactly what was about to happen.
