Page 24 of Safe Word

‘You let Elisabeth pick the guy who challenged her, but you stopped short of making him really test her. You could’ve pushed it further. Elisabeth should’ve despised Charles – before realising she couldn’t live without him.’

I stopped pedalling and folded my arms, leaning slightly towards him. ‘You think hate is the price for passion?’

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. ‘No. It’s the mortgage. Love’s just paint on the walls,’ he said, his voice low and teasing. ‘It’s the kind of connection that can’t be ignored. When you blur the line between love and hate, you get tension. Real tension. Something that twists a knife in your chest and makes you feel something.’

The way he said it… I almost moaned.

His eyes bore into me, as if he wasn’t just critiquing my work but dissecting me piece by piece.

Swallowing hard, I was suddenly gripping my composure to stop it from fraying further.

‘Elisabeth didn’t need to hate Charles to find that tension,’ I argued. ‘She already hated herself for wanting someone who wasn’t safe. That’s where the conflict came from.’

Cain sat up straight. ‘And that’s why you write Horror Romance, and I write Dark Romance. You make your characters survive. I make them surrender.’

‘Surrender,’ I shot back, though my voice wavered slightly, ‘isn’t always the answer.’

His presence was suddenly overwhelming, his words curling around me, and I hated how much my body responded to it.

‘Sometimes resilience is more powerful,’ I added.

He slanted his head, his grin softening into something more calculating. ‘Resilience is admirable, but it’s predictable. You know they’ll make it out, one way or another. Surrender? That’s messy. Uncomfortable. It makes you wonder if they’ll come back at all.’

My gut clenched, his words unmaking a memory I didn’t know I had buried – and I wrenched my gaze away. Focused on the tips of my trainers.

He shifted slightly, holding up my book, his fingers tracing the edge of the cover.

‘Take the cellar scene with Elisabeth and Charles. It’s raw. Disturbing. But you stopped just when it got interesting. Charles was breaking her, but you pulled back before she shattered.’

I clenched my jaw, his critique hitting harder than I expected. ‘Charles didn’t need to completely destroy Elisabeth. The point, as I said, was her resilience – how she held on to some part of herself, even when he tried to take it all.’

Cain inched closer, the space between us razor-thin. ‘And that’s the difference between us,’ he murmured, his voice dropping to a near-growl. ‘I’d have stripped her bare. Let her hate him. Made her beg for the pieces – and then shown her who she really was underneath.’

The words might have sounded like a threat. But I was so broken that I saw them as a blueprint instead.

He knew what emotional damage looked like. It flared in his eyes, even as his words skittered around it. But he didn’t know I’d been almost as damaged – enough to recognise it in him.

That stare of his stripped the air around me, and I fought the sudden urge to grab the handles of the exercise bike tighter – if only to feel something solid beneath me.

My mind was already conjuring images of Elisabeth and Charles in ways I hadn’t written but could suddenly imagine all too clearly.

‘Maybe I’ll keep that in mind for the sequel,’ I said, compelling myself to meet his eyes for the last time, refusing to let him intimidate me as I started pedalling again.

Cain smiled, striking another tremor under my skin. ‘Do that,’ he said, standing up. ‘Eight o’clock. Sharp. Bring coffee. The espresso machine’s fucked.’

And with that – he was gone. I watched his tall, muscular frame move through the space, his narrow waist tapering like it had been sculpted by bloody Michelangelo himself.

I sat there, dumbfounded, my legs still moving on autopilot as the pedals churned beneath me.

Eight o’clock? The words echoed in my head, completely out of sync with the tension-filled conversation we just had. One minute he was dissecting my book, his gaze burning into me like he could see every fracture I tried to hide, and the next he was giving me orders like I was already on his payroll.

Wait. Did I just land a job?

‘Coffee machine…’ I echoed after him. The nerve of that man.

Yet, as much as I wanted to be outraged, all I did was sit there, my breath uneven, my thoughts circling around the lingering heat of his voice and his faint, frustratingly wonderful scent.

Cain D’Angelo had just turned my world upside down.