Chapter 2
Iwoke up before my alarm, heart pounding like I’d run a race in my sleep.
For a moment, I didn’t know why. I stared at the ceiling fan spinning above me—too slow, too soft—and felt that strange electric hum beneath my ribs, the one that didn’t belong to morning or caffeine or anything reasonable.
Then it hit me.
The letter.
God. I’d actually sent it.
I pressed the back of my wrist to my forehead and groaned, rolling onto my side.
Charleston winter light spilled across my bedroom—pale, watery, soft enough to pretend it wasn’t December.
The city never did cold the way other places did.
The chill here was fleeting, a thin veneer over humidity and history.
Like me. A thin veneer. A performance. A version of myself that never cracked, never slipped, never admitted a thing.
My phone lit up on the nightstand, vibrating once. A calendar notification—committee meeting this afternoon. Nothing urgent. Nothing dangerous. Nothing remotely exciting.
Of course, not.
I closed my eyes again.
That letter shouldn’t have come from me.
Not from Lia Quinn—Charleston’s favorite policy whisperer, the woman who knew how to spin a statistic into a sermon.
The woman who told rooms full of donors to invest in conflict prevention, in education, in rehabilitation programs. The woman who looked danger in the eye and called it unacceptable.
A woman who built her reputation on being rational. Reliable. Safe.
Not the kind who asked to be hunted.
My stomach tightened. It wasn’t embarrassment. Not exactly. More like …
A pulse.
Low. Insistent. Hot enough to make me shift under the sheets.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered to myself, kicking them off.
But that heat didn’t go anywhere. If anything, saying it out loud only made the sensation sharpen—like naming it fed it.
I got out of bed and padded across the hardwood, my feet cold, my body too warm. December in Charleston was never consistent. Warm one day, brisk the next. Today seemed determined not to choose. The air was cool against my skin, but the sun creeping through my balcony doors hinted at warmth later.
I slid them open and stepped outside.
My condo sat on a quiet street near the water. Most mornings carried the scent of tide and old wood, the faint metallic tang of Charleston’s past woven into everything. I’d chosen this spot because it looked peaceful on the outside. Prestigious. Adult.
But I hadn’t chosen it for me.
I’d chosen it for who I was supposed to be.
The breeze lifted my hair, brushing it across my cheek, and I closed my eyes.
I could still feel the letter in my fingertips—the way I hovered over the Send button, breathing too fast; the shame that rose in my throat like heat; the flash of something darker when I pushed it anyway.
I didn’t expect them to reply.
I didn’t expect them to send anyone.
Not to me.
Not to the woman who built her whole career on stopping men like the one I described.
I exhaled through my nose, long and slow. A shudder traveled down my spine.
Why did that make it worse?
Why did the impossibility of it make my body more aware of itself?
I crossed my arms over my chest, not because I was cold, but because the air felt like fingertips. Too real. Too close.
I walked back inside before my imagination ran any further.
The shower didn’t help.
I stood under the stream, steam fogging the glass, trying to anchor myself in the physicality of the moment. I washed my long, blonde hair. I scrubbed my skin. I forced myself to focus on mundane things: errands, meetings, the grant proposal on my desk.
None of it stuck.
Because behind every thought was the letter.
And behind the letter was an image I couldn’t shake.
Not a face.
Not a name.
Just a silhouette.
A man standing still.
Watching.
Waiting.
The kind of attention that pinned you in place without touching you.
My breath hitched, and my grip tightened on the edge of the tile.
“Enough,” I whispered, but the word came out unsteady.
I turned off the water and stepped out, towel-wrapping myself like armor.
I needed normalcy. Coffee. Clothes. Routine. Anything but the spiraling fantasy crowding the edges of my mind.
By the time I was dressed, the sun was stronger, casting warm rectangles across the hardwood. My phone buzzed again—texts from colleagues. One from a friend asking if I’d be at the fundraiser next week. A reminder from my personal assistant about a lunch with a donor.
I smoothed my palms down the front of my outfit—a fitted ivory turtleneck tucked into high-waisted black trousers, the kind with a pressed front seam sharp enough to cut. A thin gold chain at my throat. Stud earrings. Black ankle boots polished enough to reflect the morning light.
Professional. Controlled. Untouchable.
Exactly the version of me the world expected to see.
All predictable.
All manageable.
All suffocating.
I sat at my kitchen island with my laptop open, a steaming mug beside me, trying to drown in work.
My inbox was a battlefield—subject lines full of policy jargon, budget revisions, requests for statements.
Normally, I could slip into the rhythm of it, slip into the version of myself everyone expected.
But today, every email felt like a flimsy costume.
Lia Quinn, the professional. Lia Quinn, the strategist. Lia Quinn, the polished advocate.
All while Cecilia Quinn, the woman, lingered inside the quiet halls of her condo, barefoot and restless, imagining a man who wouldn’t wait for permission to cross her threshold.
I typed three words into an email and erased them. Typing another sentence, then erasing that too. My fingers hovered over the keys, restless.
This wasn’t me.
Or maybe it was the truest part of me, the part I’d buried so deep it could only surface in the dark.
My eyes drifted to the floor-to-ceiling windows, to the way morning light spilled across my living room like a slow, lazy invitation.
What would it feel like—
to hear the soft creak of the door?
to look up and see someone standing there?
to know I’d asked for it?
Heat coiled between my legs.
I shut my eyes hard. “Work, Lia.”
But it was useless. Work existed on the surface. Today, I was somewhere beneath.
By late morning, I gave up pretending I could focus.
I grabbed my coat and a scarf—not because it was cold, but because stepping outside bare to the world felt indecent right now—and drove downtown for a stroll along the Battery. A long walk usually reset me. Cleared my mind. Reminded me of the version of myself I’d spent years building.
Charleston was quiet for December. Holiday decorations draped across porches and wrought-iron balconies. The air smelled like salt and cinnamon from the bakery on the corner. A couple walked past me holding hands. A group of college students laughed too loudly.
Normal.
Harmless.
Predictable.
I should’ve blended into it. Lost the tension of the morning in the gentle hum of the city.
Instead, everything felt heightened.
The wind brushing my cheek.
Footsteps behind me.
The shadow of a man stretching longer than mine on the pavement.
Every sensation felt like anticipation.
I tried to rationalize it. Hormones. Stress. The lingering adrenaline of hitting Send on something wildly out of character.
But that didn’t explain the way my pulse reacted to every male voice that passed me.
Not desire—
but readiness.
A taut, vibrating awareness low in my belly. Like the moment before lightning touches ground.
I stood at the seawall, watching the waves slap against the stone, the winter sun glittering on the water in cold sparks.
My phone buzzed.
I tensed without meaning to.
A text from a colleague.
Something about the meeting agenda.
Nothing important.
But my body didn’t know the difference yet.
I exhaled shakily and slipped my phone back into my pocket.
I needed grounding. Something physical. Something that smelled like normal life.
I walked to the corner café and ordered a latte, perched on a barstool, letting the bustle of the place wrap around me. The hiss of the espresso machine. The chatter of tourists. The barista asking customers for their names.
But even here, even in this bright, safe place, I kept imagining a presence at my back. A weight. A gaze.
Not a threat.
Not danger.
Something more complicated.
More intimate.
Someone who would stand too close by design.
Someone who would know exactly what to do with a woman who couldn’t admit what she wanted out loud.
I swallowed hard, my fingertips cold against the warm cup.
What was wrong with me?
Why now?
Because you asked for him.
The thought came like a whisper from the darkest part of me.
I hated how right it felt.
I left the café and walked home, trying to shake off the feeling. Trying to breathe normally. Trying to imagine a life where sending that letter didn’t tilt the axis of my morning.
But as soon as my condo came into view, my pace slowed.
The walkway.
The steps.
The front door.
The place he’d eventually stand.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe next week.
Maybe never.
The uncertainty should’ve calmed me.
Instead it tightened something in my chest.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside, my eyes lingering on the threshold longer than necessary. Like I expected a shift in the air. Like I expected a shadow.
I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, heart thudding.
I’d thought writing the letter would exorcise the need. That saying it out loud to strangers would get it out of my body.
Instead, it opened something.
Something alive.
Something restless.
Something I couldn’t shove back into the dark.
And as the winter light slanted through the windows, soft but unforgiving, I let my head fall back against the wood and whispered the truth I was still too proud to admit:
I didn’t just want him to come.
I wanted to be changed when he did.