Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
The answer is yes. God, the answer is yes. But there’s something that tells me he needs me to wait. To be certain. To come to him when there’s no doubt left.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “Dinner at my place. And if you still want this after . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.
“I’ll still want this.”
“I hope so.” He releases my wrist and takes a step back, putting space between us that feels like a wound. “Tonight, I need to know you’re safe inside. Doors locked. Windows checked.”
“Knox—”
“Please.” The word comes out fractured, and I realize how much this is costing him. How much control it takes to walk away when every line of his body is screaming to stay. “Let me take the time it deserves.”
“It’s been a year—”
“Let me do this right.”
I swallow hard and nod. “Okay. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
He waits while I climb the steps, waits while I fumble with my keys, waits until I’m through the door and I hear the lock click behind me. Only then do his footsteps retreat down the stairs.
I lean against the door, heart pounding, body aching. Part of me wants to yank it open and drag him back. But he’s right. Whatever this is between us, it deserves more than a frantic tumble born from weeks of tension. It deserves intention. It deserves certainty.
It deserves everything.
I cross to the window and pull aside the curtain, expecting to see Knox walking away into the night.
He’s there, standing under the streetlamp, looking up at my building. Waiting to see my light come on. Making sure I’m safe.
But there’s someone else, too.
Across the street. A figure, half-hidden in shadow between two parked cars. Tall. Lean. Perfectly still.
Not Knox. Knox is right there under the streetlamp.
This is someone else.
My blood goes cold. Knox’s words from dinner echo in my head. Like someone standing outside your apartment last night. Watching.
I’d dismissed it. Laughed it off. Chalked it up to his overprotective instincts.
But he was right.
The figure doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, just stands there in the darkness, watching my building with the same patience Knox showed all those months he followed me. Except this doesn’t feel protective. It feels . . .
And then, as if sensing my gaze, the figure turns. The streetlight catches his face for a moment—a flash of haunting features, dark eyes—before he melts back into the shadows and disappears.
My breathing stops.
Those eyes. That stance. Something sparks in my memory, a ghost of recall that I can’t quite grasp.
I’ve seen that patience before. Five years ago. In a different life.
My phone buzzes, making me jump.
Safely inside?—Knox
I type back with trembling fingers: Yes. All locked up.
I watch him read the message, watch him look up at my window one more time, watch him finally turn and walk away into the snowy night. Part of me wants to call him back, to tell him what I saw.
But I don’t.
Because if I’m right about who’s standing in the shadows, this is something I need to handle myself.
I turn off the lights and stand in the dark, watching the empty street where that figure had been.
Just my imagination, I tell myself. Just paranoia.
But when I crawl into bed, I don’t sleep.
Some ghosts don’t stay buried.
Chapter Nine
Knox
I don’t want to leave her. Standing on the sidewalk outside her building, watching her window light up, I can still taste her on my lips. Still feel the press of her body against mine, the way she arched into me when I backed her against that building. Every nerve is screaming at me to go back up those stairs, to pound on her door and finish what we started.
But I told her tomorrow. Dinner at my place. I promised to do this right.
So I force myself to turn away, to start walking toward where I parked three blocks over. The cold air does nothing to cool the heat still thrumming under my skin. I keep seeing her face in the lamplight, lips swollen from kissing, eyes dark with want. The sound she made when I gripped her hip. The way she said come upstairs like it was a challenge and a plea wrapped together.
I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
I wanted to push her through that door and pin her against the wall. Wanted to fist my hand in her hair and pull until her throat was bared for my mouth. I’ve spent months imagining what she’d look like underneath me, what sounds she’d make if I bent her over and took what I wanted. Whether she’d fight back or melt. Whether she’d beg.
I’m betting she’d do all.
The fantasy is so vivid I almost miss him.
Almost.
A figure on the corner, half-hidden by a delivery van. I catch the movement in my peripheral vision and my training kicks in before my brain fully registers what I’m seeing. I stop walking. Turn my head just enough to get a better angle without telegraphing that I’ve spotted him.