Cora straightens, a wicked gleam on her face. “So, if you’re going to do this? Let’s make it cinematic. Champagne, music, dangerous, indulgent vibes. Go big or go home.”
I finally smile, it’s shaky, but real. The ache is still there, the fire still burning, but the weight eases enough to breathe.
I lift my glass. “To being unhinged,” I whisper.
“To being unhinged,” they echo, voices warm and wicked.
And for the first time since I opened that box, I don’t feel quite so alone.
Chapter 27
The vibrations of the music hits before we even reach the door. It spills out of the club in waves, thick and hot like something alive. The closer we get, the more I feel it sinking into my skin. It’s not just music. It’s pressure. It's a pulse. It’s the kind of beat that wraps around your spine and makes you forget how to think, how to breathe, how to feel anything but heat and movement and the possibility of something reckless waiting in the dark. It’s perfect.
I’m wearing the black La Perla set, every strap and thread of it wrapped around me like a secret only I know. My skin hums beneath it like it remembers his hands, and I hate that. Hate how easily my body betrays me. I tried telling myself I chose it for me, for the power, the confidence, the control. But as I catchmy reflection in the club’s glossy windows, I wonder if that’s the truth or just the story I needed to survive.
My hand-sewn midnight-blue bodycon clings to me like a dare, like a secret I’m dying to tell and terrified to speak. I hold my head high anyway. If I’m going to be haunted, I might as well wear it like armour.
Inside, the club is already alive with energy. Gold light flickers through the haze of smoke, sweat, and perfume. Bodies sway in rhythm, close enough to be one living, breathing thing. The scent of liquor hangs thick in the air, sharp and sweet, and everything feels just slightly out of focus.
Cora throws her head back in laughter, tipsy and beautiful and free thanks to the Finlay brothers’ watchful eye. She’s texting Owen with a dreamy grin that makes my chest ache with something I can’t name. Abbie’s halfway to the VIP section, already tangled in conversation with a group of girls who look like they should be on the runway, with Smithy and Duncan close on her heels.
And me? I dance like my life depends on it.
I move like I’m trying to burn him out of me. Every sway of my hips, every snap of my shoulders, it’s a plea and a punishment all at once. The bass shakes through my bones, loud enough to rattle teeth, but not loud enough to drown him out. Nothing ever is.
I dance harder. Faster. Like maybe I can lose him in the pulse of the crowd, in the slick heat of bodies moving against each other and the sweat trickling down my back. Like maybe I can scrub his memory of my skin if I lean far enough into the music and the here and now.
But memory is a stubborn mistress, and nothing I’ve done—not the distance between us, not the lies, not the nights I forced myself to forget—has ever loosened his hold on me.
I feel him before I see him.
The air changes, sharp and electric, coiling tight around my ribs until breathing becomes an act of will. My pulse stumbles, then sprints. The crowd fades into the background, their voices thinning into static. Every nerve in my body rises in recognition and warning.
He’s here.
I don’t have to turn. I don’t have to look. My body remembers him—the gravity of him, the quiet violence of his presence.
And then the sea of strangers parts, and there he is.
Time freezes as I take him in. Standing just beyond the edge of the dance floor, cut out of shadow and strobe, the kind of presence that makes space bend around him. A dark suit clings to his frame like sin was tailored into it. His white shirt is open at the collar, his tattoos visible where he’s rolled the sleeves of his shirt and jacket—casual, deliberate, and lethal.
A year should have dulled him. Distance should have worn his edges down. But no, he’s sharper than ever.
And his eyes, God, his eyes. They slice through the crowd and find me like they never forgot how, pinning me in place with that same merciless intensity that used to have me weak at the knees. But it’s what’sinthem that makes my blood burn.
Betrayal. Accusation. As ifI’mthe one who broke us.
The look on his face is a knife to the heart, twisting deeper with every breath. I would have doneanythingfor him. And now he looks at me like I’m something poisonous. Like he doesn’t know me at all.
The floor tilts beneath me. My chest tightens, breath stuttering as heat floods my veins—treacherous, and familiar. My body remembers him too well—the weight of his gaze, the way it claimed without words, the way it undid me until I didn’t know where he ended and I began.
He looks like sin. He looks like salvation. He looks likemine.
Those emerald eyes hold me, unblinking, and the room ceases to exist. The crowd, the music, the pulse of the night, they all dissolve beneath the weight of his stare.
I don’t know how long we hold each other like that. Seconds. Years. My throat goes dry and my knees forget how to support me. The music slows in my ears, like I’m being dragged underwater. The floor feels unsteady, like the music is shaking it apart, but I can’t stop staring. A year without him and it’s like my body has been starving, now it’s feasting, too much, too fast.
He doesn’t move at first. Just watches me, anchored in shadow, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll come to him. Like the cocky bastard already knows I will.
