Closer this time.
“Out.”
My chest unclenched despite everything.
“Good girl.”
Two words. That was all. Heat flooded my cheeks so fast I was grateful for the soot covering my face. My stomach fluttered, warm and completely inappropriate given the circumstances.
My body heard“good girl”in that voice and decided we were done panicking.
“I’m fine.” I shoved upright, fumbling the key into the lock. “I don’t need help.”
“You nearly died.” Solomon’s voice came from behind me, flat, stating fact. “You’re allowed to not be fine.”
“I’m still fine.”
The door opened. I stepped inside without looking back.
A hand caught the door before it closed.
Solomon. He didn’t push his way in, just stood in the doorway, shrugging off his jacket. Without a word, he held it out to me, waiting, letting me decide. The jacket was still warm from his body. It smelled of steel and winter air, and underneath that, a thing I couldn’t name.
He was giving me his jacket plainly, waiting for nothing in return.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
“Thank you.” The words came out barely above a whisper, dragged from somewhere I kept locked. I wasn’t used to saying them or meaning them.
Solomon’s eyes met mine for a brief moment. There was a shift there, gone too fast to name. Then he stepped back, and I closed the door.
I turned the lock before pressing my forehead against the wood until my breathing steadied.
The room was small. Clean, forgettable. Exactly the kind of place I’d been looking for six months ago when I ran. Somewhere no one would think to look.
A place where I could disappear.
So much for that plan.
I crawled onto the bed, still wearing Solomon’s jacket, and let the weight settle over me.
The shop, my apartment above it. The vintage cash register that stuck on seven, a reading nook I’d built on my own.
Life I’d barely scraped together, brick by brick, book by book.
Hudson burned it to ash in one night.
I pulled the jacket tighter, buried my nose in the collar. Steel and winter air. Underneath that, pine and frost from where Lucian had crouched too close. And the faint, brown sugar and autumn leaves, still clinging to my skin from where Percy had caught me.
Three strangers and three scents.
Three men who looked at me as if I mattered.
I didn’t trust it, couldn’t afford to. The last man who looked at me that way put me in a hospital twice before I finally ran.
But as sleep dragged me under, it wasn’t Hudson’s face I saw.
A memory filled my thoughts again.
