Chapter 3
Three
Kane
Kinsley’s voice is sharp enough to cut glass. “My stupid car won’t start!”
I take my time jogging down the steps, tossing my keys in the air, catching them with lazy precision. I already know what’s wrong with her Audi, because I made sure of it last night. Nothing permanent. Just enough to keep it from turning over until I get what I want.
And what I want is Blair.
Blair’s still quiet, but I can feel her leaning toward the option I’m offering. I step closer, lowering my voice so only she hears. “I’ll make sure nothing gets messed up. Promise.”
Her throat works as she swallows, then she gives me one small nod. Precise. Like she’s making it count.
I smile slowly, letting her see exactly how much I like winning. “Good girl,” I purr in her ear as I watch the chill bumps run along her porcelain skin.
I don’t take my eyes off her. Five hours in my truck. No interruptions. No escape.
She hesitates before climbing in, like the passenger seat of my truck is a threshold she’s not sure she wants to cross. I watch her eyes flick over the interior—clean, organized, nothing out of place. I made sure of that.
She likes order. I’ve seen it in the way she packs, the way she lines up her coffee mug with the edge of the counter, the way her fingers twitch when something’s off. I don’t know if she realizes how much she gives away.
The second she’s settled, I toss my duffel into the backseat—not neatly, just enough for it to land crooked and spill a hoodie halfway onto the floor. Her gaze snags on it immediately. I hide my smile.
“Seatbelt,” I say, starting the engine.
She clicks it into place, then adjusts it twice until it sits flat against her shoulder.
We pull away from the house, and I let the silence stretch. Five minutes in, I reach over and nudge the air vent so it’s aimed slightly off-center. She notices. I can tell by the way her jaw tightens. She doesn’t fix it, though. Not yet.
I scroll through my playlist and land on something I know she won’t like—loud, fast, chaotic. She lasts thirty seconds before her hand twitches toward the volume knob.
“You can change it,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road.
She shakes her head. “It’s fine.”
It’s not fine. She’s gripping her knees like she’s holding herself together.
I lean back, one hand on the wheel, the other draped casually over the console. “You always this quiet, sunflower?”
“I’m not quiet,” she says, but it’s soft.
“Mm. You used to be quieter.”
Her head snaps toward me. “You didn’t even remember me.”
I glance at her, let the corner of my mouth curl. “I remember you now.”
She looks away, out the window, but her reflection in the glass gives her away, cheeks flushed, lips pressed tight.
I reach into the cupholder and hand her a coffee. Wrong cup. Wrong lid. I know because I swapped it before we left.
She stares at it for a beat too long before taking it. She takes a sip and doesn’t thank me.
Good. I don’t want her gratitude. I want her off-balance.
Two hours in, I “accidentally” take a different route, adding twenty minutes to the trip. She notices immediately.
“This isn’t the way to campus.” She looks around, panicked.
“Shortcut,” I lie easily. “Trust me.”
She exhales slowly, like she’s counting in her head. I wonder if she’s starting over every time I throw something new at her.
By the time we hit the halfway point, she shifted in her seat three times, adjusted the vent twice, and finally—finally—moved my hoodie into a neat pile on the backseat.
I let her think she’s winning.
Because by the time we get to campus, she’ll understand there’s no such thing as control when it comes to me.
The highway stretches out in front of us, long and empty, the kind of road that makes people talk just to fill the silence. I don’t mind silence. I like watching her squirm in it.
She’s got her knees pulled in slightly, fingers tracing the seam of her jeans like she’s counting the stitches. I wonder if she even knows she’s doing it.
I take a slow sip of my coffee, then glance at her. “So… your parents still around?”
Her head jerks a little, like she wasn’t expecting me to go there. “Yeah,” she answers after a beat, voice flat. “Somewhere.”
“Somewhere,” I repeat, letting the word roll off my tongue. “That’s vague.”
She shrugs, eyes fixed on the passing trees. “They travel. A lot.”
I can hear the lie in the way she says it. Not the kind of lie meant to fool me, more like the kind you tell yourself so you don’t have to say the truth out loud.
“Travel for work?” I press, keeping my tone casual, like I’m just making conversation.
Her jaw tightens. “Travel for… themselves.”
I file that away. Selfish parents. Absent. Probably why she clings so hard to her routines, because no one else ever gave her stability. That must have been why she stayed at our house a lot when she was younger.
“Must’ve been quiet growing up,” I say.
She finally looks at me, and there’s something sharp in her eyes. “Quiet’s not always a bad thing.”
I smirk. “Guess that depends on who’s filling the silence.”
Her cheeks flush, and she turns back to the window. I let the moment hang, then reach over and adjust her vent again, just to watch her fix it. She does, immediately, then folds her hands in her lap like she’s trying to keep them still.
She thinks I’m just being an ass.
That I’m teasing her for the hell of it.
She has no idea I’m studying her.
Every time I nudge her vent, hand her the wrong cup, take a turn she’s not expecting, it’s not random. It’s a test. I’m watching how she reacts, how fast she moves to fix it, how deep the discomfort runs before she breaks.
Blair lives in rules. I’ve seen it since we were kids. The counting. The symmetry. The way she clings to order like it’s the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
And maybe it is.
But here’s the thing: if I can disrupt that order, I can make myself the new constant. I can make her need me the way she needs those routines.
That’s why I push her. Why I press just hard enough to make her squirm, but not enough to make her run. I want her off-balance, thinking about me every time something feels wrong. I want her to start associating the relief she gets, not from fixing it, but from me letting her.
It’s not cruelty. It’s control.
And control is how you claim something so completely that it can’t remember what it was before you touched it.
She doesn’t see it yet. But she will.
By the time I’m done, her rules won’t matter.
Her routines won’t matter.
The only thing that will matter is me.