He reached his car and stood beside it, keys in hand, not moving. The metal bit cold against his palm.
Whatever he'd been reaching for, in the dim light of the club, in the press of bodies and the rhythm of surrender, wasn't there. Had never been there.
And the most terrible part, the part that settled into his bones like frost, was that he already knew it never would be.
Not here. Not like this. Not anymore.
Chapter 2
Adriel
The morning light in Adriel's bedroom was unforgiving.
It slanted through the blinds in hard, flat stripes, carving his reflection in the full-length mirror into pieces. He stood frozen, shirt half-tugged off his shoulders, the collar digging into his neck like a chokehold.
Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. He didn't know anymore.
Everything felt wrong on his body.
The charcoal trousers were new. A hopeful purchase. Slim-fit, the tag had said, which turned out to be a lie so profound it felt like a personal betrayal. They clung across his hips, the swell of his thighs, and gaped mockingly at the waist. The button-down was soft blue,professional, he'd thought. Now it just seemed wrong. Fabric straining across his chest, pulling taut across his stomach.
He'd tried tucking it in. The resulting bulge made him look like a stuffed pastry. Untucked, it hung like a shapeless tent that somehow still managed to outline every curve he wanted to disappear.
He pulled the cardigan over it all. Thick wool. Yanked the hem down hard over his stomach.
He stared.
The soft wool did nothing to disguise the curve of his belly. Just softened its outline. He tugged at it again, frantic, useless, like he could smooth himself out the way you smoothed a wrinkled sheet.
It didn't work.
His reflection was a collage of failures.
His hair, dark blond, too soft, exactly like his mother's, refused to obey. No matter how much he wet it, smoothed it, begged it, fine strands escaped. Stuck up at his temples. Curled against his neck. Made him look tousled and unkempt instead of polished. His cheeks were already flushed, blotchy and hot pink.
He looked short. He looked pudgy. The cardigan made him look frumpy.
He looked, in the cruel flat light of morning, like too much.
Too much body. Too much anxiety. Too much effort, poured into a result that screamed, in every possible language…
Not enough.
He thought about the name on his contract. Landen Waters, Editor-in-Chief. He'd looked him up, because he was incapable of walking into anything unprepared. The photographs had not helped. Sharp jaw, wheat-gold hair, the kind of face that existed in a different taxonomy entirely from Adriel's own.
The kind of man who would look at Adriel and see exactly what he was.
He yanked at his cardigan again.
A sharp knock sounded on his bedroom door. It opened before he could answer.
Jenna leaned against the frame, coffee steaming in her mug. She took him in with one swift, comprehensive glance, the panicked eyes, the death-grip on his sweater hem, the closet vomited onto his bed in desperate heaps, and snorted.
"Wow." Dry as toast. "You look like shit."
Adriel's hands fell to his sides. The fight drained out of him all at once, a puppet with cut strings.
"I hate this." His voice came out wrecked. "I hate all of this."
