Chapter 2 Mikayla
Mikayla
Pain woke me with a vengeance—not all at once, but in layers, creeping through muscle and bone until there was nowhere left to hide from it. As if my body had taken the entire situation personally and decided to bruise everything out of spite.
My hip throbbed with a steady, ugly pulse, each beat a reminder that something had gone very wrong. My head felt thick, stuffed with cotton and bad decisions. When I tried to shift, even slightly, the world pitched sideways, sharp and sudden, and I froze—heart racing—until the room settled again.
Apparently gravity and I were no longer on speaking terms.
I lay still, testing myself in small increments. Fingers first. Then toes. Everything answered, reluctantly, as though offended I was asking it to function at all. My throat was dry. My mouth tasted faintly of copper.
There was leather beneath me. Smooth. Cool against my skin.
That registered next.
Not stone. Not asphalt. Not the hard, unforgiving pews of a church I’d fled barefoot and bleeding. Leather meant furniture. Furniture meant indoors. Indoors meant someone had moved me.
I cracked one eye open.
The ceiling was unfamiliar—too high, too clean. Light filtered in softly, not the harsh glare of hospital fluorescents or the flicker of streetlamps. When I managed to turn my head, slowly, carefully, I confirmed it.
I was lying on a couch.
Someone else’s couch.
And given how thoroughly my body ached, I had the sinking suspicion that wherever I was, I hadn’t arrived there by choice.
That realization sent memory slamming back in jagged pieces: the window. The fall. The sprint fueled by pure panic. The car. The very public, very ill-advised attempt at becoming roadkill on my wedding day.
I gasped and tried to sit up, because apparently I hadn’t learned a thing.
“Don’t.”
The voice came from my left. Male. Calm. Far too close for comfort.
I froze instantly, every muscle locking as my brain sprinted through worst-case scenarios with the enthusiasm of an overachiever. Kidnapped. Murdered. Sold. Re-delivered to the altar with a stern lecture and a knife in my back.
Slowly, carefully, I turned my head.
The man who’d hit me stood by the window, light spilling over his shoulders, surrounding him much like I imagined a halo would. Although, there didn’t appear to be anything angelic about him. Fantastic.
Of all the men in the city I could wake up next to, it had to be the one who’d introduced my body to a moving vehicle.
His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled up to his forearms like he was settling in for manual labor—or murder. It was hard to tell with a body like that. The light caught on the watch at his wrist; it looked like it had been custom-built around him and politely refused to function for anyone else.
Dark lines of ink traced over his hands and climbed his forearms, disappearing beneath the fabric of his shirt like secrets. There was nothing accidental or careless about them. They spoke of permanence and suggested commitment wasn’t something he struggled with.
He wasn’t looking at me.
He was watching the street through the window, posture loose, casual, like a man waiting for a takeaway order.
Except something about the way he stood—balanced, ready—told me that if I made a break for it, I’d get maybe three heroic steps before he caught me and politely returned me to the couch like a misbehaving cat.
My pulse kicked up, traitorous and loud, like it had its own agenda.
“Where am I?” I croaked. My throat burned, each word scraping its way out like it resented being involved.
“Alive,” he said calmly. “Which is more than you’d be if I’d left you where you fell.”
Fair. Rude, but fair.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly too dry. “Why didn’t you?”
That got his attention.
He turned, finally facing me, and the air in the room seemed to shift with him. Control was stitched into every line of his face, every measured movement. Like restraint wasn’t something he practiced, but something he was born fluent in.
He’s beautifully controlled.
Control could have been his middle name. A man used to being obeyed, not questioned.
Which was unfortunate for me, because I had a long history of making very poor life choices around men like that.
On closer inspection, he was… devastating. Dark hair, neatly cut, thick and black and effortlessly luxurious. His eyes were, too—cold, sharp, and unsettlingly mesmerizing. I had to be careful not to get lost in them, because something told me getting lost there would be a very bad idea.
His voice cut through my lust-fuelled haze.
“I don’t enjoy witnesses,” he said. “You were bleeding in the middle of the road.”
“That’s it?” My voice shook despite my best efforts. “You hit me with your car and abducted me because you were worried about eyewitnesses?”
“Yes.”
He said it so simply that his honesty stunned me.
I pushed myself upright despite the protest from my body. Pain flared bright behind my eyes, but I held on.
“I need to leave.”
“No, you don’t.”
My heart slammed. “I’m supposed to be getting married,” I said, like that should be enough to make him open the door and wave me through.
His eyes stayed on my face a second too long, then slid down my body and stopped on what was left of my dress.
“In that?” he asked, somewhat disgusted.
I looked down. He wasn’t wrong. I looked like a disaster.
Fear curled low in my stomach.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He studied me for a long moment. “Someone who knows you missed a very important appointment today.”
My breath hitched. “I need to get back.”
I swung my legs off the couch and stood too quickly. The room lurched. I would have fallen if he hadn’t crossed the space in two strides and caught my arm.
His grip was firm, not gentle. Heat flared where his hand touched my skin.
“Sit,” he said.
I did.
Anger flared through the fear. “Don’t touch me.”
He released me immediately, stepping back like I’d burned him.
“Then don’t give me a reason to,” he replied.
Silence stretched.
“Why am I here?” I asked finally.
“I already told you - I rescued you off the side of the road.”
“You hit me with your car,” I reminded him.
“You stepped out into oncoming traffic without warning,” he countered.
“So what, now you’re helping me?” The thought seemed preposterous to me, that he could hit me, then help stitch me back up again.
He tilted his head slightly. “I haven’t decided if that’s what this is.”
My chest tightened. “Then what is this?”
His dark eyes met mine. Assessing.
“A complication,” he said.
I let out a weak laugh, because apparently that was my coping mechanism now.
“Well. I’m sorry to add you to the long list of people whose lives I’ve complicated. It’s a talent. Very transferable.”
“You should be.”
His gaze dropped then, slow and unapologetic, taking inventory.
The torn hem of my dress. The stiff, dried blood clinging to fabric that had cost more than my monthly rent.
The ruined veil. The bruises already blooming beneath my skin.
All the careful planning. All the fear. All the contingencies I’d rehearsed in my head—reduced to this mess on his floor.
Everything I’d planned had collapsed spectacularly. Everything I’d feared had arrived early and brought friends.
His eyes lifted back to mine, expression unreadable.
And somehow, insultingly, I had the sudden, absurd thought that this wasn’t even the worst mess I’d ever made.
Just the most expensive.