Chapter 10
RETH
Present
Ian knew I was at the club. He doesn’t say it right away. He waits until we’re all three crammed in the elevator—Sophia’s hand warm in mine, my jacket hanging off her shoulders, floors ticking upward—before he drops it, casual as a thrown knife.
“Club Lumière. Second floor, northeast corner, eleven forty-two.” A small pause. “You were sloppy.”
“You got lucky,” I mutter.
“Lucky?” Ian turns his head just enough to grin at me. “I clocked you the second we stepped off the dance floor. Hood up, statue pose, while everyone else is moving. You stuck out like a sniper at a tea party.”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying to hide.”
Ian stares at me for a beat, then lets out a low, disbelieving laugh. “You followed this woman for years without her knowing you existed. Hiding is your love language. It’s your entire personality. Stealth is your superpower.” He shakes his head. “And you got spotted by a guy who needed to piss.”
Sophia buries a laugh against my shoulder, her body shaking with it.
“It’s not funny,” I say.
“It’s a little funny,” Ian replies, eyes sparkling.
“It’s very funny.” Sophia squeezes my hand.
She looks up at me with that dangerous little smile—the one that says she knows she’s making my life harder and is enjoying every second of it. Inconvenient woman.
Perfect woman.
Ian’s not done. He’s warming up now, the way he always does when he smells blood.
“And yet,” he continues as the elevator hums higher, “despite being made by a man literally on his way to the bathroom, the plan still worked. Which means either you got extremely lucky…” he tilts his head toward me, “…or you counted on me to cover for you. Which is honestly worse. Because that means you trusted me. Without asking. How dare you?”
I say nothing.
Ian points at me, looking at Sophia. “He counted on me. Look at him. Silent. Guilty.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. Your brooding is very expressive tonight.” He straightens, smug as hell. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
The elevator doors open. Sophia steps out first, barefoot, heels dangling from her fingers, my jacket swallowing her frame. It looks ridiculous. It looks perfect.
Ian watches her walk down the hall and nudges me with his elbow. “I feel like that’s a marriage proposal.”
I narrow my eyes. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“You gave her your jacket. You never give anyone your jacket.”
“Her dress was torn.”
“Her dress was torn because you tore it.”
“Her dress was already a problem,” I mutter, stepping out.
“Her dress was fine,” he says, right on my heels. “You’re not going to say anything about the jacket?”
“There’s nothing to say about the jacket.”
“Oh, there’s plenty to say.” Ian grins like a shark. “My emotionally constipated friend… you are so fucking pussy whipped it’s beautiful.”
I stop in the middle of the hallway and stare at him. “I’ve stalked her for years. Kidnapped her. Risked my life for her. Multiple times. But the jacket is what does it for you?”
Ian shrugs, completely unbothered. “What can I say? You really love that jacket.”
We step inside the apartment and the lights bloom on automatically. My gaze drifts first to the far corners, then the windows, exits, then the thin gap behind the curtains—checking for anything that doesn’t belong.
And then I stay there, watching Sophia move through the apartment without looking where she's going.
The way she drops her heels by the door like it’s the exact spot they’ve always been dropped.
The way her body knows the layout—the slight lean around the kitchen island, the hitch of her hip as she scoops a glass from the cabinet.
The way she presses her palm to the faucet before she pours water, like she’s checking if it’ll bite.
All those learned movements when you’ve lived long enough in a place to become a place.
Ian kicks the door closed behind us, going straight to the fridge. “Beer?”
“Do you even have to ask?” I crouch without thinking and nudge Sophia’s left shoe upright, positioning it perfectly next to the other, and what’s supposed to be a slight adjustment becomes a moment of familiarity.
A second of my chest expanding with something almost physical, a dull ache along the ribs.
I recognize it for what it is—a need. Not the destructive kind, not exactly.
Just a quiet, persistent hum under the bones, a longing for the shape her absence leaves behind.
Which is fucked up, because she’s not absent.
She’s right here, standing across the room, watching me with those eyes that don’t miss anything.
Her head tilts slightly, and for one stupid second I want to put on my mask, hide my ugliness from her because she is so fucking beautiful, it hurts to look at her sometimes. Like now.
“I need a shower.” Sophia pads across the living room, glass of water in hand. “Be right back.” As she nears her bedroom door, she stops, and when she looks at me, I swear my heart buries a little deeper into my chest. “You’re staying, right?”
I nod, words trapped somewhere in my throat because the woman who’s been the little corner of light in my life for longer than she even knows wants me to stay.
She wants me. To stay. Fuck, it does beautiful, violent, ruinous things to me.
When she disappears into the room, Ian hands me a beer and drops on the couch.
“How did you manage it?”
I glance around the apartment some more. “Manage what?”
“Being here. I assume the psycho-bitch with weirdly long legs has no idea.”
“You assume right.” I notice one of Sophia’s coats on the hook next to Ian’s. “She’s off the grid for the next two weeks.”
“How the fuck did you make that happen?”
“I didn’t.” I take a seat on the chair, an open book lying face down on the armrest. One of hers. I touch the spine lightly. “Rowan did.”
“He knows you’re here?”
It’s a complicated question, and right now I only have simple answers. “I’m supposed to be in Brussels. But I’ve got time.”
Ian takes a swig of beer. “How much time?”
“A little over a week.”
He nods, contemplating. “She’s going to want more than a week.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t push. He never does. That’s one of the things that makes us work well together—he reads the edges of what I can give and doesn’t try to yank me past them.
Ian finishes the beer in one long pull, sets the empty bottle on the coffee table, and stands. He shrugs on his jacket, checks his pockets out of habit, then lets his gaze drift once around the apartment. It’s the same casual inventory I’ve seen him do a thousand times.
He gives a small nod, like everything checks out. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I frown. “Where you going?”
A familiar grin flashes across his face, dimples and all. “Met a girl at the bar earlier. French. Very French.” He pulls his jacket straight. “I've heard things about French girls. Specific things. Anatomical things.” He heads for the door. “I'm a curious man.”
“Ian—”
“You know what they say. When in Paris.” He pauses with his hand on the door, and when he looks back, there is something underneath the way he stares at me. “Are you clean?”
I lick my lips, wiping cold droplets off the beer bottle with my thumb. “Haven’t touched the stuff since Prague.”
Ian nods, his expression somewhere between something and nothing.
“We'll catch up on everything. The whole mess.” He glances in the direction of Sophia’s room, then back at me.
“Right now, you've got a girl who's been waiting three months for you.” He opens the door. “Don't waste it.” Then walks out.
The apartment falls silent, and I just sit with it, taking it all in.
A beige throw blanket draped over the couch in that careless, lived-in fold that says she wrapped herself in it and forgot to straighten it.
The two mugs on the kitchen counter, one with lipstick stains, the other without.
Her scarf is slung over the back of a chair that was never meant for scarves.
A pack of Ian’s cigarettes on the side table by the door leading out to the balcony that says she’s making him smoke outside.
Every inch of this place carries the signs of a home lived in. Like it has a heartbeat I can feel under my skin even if I hadn’t been a part of it.
It’s because of her. She has this light that touches everything around her, makes it alive. I wonder sometimes if she knows that about herself—the way people gravitate toward her, as if her presence is a fire and they’re just trying to get warm.
This morning, instead of knocking on the apartment door like a man who had any right, I followed her four blocks to the bakery.
I told myself it was caution. Old instincts. Necessary distance. More bullshit.
The truth is vicious and simple; I had been starving for her for three fucking months.
Three months of concrete rooms, Valeria’s leash around my neck like a blade at my throat, three months of waking up empty because the only thing that ever filled the void behind my ribs was her.
I needed to watch her exist without the weight of my shadow on her.
Needed to drink her in slow and greedy, like a man dying of thirst finally finds water he knows he’ll poison.
So I stayed two steps behind on that sun-drenched Paris sidewalk and let the city wrap around us both.
I watched the way the breeze toyed with the hem of her dress, flirting with her thighs.
The lazy sway of her hips as she moved through the crowd like she’d made peace with every step.
Honey hair catching the light, loose strands clinging to the damp skin of her neck.
Every small, unconscious motion carved itself deeper into me than any scar I’ve ever earned.
When she paused outside the bakery, I stood right behind her.
She felt me. I know she felt me. That tiny hitch in her breath, the way her shoulders drew up just a fraction.
But she didn’t turn. She simply breathed through it, tilted her face toward the sun like she could outrun the pull between us, and kept walking.
I let her.
Because watching her move through her day without knowing I was there was the closest thing I’ve had to peace in months.
I got to be part of her world without ruining it.
Got to pretend, for four stolen blocks, that I was just another ghost drifting through her summer instead of the man who carved fresh wounds under her skin.
So I stole the moments I could—silent, unseen, ravenous—because three months without her had hollowed me out worse than any knife ever could.
“Don’t waste it.” I murmur Ian’s words, then get up and go to her room.
I stop in the doorway for a moment. Not long. Just enough.
The room is hers in every way that matters—the blanket pulled to one side, the shoes she didn't put away, the particular quality of light she's managed to cultivate here. She has a way of making spaces her own without trying.
My pulse quickens when I see the diary on her nightstand, the one I sent her with the first bouquet of peonies.
I wonder how many pages. How many thoughts. How many truths written in ink. A thrill rushes through me, thinking about it, thinking of how many pieces of her I’ll get to learn with every word.
But I don’t touch it. Not tonight.
Tonight I want the living, breathing version of her.