Nothing.
I told myself it was fine. I’d planted the seed. Now I just had to wait for it to grow.
But patience had never been my virtue.
And Zara Cruz was making me want to burn down every damn wall between us.
Chapter Seven
Zara
I had practically run out of the bar.
My legs carried me down the street before my brain even has a chance to catch up. The cold air biting my cheeks, grounding me for a moment.
My whole body was buzzing. Not just from panic or adrenaline, but from something hotter, darker, humming under my skin. Even now, I could still feel the way his gaze had settled on me, heavy and lingering, drinking me in like some forbidden fruit. Every brush of winter air against my cheek reminded me of the warmth of his hand, the barely there touch that lingered at the edge of memory.
I had no clue where I was going.
I just knew I had to get away from him—from those dark, knowing eyes and that voice that made my stomach flip in ways I didn’t want to examine, my pulse skipping each time I replayed his words, each syllable rough and low like velvet scraping across bare skin.
“Marry me, Zara.”
The words reverberate in my skull, bouncing off the hollow spaces where logic used to live. Who the hell does that? Who sees a crying stranger at a bar, buys her dinner, and then proposes a fake marriage like he’s ordering a drink?
A crazy person.
A rich, powerful, dangerous, crazy person.
I fumbled for my phone as it buzzed in my pocket before Marcus’ name displayed across the screen.
“Hey,” I said, my voice shaky.
“Zara! I just landed. My flight got in early. I’ll be home in about an hour. You still alive?”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “Barely.”
“Uh oh. That bad?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“Copy that. Food run first? I’m starving.”
“Whatever. Just… hurry.”
I hung up and kept walking, my suitcase wheels clattering behind me like a tinny heartbeat. The city lights blur past—neon signs, headlights, the glow of apartment windows. Everyone else seems to have a place to go. A home. A person waiting for them.
I had a lumpy couch and a friend who was about to hear the most unbelievable story of his life.
I finally made it to Marcus’s walk-up apartment on the east side, and took the time waiting for him to brace myself against the door while I processed my night from hell.
In the span of a few hours, I was broken up with, made homeless, and then proposed to by a stranger.
You know what?
Screw Nathan.
We hadn’t grown apart. He’d grown away. Away from me, away from my neediness, away from the broken pieces that I kept trying to glue together with his attention.
