The second is that once my brain catches up, it could not care less.
I come into Noir on too little sleep, too much caffeine, and the kind of brittle determination that feels a lot like anger if you don’t look at it too closely. My nerves are scraped raw from last night—storm, darkness, panic, Shiloh in my bed, Shiloh’s hand in mine, Shiloh’s phone light burning beside the lamp that failed me.
I should be ashamed, or at least embarrassed.
I am. I’m both of those things.
And still, under the shame, there’s a traitorous little pulse of heat when I remember his mouth at my throat and the way he didn’t ask questions I didn’t want toanswer. The way he left a steaming mug of coffee, weak with cream and sugar the way I like it, on the bedside table.
The lamp was burning.
I didn’t wake to him, but I woke to that, and that’s…something.
It’s the kind of weakness that gets people in trouble. So I come to work spoiling for a fight.
Friday night at Noir is all sharp edges and strong perfume, the room swelling into weekend hunger before the sun has fully gone down. Thursday was bad. Friday is worse—more bodies, louder laughter, greedier hands, bigger tabs, richer men pretending they’re invisible because they tip well enough to buy silence.
I move through it on autopilot, tray balanced, smile in place, spine straight.
I’ve learned by now to keep my head down, my ears open, and although it goes against my every instinct, to avoid overplaying my hand.
That’s the rule.
Then I walk into the shift and feel it immediately: something is off.
The energy behind the bar is wrong. It’s not chaotic. Ever would never allow chaos. It’s still controlled—but too controlled.
Ever and Shiloh aren’t exactly on their best behavior on a normal day, but tonight they’re different. They’re tighter around the mouth. Quieter in the shoulders. Watchful in a way that reads less like boredom and more like men waiting on impact.
Like they hear thunder the rest of us can’t yet.
The room feels charged with it. Staff picks up on it even if they don’t have words for why. Patrons feel it too. They laugh louder, drink faster, look over their shoulders without knowing the reason.
We’re all breathing in the same shift in the air. We’re all waiting for something.
Then Nash Blackwood appears.
He fills the side entrance before he even steps through it, broad shoulders and sheerpresencetaking up the frame, and the room doesn’t hush exactly—but it shifts. Like a school of fish changing direction at once.
I’m halfway through entering a whiskey order when I look up and forget to breathe.
Damn.
Despite what his upbringing and his house suggests, there’s nothing polished about him. No sleek suit, no curated charm, no peacocking. It’s as though labor and violence made a man and taught him how to wear denim.
With a vest. He is wearing a vest out of some material—tweed? linen?—that my fingers itch to touch.
But the rest of him is pure working man. Clean jeans. Boots. Pale shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, exposing forearms roped with muscle and old scars the color of pale wire that I can see from across the room. Hands that could rebuild an engine if that’s what he wanted to do.
Or break a neck.
Scruff roughens a hard jaw and pointed chin. Chestnut hair, a little too long on top, pushes back from a widow’s peak like he ran his hand through it on the way in and didn’t care what it looked like after. His eyes are glacial blue and awake in a way that consumes the room.
He’s not flashy. Not pretty, although handsome comes to mind.
He’sarresting. The kind of man people notice before they realize they’ve noticed him.
Even patrons on the near side of the bar straighten as he passes. Not because he asks for space.
