“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
Rafe beams. “It’s art.”
“It’s insulting,” I argue.
“It’s accurate.”
They light candles. An absurd number of candles. The DJ lowers the music again. Everyone gathers around, faces bright with expectation.
I brace my hands on the counter, feeling strangely overwhelmed. Not in a bad way exactly, but in a way that makes me acutely aware of how rare this is. A room full of people happy to be here. People I respect. People who make me feel like something more than a player.
Rafe slides in beside me, shoulder touching mine. He doesn’t look at the cake. He looks at me. His eyes soften in that way that always makes my chest ache.
“Make a wish,” Marco says.
I snort. “I have no idea what to wish for.”
“You do,” Rafe murmurs under his breath, too quiet for anyone else to hear.
I glance at him. He’s smiling. Warm and certain. I take a breath, lean forward, and blow out the candles.
Cheers explode around me. Someone shoves a knife in my hand. People demand the first slice. Eli tries to steal frosting and gets slapped away by Miles.
I cut the cake, laugh when Marco insists on an edge piece like it’s a life-or-death preference, and let the night keep carrying me along.
At some point, amid the noise and laughter, Rafe leans in close again. “Still hating it?” he asks softly.
I look around—the band, my teammates, Miles pressed close to his date, Drew’s arm around his.
I meet Rafe’s eyes. “No,” I admit. “I’m not.”
His smile turns incandescent. “Good.”
And then, because he can’t help himself, because he’s Rafe and he lives for pushing right up against the edge of what we’re allowed, he adds in a whisper only I can hear, “Because when everyone leaves, you’re mine.”
My pulse spikes so fast it’s almost dizzying. I swallow. “I already am.”
His gaze burns. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “But then I get to remind you properly.”
I nearly choke on cake.
Rafe just laughs, delighted, and drifts back into the crowd like he didn’t just light my entire body on fire in the middle of my own party. I stand here, smiling like an idiot, the noise of the room swelling around me.
I don’t feel like we’re just surviving the secrecy.
Tonight, it feels like we’re building something. Together.
And when the party finally begins to thin—when people start hugging goodbye, when the DJ shifts into slower tracks, when the lights feel softer and the house feels warmer—I catch Rafe’s eye across the room again.
He doesn’t wink this time. He doesn’t have to. His smile says everything.
I grin back, already feeling the pull of what comes next.
12
The late-morning sun is bright.It hits the windshield in clean, unapologetic bands as we roll through streets that still look half asleep, Los Angeles stretching lazily into another day like it has all the time in the world. I sit in the back seat of Miles’s SUV, shoulder to shoulder with Rafe, and it takes me a full minute to remember that yesterday wasn’t a dream.
The party. The noise. The banner. The cake. The way Rafe looked at me across the room like the rest of the world didn’t matter, like it could burn and he’d still be watching me with that quiet heat.
