Too fast.
Wrong.
My body reacts before my mind can.
I flinch. Damn it. My heart spikes painfully. The world narrows to a single point of fear.
Then warm fingers settle against my back. Gentle and familiar.
“You’re okay, Eli.”
CJ’s voice. I freeze.
Not because I’m afraid, because I’m not. My body doesn’t reject his touch. It doesn’t tense. It doesn’t expect pain. Instead, my pulse races for an entirely different reason.
My cock stirs in my jeans, causing air to catch in my lungs. Heat sits low in my stomach, and my mind rejects the thought of pulling away. So I don’t. I lean in a little more and breathe him in.
Oh god.
“Eli, you’re safe.” He says each word slowly, mistaking my reaction for panic.
“I’m okay,” I nod at him. He looks at me for a beat and steps back, opening the door. I step through it, still feeling his hand on my lower back.
We place our orders, then find a seat by the window. Conversation is about nothing important. Just what our days might look like. But I still feel off. My mood hasn’t really lifted nearly as much as I’d hoped, but there is one thing that refuses to leave my mind.
The feel of his hand resting on the small of my back. He touched me as if it wasn’t an obligation. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I want more. Not just his hand on my back. I want that hand everywhere.
I’m in so much trouble.
The thought terrifies me. Wanting someone has never been safe.
* * *
I see the PalMerc Security office building at the end of the street. Not far away, but close enough to see the staff arriving for work. CJ is still half a step in front of me. Hands in his pockets, head slightly down, keeping the wind off his face. Eyes always moving. Always watching.
And that’s when it hits me. Goosebumps ripple across my skin, sharp and sudden, and my head snaps up before I even understand why. My eyes search the crowd for something my body has already sensed.
Then I see him.
A man standing further up the sidewalk, still and deliberate, like he’s waiting for someone. Something about him is off. The baseball cap pulled low, the sunglasses hiding his eyes even though the sky is nothing but cloud. His hands stay buried in his pockets, shoulders tight, posture wrong for this place. He looks like he doesn’t belong, and yet something about him feels familiar. Too familiar.
It’s the way he holds himself.
I can’t see the man’s face, so it can’t be Adrian. I’ve been gone close to three months. I covered my tracks. I vanished. I know I did. But my body doesn’t care about logic. It reacts first, decides for me.
I stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk. People mutter as they move around me, annoyed, but I barely hear them. My lungs forget how to work, my chest cinching tight enough to hurt. Cold sweeps through me in a single, brutal wave. My vision blurs at the edges, my heartbeat stumbles, and the world tiltslike it’s slipping out from under me, yet my feet stay locked to the concrete. Fear not negotiating, just taking over.
CJ takes another step before realizing I’m no longer beside him. He turns back immediately, closing the distance in seconds. “What is it?”
I blink and look again for the man in the cap. He’s gone. Just like that. In a blink. A fucking blink. I tell myself it wasn’t him, that it couldn’t be him. I suck in another sharp cold breath. And another. I look at CJ for a heartbeat and shake my head, forcing a smile to my mouth. “It’s nothing.”
CJ doesn’t move, forcing people to move around him on the sidewalk. I watch as his head moves from me as he scans our surroundings; His eyes sweep the street with practiced precision, checking every doorway, every parked car, every face, looking for whatever has me trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.
I grip my jacket to keep myself upright as his face turns back to me. His eyes find me, and he asks me, his voice low and uncertain, “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I nod too quickly.
CJ takes me in slowly. I can see he doesn’t believe a word I have said, but he lets out a small sigh and asks me quietly, “Eli, you okay?”
