He lifted a brow. “Just a question. Like the one you just asked me.”
I exhaled. Hard. “You’re telling me that out of all the people in this city, you happen to be friends with Jake?”
He grinned. “Small world, isn’t it?”
I shifted, my body buzzing as if I’d touched a live wire. “Did you follow me? Did you know I’d be here?”
“No,” he said, cool as ever. “I didn’t.”
“Then how the hell did you find me?”
His smile softened. The moment shifted—just a little. “Fate, I guess.”
It caught me off guard. The sincerity. The ease. For a split second, something in my chest tightened—I dropped my gaze, knowing I would lose myself in his chocolate-colored eyes if I didn’t.
I’d met him only once. But he’d been in my head for weeks. In dreams I hadn’t meant to have. Ones I would never admit to.
“They don’t know,” he said after a beat, moving closer, until he practically sat on the counter beside me. “Do they?”
I didn’t answer.
“They don’t know what you do…” His tone wasn’t judgmental. Just… puzzled. As if he couldn’t make the pieces fit.
Heat climbed up my chest, burning hot beneath my collarbone. “That’s none of your business, now is it?” The words came out sharper than I meant them to—bitter and biting, lacedwith the edge I’d relied on more times than I cared to admit. The edge that kept people from getting too close.
His expression hardened. “Why keep the secret?”
I turned toward the sink. “What are you trying to prove?”
“Nothing,” he said. “But if they’re your friends…”
I flipped on the faucet, scrubbing my hands as though to wash away something invisible. Embarrassment, shame, guilt, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
But the words rang hollow. I could hear it in my own voice.
It hadn’t started as a secret. But somewhere along the way, it became one. I wasn’t even sure when or how—more of a withholding of truth than a lie, something I’d always done. Like muscle memory. Keep things close. Protect the soft parts of myself, because this world was designed to crush people like me.
Deep down I knew my friends weren’t like that, but this job came with assumptions I didn’t have the energy to explain away.
I offered companionship—no strings, no expectations, nothing physical. Just time. The kind most people were starved for. The fact that it came with a paycheck was the part that raised eyebrows.
Yet…I was never ashamed of it.
Not really.
I knew they’d worry. Especially Jake and John. They’d always been overprotective to the point of absurdity, even when they thought it was just a harmless date. John still had my location shared on his phone “for emergencies,” which apparently included times when I was running ten minutes late to brunch. And Jake once showed up at a restaurant uninvited while I was on a date, claiming he “just happened to be in the neighborhood,” then sat two tables away pretending to read a menu for forty-five minutes.
It was infuriating. Endearing. And part of me loved them for it… but there was a fine line between being cared for and being caged.
Then time passed.
Too much time passed for me to just come out and tell them the truth. Every day that I didn’t, the lie grew teeth.
I grabbed the towel from the counter, drying my hands a little too hard before turning back to Dean—heart pounding, jaw tight—already knowing exactly what I had to do to get out of this mess.
“I’ll go to Pine Ridge with you. Just don’t say a word.”
His gaze dipped briefly to the floor, and he chuckled. There was a beat—long enough to make my pulse skip—but when he looked up again, something had shifted behind his eyes.
