Chapter 12 #2
The years seem to thin again until they are almost nothing.
Until it is just this, just him in a kitchen making too-strong coffee and trading barbs with Cassie over the phone as if no time has passed.
Because he knows her. He has always known Cassie’s rhythm and her teeth and the loyalty beneath all that wit she would die before admitting out loud.
He knows where she fits with me, what she means, what it costs when someone treats her like an inconvenience rather than a fixture.
Zane has never once looked at Cassie as if she were anything other than exactly what she is. He always knew what came with me. He chose it anyway.
Cassie’s voice pulls me back. “You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“You sound weird.”
“I’m drinking coffee.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.”
“And Sky?”
“Yeah?”
Her voice sheds its last layer of performance. “You don’t have to know what this is today. You just need this. Remember that.”
I look at Zane. He has turned toward the window, one shoulder against the frame, looking out at the street below, his coffee in his hand.
“I know,” I say. “Thanks, Cass.”
I hang up.
For a moment, I just sit with the phone in my lap, the coffee warm in my hand, and the morning doing its quiet, indifferent thing around me.
Zane turns from the window, walks over, and sits on the edge of the bed.
“She okay?” he asks.
“She’s Cassie.” I take a sip of coffee and wince before I can stop myself.
Zane sees it immediately. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You made a face.”
“I did not make a face.” I look down at the mug. “It tastes like something that gave up halfway to becoming coffee.”
His mouth curves. “My standards for coffee have been a little rough for a few years.”
I bite down on my smile and lose the fight with it completely. For one small, warm, unguarded moment, we are just two people on the edge of a mattress with terrible coffee. Then the smile fades.
I set the mug on the nightstand and cross my knees, causing Zane’s shirt to slide up over my thighs.
His eyes track the movement, dropping for just a second before he pulls them back up.
That want in him—quiet, present, and entirely undisguised—does something reckless to the parts of me that have been starving.
“What happens now?” I ask.
The question comes out before I can soften it or dress it up in something more manageable.
Zane looks into his coffee. “Don’t know.”
I laugh. “Excellent. Very reassuring.”
“I’m trying this new thing where I don’t lie to you.” He falls quiet for a moment, turning the mug in his hands.
“I don’t want to fuck up my life again,” he says, keeping his eyes on the mug. “I know that sounds stupid because I’ve been out five minutes and I’ve already got a man threatening me, you in my bed, and Rainer probably one bad decision away from throwing a wrench at my head.”
“Rainer has probably wanted to throw a wrench at your head for years."
“Yeah, he probably has one already picked out.”
I almost smile.
“I mean it, Sky,” he says, and the quiet in his voice settles over the room.
“There is no way I am going back in there. I don’t want to fight some asshole because I still haven’t learnt to keep my temper in a cage.
I don’t want to wake up one morning to find I’ve wrecked everything that matters, because wrecking things is the only skill I’ve ever really perfected. ”
The room goes quiet.
The boy I loved hid every fear he had behind smirks, blood, and spectacularly bad ideas, and would stand in front of me with split knuckles and call it a scratch. He outran everything.
This man sits on the edge of a mattress and tells me the truth.
“Has something happened since you’ve been out?” I ask.
“Yeah, fucking Griff.”
The name drags something cold through the room like a window opening in winter.
“He came looking for you?” I ask.
“The day I got out. He’s been circling since.”
“What does he want?”
“Money. A fight. Blood. Probably all three served in that order.”
“What does he say you owe him?”
Zane’s jaw tightens and I can tell I’m not going to like it. “The last fight. The one I missed the night I got arrested.”
Something lands in my chest.
It’s not quite surprising since I knew Zane kept secrets from me back then. He sees it appear on my face.
“You told me you had stopped fighting,” I say.
“That was supposed to be my last one.”
Supposed to be. The anger comes quiet and clean. “You didn’t tell me shit back then.”
“I know.”
“You made choices in the dark and handed me the wreckage in the light.”
“I know.” His voice doesn’t flinch from it. “That’s why I want to be truthful this time.”
He lifts his eyes to mine. “All of it. No edited versions. No protecting you from things you have a right to know.”
Honesty from Zane Rivera feels like a hand reaching through broken glass. You want to take it. But you are also aware it might shatter.
“So what are you going to do about Griff?” I ask.
He runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t know yet. Rainer knows about it. He told me not to bite.”
“Good advice.”
“Annoying advice.”
There it is. That small, live spark beneath all the weight. That specific frequency that has always existed between us.
“You always did love telling me what to do,” he says.
I lift a brow. “You always needed it.”
His lips curve. That particular smile that starts at one corner and takes its time to get anywhere.
I watch it move across his mouth.
Bad idea.
The air shifts with it. Just enough that my body registers the change before my brain has finished processing it. That crackling warmth has no off switch where he is concerned and I apparently have no shame about advertising the fact.
His gaze drops to my bare legs.
The room goes still as if holding its breath.
I should not want him again. Not after the conversation we just had about old danger and all the things still unresolved and waiting between us. But wanting Zane has never once waited politely for the right conditions.
He sets his empty mug on the dresser and turns back to me.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
My pulse jumps. “You are not doing anything.”
“Not yet.”
I look up at him. “And if I do not tell you to stop?”
His eyes darken. “Then I am going to kiss you until you stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like you are remembering what my mouth can do.”
Absolute asshole.
He’s a beautiful, dangerous, and honest asshole with excellent recall and no sense of appropriate timing.
“You are very full of yourself for a man who nearly had an emotional breakthrough ten seconds ago.”
His mouth curves. “And a very specific interest in what you’re wearing under my shirt.”
His mouth takes mine in a kiss that starts hard and turns filthy fast, as if the conversation had not cooled anything between us. It fed it.
I grab him and pull him closer.
He groans into my mouth.
The sound goes straight through me and lands somewhere beyond reason.
His knee comes onto the bed, followed by the other, and suddenly he is over me again, all heat and muscle and morning light. His jeans are rough against my bare thighs, making it very hard to remember why slowing down is even an option.
I drag my nails down his back and he breaks the kiss to curse against my mouth.
I bite his lower lip, causing his whole body to tighten at once. That full-body response that tells me everything about what I do to him and absolutely nothing about how to be sensible about it.
For a second, the bad boy grin slips entirely. What lies beneath it is hunger.
His hand slips under my shirt, moves it higher, his warm palm gliding over my ribs, then cupping my breast. His thumb drags across my nipple.
I gasp, the sound embarrassingly immediate.
He lowers his mouth to my ear. “I love that sound.” His voice is rough and so close I feel it more than hear it.
His mouth finds my throat, and talking becomes considerably less important than everything else happening.
His hand slides lower. Down over my stomach. Between my thighs.
When his fingers find my pussy, his whole body goes still when he discovers how wet I am for him.
“Fuck, Sky.” The words come out wrecked, breathed against my jaw like something he did not plan to say out loud, but he says anyway. His tongue glides slowly along my lips. “Is this all for me?”
My cheeks heat. “Yes.”
His eyes lift to mine and hold there, dark and blown wide. The expression in them is the most unguarded thing I have ever seen on his face.