Chapter 4
RETH
Flashback
Istand beneath the heat lamps that never help.
The red ribbon in my pocket warms with my body and prints a line across my palm when I squeeze. She’ll be here any moment.
While I wait, I think about the painter. He keeps asking what I want it to feel like, and I never have an answer that satisfies him. Every version is wrong. Too cold. Too romantic. Too perfect. I don’t know what it is, I only know it hasn’t been right yet.
I think about the glass, whether it’ll need films. The property sits high on a bluff, the windows floor to ceiling, the lines severe and honest. No curtains. You don’t hide the view when you’ve bought a horizon.
The moment she rounds the corner, my thoughts cut off like a blade. Everything else blurs, and she becomes the only thing that exists.
On the inside, every instinct is heightened, my nerves scattering. On the outside, I remain unmoved, quiet, steady as my gaze follows her every move.
God, she’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.
Honey hair. Fair skin. That easy warmth she carries like she doesn’t know how dangerous it is. The cherry-red lipstick is a boldness her softness doesn’t account for, and it pulls my focus like a fucking magnet.
I scowl. She’s wearing heels today. They don’t belong to her the way her flats do.
She walks careful in them, precise, like she decided this morning needed a different version of herself.
I don’t like it. In fact, I fucking hate it.
Hate what—or rather who it’s for. Those shoes change her posture but not her nature, and the effort grates on something raw in my chest.
She stumbles half a step, laughs at herself, grabs the maroon scarf before the wind takes it. Her lips always hover at the edge of a smile like she’s daring the world to disappoint her.
My heart does this weird fucking thing behind my ribs when she passes me, so close I catch the vanilla and orange peel scent of her shampoo.
She doesn’t notice me. Of course she doesn’t. I’m not here to be noticed. I’m here to watch. To observe. To suffer.
The bell jangles as she pushes open the cafe door, every head turning in her direction because she’s the kind of bright people follow without knowing they do. And when she scans the room, I know she’s searching. For him.
I hold my breath until the pressure eases.
From the outside, I watch her lips move as she speaks to the barista. I don’t have to be close to know what she orders.
Cinnamon latte. Apple cinnamon muffin. I also know she says the word cinnamon like it’s a small, private comfort. Something the world can’t take from her.
She holds her card between forefinger and middle, chews her lip while she waits for the chip reader to decide.
I’m never bored when I watch her. She’s my favorite fucking movie, but for someone like me, Sophia Sinclair is pure fiction.
Something that can never happen without burning the whole goddamn theater down.
Dean arrives, and I shift my weight. Violence pricks at my fists as he yanks the door open in a rush. He’s late. He knows it.
I watch as he searches the room, and when he finds her, his face changes, softens, like he’s already decided she’s the best part of his morning.
The ribbon tightens around my fingers, and I let the moment pass through me without sharpening the edge. And I manage it…until he touches her elbow, and she smiles at him. Not the smile she gives strangers. It’s something warmer. Earned.
Motherfucker. I don’t like it.
“Sorry,” he says. I can’t hear it, but I recognize the shape of apology. It’s in the way he leans in to say it, head tipped down, voice meant only for her, and she waves it off without thinking—easy, forgiving—like forgiveness is something she hands out on instinct.
The barista calls her order, and she reaches for the cup first, then the bag. Dean’s hand overlaps hers and lingers, his thumb brushing her knuckle before he takes it from her.
I wonder what shade his blood will be on my hands…
Sophia reacts with a soft smile, faint color rising in her cheeks, that precise shade she gets when she’s pleased but trying not to show it too much. I track it the way I track everything. Cause and effect. Stimulus and response.
He wanted that smile. He got it.
They take the small table by the window, and I watch him break the muffin in half without asking, crumbs falling, sliding the larger piece toward himself like it’s automatic.
She doesn’t stop him. Just laughs and takes the smaller one, brushing sugar from her fingers.
She always does that—loves the taste but not the texture on her hands.
My vision tunnels until the rest of the café disappears. All that exists is her mouth as she takes a careful bite, sugar catching on her lower lip like a secret I’m not supposed to see. Dean’s hand lifts without thinking, already reaching to wipe it away like he has any fucking right.
The urge to cross the street and break every bone in that hand flares hot and vicious, but I force it down like broken glass, eyes slamming shut for half a second.
I should leave. But just like every other time I’ve tried to…I don’t.
When I finally manage to open my eyes again, I’m looking through the window just as he leans in closer, already animated, hands moving in broad strokes while he tells her something—a work thing, maybe, a complaint dressed up as humor.
She listens the way she always does, head tilted, attention complete, as if whatever he’s saying deserves the full measure of her.
It doesn’t.
He breaks off another piece of muffin and offers it to her. Every muscle in my body locks as I watch her lean in and take it from his fingers—the way her lips close around it, the way he smiles like he created this moment just for her.
Something shifts in me. Violently. A fracture running through steel.
Again, I should walk away. Turn my back.
Disappear into the cold. But that’s the thing about Sophia Sinclair.
You don’t just walk away from her. Not when she’s the only thing that ever made the dark feel like it might be anything other than dark.
And the fact that she exists in a world where men like Dean get to feed her pieces of muffin and watch her smile is already carving something jagged out of me—something that bleeds when I breathe, something I hate because it means I’m still capable of bleeding at all.
I stay rooted. Hands flexing in my pockets until my knuckles ache. Jaw locked so hard my teeth feel like they’ll crack.
The longer I watch them, the louder the thoughts get. Proximity. Timing. How easily routines form and how easily they break. How much space he’s allowed to occupy so close to her like it’s a fucking right instead of a privilege I have no claim to and never will.
I hate her for it.
I hate myself more.
I shift my weight beneath the heat lamp, the ribbon warm and damp in my pocket now.
Across the glass, she lifts her cup and blows gently across the surface before sipping, lashes lowering.
The sight of it hits me harder than it should.
The illusion that she’s safe here. That nothing is watching.
That the world is still simple enough to offer her apple cinnamon mornings and expect nothing in return.
That’s not how the world works.
I’ve seen what it takes from people who believe in mornings like this. How comfort becomes leverage. How routine turns into the soft spot someone else will press until it bruises.
And her? She knows exactly what the world is yet chooses to stay soft anyway. That’s the most dangerous thing about her.
When they stand to leave, Dean reaches for her coat, helps her into it with the practiced familiarity of a man who thinks he’s earning something.
She thanks him, and he goes in for a hug, hands low on her waist, then a peck on the cheek, and I’m calculating how deep I have to bury him so he never fucking touches her again.
As they make their way to the door, I notice her purse still sitting on the table. A smile ghosts at the edge of my mouth. Of course it is. She leaves pieces of herself behind wherever she goes—keys, scarves, ribbons—always moving a half step ahead of what she’s carrying.
They’re about to step out the door when she finally realizes, then laughs at herself.
Dean’s in a rush and doesn’t wait for her as she goes back for her bag.
I take it as the universe’s way of stopping me from going after Dean because it knows my need to keep watching her is stronger than my instinct to slit his throat.
But fate grants me one, an opening which I take without hesitating.
I push off the brick wall and move, the timing precise, just as Dean steps through the door, and for a single, suspended beat, we occupy the same threshold.
Warmth spills out behind him. Cold presses in at my back. The bell overhead hasn’t decided whether to ring yet.
Our eyes meet. Up close, he’s exactly what I expected, neat, open-faced, comfortable in his place in the world. But he reeks of secrets, and I’m already mapping the places I’ll start carving to get them out.
He hesitates, uncertain whether to apologize or step aside. I do neither. He has nothing else to look at besides my eyes. It’s thirty-eight degrees out, so wearing a buff to conceal the lower part of my face is not unusual.
I hold his gaze just long enough for something to pass between us, sharp and wordless. Nothing more. It’s a quiet understanding that this moment matters, even if he doesn’t know why.
“Excuse me,” he says in a voice that’s meant to be dismissive, like this is a minor inconvenience.
I give it one more beat, imagining the exact sound bone makes when it gives, then step aside and let him pass while my eyes stay locked on his. He walks away, and I can almost feel it—the snap of cartilage, the sharp release of breath—how easy it would be to end the noise he leaves behind.
While I’m focused on Dean, on the space he’s occupying, a sound pulls me back. A soft gasp and the unmistakable hitch of a misstep.
I turn as she stumbles. Those fucking heels betray her the way they always do, balance tipping forward too fast for recovery.
I’m already moving before the thought even registers, closing the gap in two strides and catching her before the pavement can split her face open.
She slams into me instead, and the impact doesn’t knock the wind out of me from force.
It knocks it out from the sheer fucking proximity.
Her body against mine—warm, real, soft in places I’ve never been allowed to know.
The unthinking trust in the way she falls forward, like the world has never once failed to catch her.
My hands clamp around her waist on instinct—hard enough to steady her, not hard enough to bruise, though the urge to dig in and leave marks flares hot and ugly in my palms. Her scent hits me, coffee, sugar, cold air, and that faint vanilla-orange shampoo that’s been living rent-free in my skull for too fucking long.
Her breath catches, short, startled…against my neck. One hand grips my sleeve like she’s afraid the ground might still claim her. The other flattens against my chest, fingers splayed, and for one stupid second, I think she’s pushing me away.
She isn’t.
She’s just holding on.
Fuck.
The contact burns through layers of cotton and leather like they’re nothing. Heat pools low in my gut, sharp and possessive, and my grip tightens without permission—one hand sliding half an inch higher on her back, thumb brushing the edge of her spine. My jaw locks so hard my teeth ache.
She looks up, and her green eyes catch mine—no, not green. It’s deep, rich, and endlessly more complex than just green. And for the briefest moment, she doesn’t pull away. She just looks at me. Really looks. Like she can see past the buff, past the shadows I strategically place to remain invisible.
I should let go. I should step back. I should disappear into the crowd and pretend this never happened.
I don’t.
“Oh my God, I’m—”
The sound of her voice snaps the moment clean in half, and I let go.
The release is abrupt, almost brutal, like my body understands the cost before my mind does.
I step back fast, putting distance between us, breaking the contact before it can become anything else.
My pulse is loud, unruly, and my hands flex at my sides like they’re reaching for her without permission, like they don’t recognize the order to stop.
She steadies herself, smooths it over the way she always does. Effortlessly.
“Thanks. I do that sometimes.”
I don’t move. I can’t. It’s too fucking risky.
She glances down at her heels, so comfortable in the moment, clearly no idea what she just stepped, or fell, into. “Turns out gravity still hates heels.”
I don’t respond, and she smiles anyway—soft and warm, like nothing in the world has shifted—then turns and walks away. I stay rooted long enough to catch her glance back, just a second, that same shy smile still lingering, before she disappears around the corner.
The contact doesn’t leave with her. It stays, lit into muscle and breath, refusing to fade.
This is the danger. Not him. Not Dean Murdoch.
Her.
I can’t touch her again. It’s too fucking dangerous. Now that I know what it costs me not to, I understand how careful I’ll have to be.