Khai
Make sure it’s clean. Same spot.
I mount the bike but don’t start it yet. Instead, I look up at her building, eyes tracing the second floor until I find it.
Apartment 9.
A light flicks on.
My jaw tightens.
She’s safe.
For now.
The bike rumbles to life beneath me, a familiar vibration grounding the part of me that wants to go back upstairs and knock. To test how close she’d let me get again.
I don’t.
Instead, I pull away from the curb, the night opening up in front of me.
Sweet dreams, Little Heaven.
Chapter Seven
Khai
The music is wrong.
It’s too loud, too distorted, pulsing through my skull instead of my chest. The bass rattles the floor beneath my boots, the lights slicing the darkness in violent flashes of blue and red. The club is packed, bodies everywhere, heat and sweat and movement, but none of it feels right.
Because she’s here.
Emmy.
She’s pressed against me, her body moving with mine, hands resting on my shoulders like they belong there. Like they’ve always belonged there. Her hair is loose tonight, spilling down her back in soft waves, catching the strobe lights as she tilts her head up to look at me.
Green eyes. Bright. Alive.
She smiles at me, breathless, unaware.
And that’s when the fear hits.
Not sharp. Not sudden.
Heavy.
Wrong.
My hands slide to her waist, instinctive, possessive, as if holding her tighter might anchor us both. I open my mouth to say something, move,get out,stay behind me, but the music swallows the words before they reach her.
The crowd shifts.
I feel it before I see it.
The air changes.
A pressure builds in my chest, familiar and horrifying, like standing on the edge of a cliff I’ve already fallen from once.
