Chapter Twelve
LUKE
Logan leaned against the locker bank like he owned the place, arms crossed, grin fixed in place. He waited until I was close enough that I couldn’t ignore him then fell into step beside me.
“Your old man better watch his back,” he muttered, voice pitched low, meant for me alone. “Dunn’s going to eat your family alive.”
I kept walking.
He matched my pace, sneakers scuffing the floors. “Big empire. Fragile footing. Everyone sees it.” His smirk widened. “Guess you’ll be the last to know when it falls.”
My jaw tightened, fingers flexing around the strap of my bag. The worst part? He wasn’t pulling it out of thin air. I’d heard the same tension in my dad’s clipped calls, the same unease in Drew’s late-night silence.
But a fight in the middle of the hall wouldn’t solve anything. It would prove him right—that I was reckless. So I didn’t bite.
Logan leaned in anyway, breath hot against my ear. “Maybe Mila should be careful who she ties herself to. Funny, isn’t it? She crawls back, latches on to you, and you’re the one headed for the drop. Dunn’s going to make sure of it.”
I stopped walking. Out of the corner of my eye, Mila stood by the stairwell near the art classroom, watching. Logan caught it too—his grin widened like he’d staged the whole thing for her audience—then he peeled off into the stream of students.
Her brow furrowed for a second before she masked it. But I’d already seen.
I stood there a second too long, fists locked at my sides, every muscle screaming for release. Then the bell shrieked overhead, and the crowd enveloped me again. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a look back. But the words stuck, lodged as if glass under skin.
After seventh period, when I was at my locker, Mila caught up to me. She caught the tension—the way my shoulders stayed tense after class, how I shoved my books in my bag as though they’d wronged me. She brushed close, low enough so only I could hear.
“What was that with Logan?”
“Nothing.”
She tilted her head, unconvinced. “Looked like something.”
I smirked faintly, too brittle to be real. “I’ll tell you later.”
It was the best I could give her in a hallway with ears everywhere.
By the time we hit the locker room, it was the usual chaos—gear slamming into lockers, somebody blasting tinny music through a speaker, half the guys shouting over each other as if it were their job.
I dropped onto the bench, tugged at the laces of my skates, head still buzzing from Logan’s warning earlier in the hall.
Theo slid onto the bench beside me, hoodie half-zipped, calm in a way that felt calculated. But his jaw was too tight, his eyes fixed on the tape as though it owed him something—more guarded than usual, as if he carried a weight he wasn’t ready to share.
“Met with Tori,” he muttered. “Nothing solid. But she’s jumpy. Like she knows something and doesn’t want to be the one to say it.”
I kept my eyes on my skates. “Define jumpy.”
“She flinched when I brought up Elise and changed the subject fast.” He leaned closer. “I’ll give you the rest after practice.”
Across the room, Chase cursed about someone stealing his tape, a couple of guys laughing too loud, the smell of sweat and ice thick in the air. The noise enveloped us. But the weight of Theo’s words stuck, circling tighter than any drill Coach was about to throw at us.
Practice dragged. Coach was in one of his moods, riding every play, barking about precision as if we weren’t already grinding ourselves into the ice.
My legs burned. My head was worse. Theo’s message.
Elise’s silence. My father’s clipped dismissal about the boardwalk property, treating it as a case study, and I was supposed to learn the right lesson.
I didn’t need a shower after—I needed answers. But I hit the shower anyway. Habit.
I shot Mila a message once I was outside, hair still damp, bag in the backseat.
Me: You home? Okay if I stop by?
Mila: Mom’s out. So yeah.
By the time I pulled into her neighborhood, the sun was gone. Streetlights buzzed faint over cracked sidewalks and patchy lawns. Houses sat too close together, porches sagging, paint flaking, the opposite of the manicured bubble where I lived.
Her place was near the corner—a rental you could spot a mile away. Faded shutters, screen door hanging a little crooked, driveway gravel instead of paved. The porch light flickered yellow across the warped steps where she stood waiting, hoodie pulled tight like she could disappear inside it.
She waited for me on the porch, arms crossed. The light cast her in a soft cone that made her look both fierce and small.
I killed the engine and climbed out, gravel crunching under my shoes. She stood on the porch, arms folded into her hoodie. Her eyes flicked to my hair.
“You’re wet.”
“Didn’t want to stink up your house.”
Her mouth twitched. She tried not to smile. Failed. “Considerate.”
She stepped back, letting me in.
The house was dim, most of the lamps off, full of old rental furniture—a couch with worn arms, a coffee table scarred from years of use, threadbare carpet underfoot.
It wasn’t empty, though. It felt lived in.
Claimed by her. A sketchbook lay open on the table, shoved against a calculus textbook like it had won the fight.
Her mom’s car was gone, just as Mila had said in the text. She tracked my glance toward the driveway.
“She’s working late,” she explained, tugging open the fridge and handing me a bottle of water. “Or just ‘out’ is the more likely phrasing.”
I nodded and dropped onto the couch, twisting the cap off. Took a pull. My shirt still clung damp at the collar.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Define okay.”
She didn’t press. Just waited. So I gave her what I had. “Theo met with someone—his sister’s friend. She interned at Dunn for a semester last year before transferring to UCLA.”
Mila’s head lifted, interest flickering. “And?”
“She said most of it was grunt work—copies, coffee runs. Kept out of anything that mattered. But once, she overheard her boss on the phone. Talking to a Mr. Langley. She said his tone changed—uptight, a little panicked. As though whoever Langley was, he carried weight. Enough that just the name stuck with her.”
Mila went still.
“Mr. Langley,” she whispered. “That’s what Elise said. On the phone.”
It had to be the same person. But Darren was dead. Wasn’t he? Not only that, but he didn’t have any living relatives.
Mila sat down across from me, tucking her legs under herself, voice quieter now.
“I don’t know what they want from me. My mom keeps saying everything’s fine.
That it’s under control. That I shouldn’t stir the pot.
” Her jaw tightened. “But I know what I saw when I met her at King Enterprises. Darren Langley was dead.”
I held her gaze. “Are you positive? Because his name keeps surfacing, and yet there was never an obituary. No notice. Nothing public. Doesn’t that strike you as—off?”
Silence pressed in.
Her voice cut through it, low and certain. “I’m positive. There was too much blood. His eyes were open—sightless. No sirens. No one coming. And even if they had been, it would’ve been too late. You don’t come back from that.”
Then I added, “My PI called me earlier.”
Her eyes snapped to mine. “Already?”
“He’s fast.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much yet. But he found a financial record of a rental storage space in Darren’s name. Leased under initials. Closed two months after he disappeared.”
Mila’s voice dropped. “Closed by who?”
“Don’t know. No record of a signature. The payment history ended in cash. The paper trail just… stops.”
Her brow furrowed. “So he wanted it hidden.”
“Or someone else did.”
It wasn’t proof—of life or death. Not even that the unit had belonged to him and not someone using his name. But it was a thread—thin, frayed, leading somewhere. And I wasn’t about to let go.
She didn’t speak for a while, just stared at the carpet, lips pressed together as if she was holding in a hundred thoughts.
Her silence stretched, heavy. Then she shifted, almost to herself at first. “We were brought back here for a reason. Even if Mom doesn’t know it—or won’t admit she does.
And if Dunn, or whoever’s pulling the strings, gets wind that we’re digging…
” Her eyes found mine, voice lower now. “Do you think the same thing could happen to us that happened to Darren?”
Honest question.
“I think if they were going to, they would’ve already. But I also think they’re watching.”
Her gaze lifted. “Us?”
“You,” I said. “And anyone you talk to. Anyone who asks the wrong questions.”
Her throat worked. “Including you?”
“Especially me.”
She exhaled, shoulders loosening only to tense again. “Then maybe you should stop.”
I shook my head, eyes steady on hers. “You know I won’t.”
Her fingers brushed mine where they hung between us, light as a breath.
I didn’t pull back. Neither did she. The silence stretched, heavy with everything we weren’t saying. I shifted, closing the gap, my hand covering hers. She let me. No flinch. No retreat. Just the faint tremor of her pulse beneath my palm.
“You’re not alone in this,” I said, voice low.
Tension eased from her frame, the faintest shift, and then she leaned into me. Instinct took the rest. My arm slid around her, pulling her closer. Her hair brushed my jaw, carrying that faint salt-sweet scent of the coast.
She tipped her face up. I leaned down, close enough to feel the hitch of her breath, and brushed my lips over hers. Barely there. A spark instead of a flame. It should’ve been enough—just the ghost of contact—but the second I felt her soften into it, I was gone.
She kissed me back, hesitant for half a beat, then certain, her mouth parting against mine.
Slow, searching, like we were relearning each other after too much silence and damage.
The taste of her—sweet and intoxicating, familiar and new—slid straight through me, and suddenly, I couldn’t get close enough.
Slow didn’t last. It never did with us.
Her hand slid up my chest, heat surging in its wake as her fingers pressed into my jaw, dragging me down harder as if she couldn’t stand the space left between us.
The pressure of it set me on fire. I caught her against me, hand under the edge of her hoodie, thumb grazing skin—warm, soft, alive.
She gasped into my mouth, and the sound broke me open, stripped me raw.
The kiss turned frenzied—teeth, breath, the desperate clash of want and memory colliding. Her nails scraped the back of my neck. My pulse hammered in my throat. Every brush of her lips, every tug closer, every frantic gasp fueled the part of me that had missed her so fiercely it bordered on pain.
My hand slipped higher, beneath fabric, fingers splaying against bare skin.
She tore herself away. Our breaths collided in the space between us, ragged, uneven. Her pupils blown wide, a flush racing up her throat, lips swollen from mine. Gorgeous. Shaken.
“Luke—” Her voice fractured. “I’m not ready for more.”
I froze, the ache still clawing at me, but I didn’t push. Couldn’t.
She steadied herself with a breath, words spilling fast, as though she had to get them out before she lost the nerve.
“We had everything before, and it still broke. Trust between us is fragile. And we can’t even be seen as anything outside rooftops or behind closed doors. I don’t want to rush this. Not yet.”
Her eyes searched mine, fierce and pleading all at once.
I forced air back into my lungs. Nodded once. “Then we go slow.”
Her shoulders softened—barely. But enough.
I lifted a hand, brushing my thumb gently across her bottom lip, still swollen from my kiss. She stilled, breath catching again, but didn’t pull away. For a moment, I let my forehead rest against hers, the heat of her skin grounding me, keeping me from pushing for more.
The ache didn’t fade. But it steadied.
When I finally stood, she walked me to the door, hoodie wrapped tight as armor. Neither of us spoke—too much still burning in the air. On the porch, she lingered a second, then slipped back inside, the door clicking shut between us.
I crossed the gravel drive, every nerve still wired, jaw tight.
By the time I slid behind the wheel, my hands shook faintly on the steering column.
Her taste lingered on my lips, the ghost of her body still pressed against mine.
Want twisted sharp under my ribs, threaded with frustration I couldn’t shake.
I started the engine, headlights flaring across the quiet street.
The night pressed in heavy as I pulled away, carrying the heat of her with me and the ache of everything we weren’t—yet.
And all I could think was how wanting her this much was its own kind of risk—because Dunn, Langley, even my father’s empire couldn’t cut me down the way losing her would.