Chapter 22
Izzy
It’s funny how, when you’re in the moment, you think you know everything.
You think you’re in love. You think this person is it. The one. The future. The axis your whole world should spin around. You build castles in your head with their name carved into the doorframe. You plan cities and babies and Sunday mornings before you’ve even learned the shape of their silence.
I was twenty-five, and before Raze, I’d been with a total of four men.
Four.
That sounded like a respectable number when you thought about it. It sounded experienced. Grown. Mature. It wasn’t.
The last of them was Nathan.
Nathan with the soft hands and the big promises.
Nathan who always had a new plan but never any follow-through.
I met him in that drifting phase of my life—the years when everyone else seemed to sprint forward while I wandered sideways.
Instead of college, I worked dead-end jobs that smelled like fryer oil and cleaning chemicals.
I shared houses with people who thought ambition was a personality flaw.
We stayed up too late, drank too much, talked about changing the world without ever changing ourselves.
That’s how I met him.
We were both lost. The difference was, I eventually decided I didn’t want to stay that way.
I got tired of waking up in bedrooms that weren’t really mine, next to men who didn’t see me.
Tired of scraping by. Tired of pretending I wasn’t meant for more.
So I picked myself up, filled out the forms, and applied to art school as a mature-age student with a résumé that didn’t look too impressive but did the job nonetheless.
It was humiliating and empowering all at once.
I worked during the day and studied at night. I stopped going to parties. I stopped answering texts from people who only remembered I existed after midnight. I built something out of discipline instead of desire.
In hindsight, the only thing standing between me and the life I wanted was Nathan.
It sounds dramatic when I say it like that. Like I’m rewriting history to make him the villain and myself the na?ve girl who didn’t know better.
But that’s the truth of it.
Every time I tried to move forward, he pulled me back. Every small step I took toward something better—toward art school, toward stability, toward ambition—was followed by ten steps backward because I was dragging him with me.
If I stayed late at the studio, he’d sulk.
If I talked about internships, he’d laugh and call them “corporate traps.”
If I saved money, he’d find a reason we needed it now.
I thought that was love.
I thought love meant carrying someone when they couldn’t carry themselves.
What I didn’t understand was that he wasn’t trying to stand.
He was comfortable being held.
And I don’t know why it took me so long to see it.
Maybe because admitting it meant admitting I had chosen wrong. Or maybe because I was scared that without someone to save, I’d have to focus on saving myself.
He’d let me build a future in my head while he was building something else entirely behind my back. Something dirty. Something intoxicating. Something that could have dragged me down with him without me even realising it.
And that’s when it hit me.
He hadn’t just been dependent.
He’d been anchoring me to the bottom.
All those times I felt exhausted wasn’t because art school was too hard. It was because I was carrying a grown man who didn’t want to grow.
And those times I doubted myself? It wasn’t because I wasn’t capable. It was because he benefited from me staying small.
In hindsight, the stars had always been there. I just couldn’t see them through the smoke.
And then I met Raze Cavalho, quite by accident. I didn’t know what to do with a man like him.
He wasn’t a boy pretending to be a man. He walked into a room and the room adjusted.
That was the first thing I noticed.
The air changed around him. People rearranged themselves without realising the change. Voices lowered. Space opened.
He was what you’d call a man’s man. Not because he was loud or crude or trying to dominate the world with noise. But because he carried something steady inside him. Something unbearable.
He was strong in a way that wasn’t just muscle—though God help me, there was plenty of that.
His forearms. I noticed them before I noticed anything else.
Thick and corded with muscle, veins running just beneath the skin like dark rivers.
When he rolled his sleeves up, the fabric stretching over his biceps, it was almost unfair.
Those forearms looked like they’d been carved out of something solid.
The kind of arms that could lift you without effort.
Forearms that could pin you to a wall and make you thank him for it.
And his hands. Big. Calloused. Capable.
When he wrapped one around my wrist for the first time—just enough to feel the weight of him—I forgot how to breathe.
The boys I’d dated before had been all sharp edges and insecurity. They’d needed reassurance. Needed ego stroking. Needed to feel bigger than me to feel whole.
Raze didn’t need anything. He knew exactly who he was.
And in bed—wow.
The difference between a boy and a man was never clearer.
He moved with intention. Knew how to take his time. Knew how to watch my face and adjust without me saying a word. He wasn’t clumsy or rushed or selfish. He was deliberate. Like everything he did had weight behind it.
With the others, sex had been something we did.
With Raze, it felt like something we built.
My life before him had been noise. Chaos. Half-formed dreams and temporary people.
After him, everything sharpened.
He didn’t try to change me. He just made drifting impossible. There was no floating when you were tethered to something that solid.
That was the thing about Raze—he was an anchor. Strong and immovable. If you wrapped yourself around him, you weren’t going anywhere.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to.
I was lying beside him now, the sheets twisted around our legs, his arm stretched above his head.
My fingers drifted down his arm, over the hard slope of his shoulder, along the thick line of muscle in his forearm.
He flexed instinctively when I touched him.
I smiled.
“Do you have any idea how unfair these are?” I murmured, tracing the vein that ran toward his wrist.
His mouth curved slightly. “Unfair?”
“They look like they belong in a gallery. Not attached to a man who can probably dismantle a boardroom with a single sentence.”
He huffed a short laugh.
I leaned in closer, pressing my cheek against his chest. His heartbeat was steady. Strong. The kind of rhythm you could fall asleep to and trust would still be there in the morning.
He rolled toward me then, his hand sliding down my back, fingers splaying possessively at my waist.
His forehead touched mine.
“You’re staring,” he murmured.
“I like looking at you.”
His thumb traced the curve of my hip beneath the sheet. Slow. Intent.
“Careful,” he warned.
I felt movement in the air. The temperature rising, subtle but undeniable.
“Or what?” I whispered.
His hand tightened, just slightly. Enough to remind me of the strength there. The power.
“Or I’ll show you exactly what those forearms are good for.”
Heat bloomed low in my stomach.
The world outside the room faded. No drifting. No uncertainty. No past versions of myself trying to survive on scraps.
Just this. Just him.
He pulled me over him with effortless strength, my palms braced against his chest as I straddled his hips. The look in his eyes wasn’t wild.
It was focused.
Like I was the only thing that existed.
His hands slid up my thighs, and when he leaned up to kiss me, it wasn’t rushed. It was certain.
And I kissed him back like I finally understood what it meant to choose someone—not because I was lost.
But because I wasn’t.