The words alone have heat flickering low in my stomach.
North releases my hand and reaches up to undo two buttons of his shirt, then pulls the fabric aside at his left side, just under his arm. I lean in without thinking, narrowing the small gap between our chairs, his scent close to making me pass out, but then I see it.
The scar is brutal.
Healed, yes, but badly. The skin is puckered and uneven, pulled tight in places, the kind of wound that never had proper hands on it when it mattered. It runs long across his rib cage, pale and ugly and deeply wrong against the bronze of his skin.
My whole chest tightens. “Is that where you were stabbed at sixteen?”
He stares at me, not flinching from my reaction. “My father did it because I laughed during a church session.”
For a second, I can’t do anything except stare at him.
All the hot, dark tension between us, all the flirting and the steady glances and the way my body has been responding to him all night, it doesn’t disappear. It just deepens, turns into something heavier and more dangerous. Something that hurts.
“We were part of a religious community,” he explains, and the faint contempt in his voice says exactly what he thinks of that term. “But it was a guise, as it was really a cult with clean shirts and good manners. My father liked to call it discipline. Everyone else liked to call it faith.” He buttons his shirt back up. “When Iasked for help, they handed me back to him. I learned early on that nobody was coming.”
That wrecks me, and I feel sick to my stomach. I see him suddenly—younger, smaller, standing there hurt and furious and abandoned—and something in me tears wide open at the image.
“You were a child,” I say, and my voice sounds shaky to my own ears. I reach for his hand and draw my seat closer to him. And I hold on hard, as though I can somehow pass warmth into all the years that didn’t have enough of it.
“That’s monstrous,” I whisper. “That’s not discipline. That’s evil.”
We stay like that for a long time. “I left at sixteen. Walked out with what I could carry, and never went back.”
“And nobody came after you.” I don’t know why that’s the part that breaks me, but it is. The idea of him leaving and no one loving him enough to follow or find him.
My throat burns. Before I can think better of it, I lean forward again and wrap my arms around him. He shuffles even closer in his seat, and I’m now sitting between his spread thighs.
He stills for a fraction of a second, and I press against the hard line of his body.
Then his arms come around me once more, and God, I didn’t know how badly I wanted that until it happened.
He’s solid everywhere, hot and muscular. My whole body registers him, his scent engulfing me, and even with my heart aching for the boy he was, there’s still a deep, helpless pull low in my belly because being this close to him feels insane and perfect and dangerous all at once.
I breathe him in anyway.
His chest rises under my cheek. One of his hands spreads across the middle of my back, steady and protective, and I swear the entire world narrows to that touch.
“You just broke my heart,” I say into his shoulder. “I hope you know that.”
His arms tighten around me, not enough to trap, just enough to make me feel held. “You did a number on mine too.”
That nearly undoes me. I pull back just enough to glance up at him, and we’re close. I hear the crowds around us, the chatter, the laughter, yet I’m in a different place. Just North and me. My hands remain on him, one on his forearm, the other now tangled with his.
“You shouldn’t be this easy to touch,” I murmur, because apparently my mouth has given up on self-preservation entirely.
His eyes drop to my mouth. “You think this is easy for me?”
Heat instantly flashes through me, and the realization of what is blooming between us sits heavily, breathing.
His hand comes up, and his thumb holds under my chin, tipping my face toward him. The gesture is gentle.
“You are not made by what they did to you,” he says, and every word is clear and deliberate, as if he wants no room left for me to hide from it. “None of that gets to claim you.”
My eyes sting again. Damn him. “I’d really prefer not to cry in front of the hottest man at the table,” I whisper.
His thumb brushes once along the line of my jaw. “Then I’ll count it as an honor if you do.”
