Chapter Seventeen Khai
Chapter Seventeen
Khai
I wake before the city decides to move.
The sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass is still heavy with night, a dull slate bruised by the promise of dawn. I sit up, already alert, already aware. Sleep has never held me for long. Routine does.
The gym is quiet when I step inside. No music. No screens. Just steel, rubber, and the faint hum of the building waking beneath my feet. I load the bar without hesitation, hands moving from muscle memory alone, and start the first set.
Lift. Breathe. Control.
Normally, this is where my thoughts fall into line.
Today, they don’t.
She intrudes between one repetition and the next, uninvited and relentless.
Emmy, under strobe lights. Her body moving with the music, loose and unguarded. Another man’s hands on her waist. Ryan’s hands. Too familiar. Too close. His mouth leaning toward her ear like he has the right to be there.
My grip tightens.
The image sharpens, cruel and vivid, her laughing, head tilted just enough to invite him closer. His fingers pressing into her skin where mine should have been. Possession slams through me, hot and violent, something ancient and unforgiving roaring awake.
Mine.
The word lands like a blow.
I add more weight to the bar and lift again, harder this time, muscles straining, breath controlled but sharp. Sweat slicks my spine as I push through the burn, chasing exhaustion the way I’ve always done when I need to outrun a thought.
It doesn’t help.
I see his hands again. I see her letting him touch what was never his to touch. Rage coils tight in my chest, dark and deliberate. The only reason he’s still breathing is because she didn’t know better yet.
I rack the bar with more force than necessary and straighten slowly, jaw clenched. She didn’t choose him.
That matters.
I will make sure she understands the difference.
The shower is hot, deliberately so. Water cuts over my skin, steam curling as I brace my hands against the tile and breathe through the lingering edge of violence in my blood. Control settles back into place, layer by layer, like it always does.
Coffee comes next. Black. Bitter. Familiar.
I stand at the counter, mug warming my hands, watching the city finally wake beneath me. Cars begin to move. Lights blink out. Life resumes.
Tonight arranges itself in my head with the precision of a job.
I won’t take her out.
Restaurants are exposure. Too many eyes. Too many exits. And now, too much risk. My father watches patterns. He notices proximity. Anything that can be leveraged becomes a weapon.
Emmy will not be one.
The decision is easy.
I make the call while the coffee is still hot. Private chef. Discreet. No lingering staff. Rooftop only. Candles. Time. Silence. My balcony sits high above the city, glass, steel, distance.
Untouchable.
Safe.
Mine.
My phone vibrates before I can linger too long on the image of her there, city lights stretched beneath her feet.
Jaxon.
“Tell me you’re not in the city tonight,” he says.
“I am.”
A pause. Then, “I need you not to be.”
I listen as he explains, retrieving the file, moving quietly, keeping me away from the blast radius if anything goes wrong. He doesn’t say it outright, but I hear it anyway.
Choose.
“Fine,” I say after a moment. “You handle it.”
He exhales. “Good. Also,” a grin creeps into his voice, “, you having a date is still fucking surreal. Thought you only did conquests and one-night stands.”
“She’s not that,” I reply, cold and final.
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “I figured.”
The call ends.
My phone lights again, softer now.
Emmy:
What should I be dressing for tonight?
I stare at the screen longer than necessary.
Khai:
Comfort. And the weather.
Not the truth. But close enough.
By the time the sun sinks again, I’m dressed. Black combat boots, laces loose. Dark jeans worn soft with age. A fitted t-shirt that leaves nothing hidden. As I move, rules line up in my head like commandments.
Don’t touch her unless she comes to you. Don’t crowd her. Don’t rush. Don’t lie.
The last one will cost me.
Her building greets me with unease. The stairwell looks the same, but it isn’t. More cameras sit high in the corners, angled with careful precision.
Not ours.
My father’s reach brushes too close for comfort.
I knock once.
The door opens.
And everything I’ve built fractures.
She stands there in red, tight at the top, flowing at the skirt, a slit climbing high along her thigh like a deliberate provocation. Red strappy heels bare her feet. Loose curls frame her face. Skin glowing under soft light.
Mine.
The need to claim her hits hard and merciless, every instinct screaming to pull her into me, to press her back against the door and remind the world who she belongs to.
I don’t.
I lean in instead, brushing my lips against her cheek, my mouth close to her ear.
“You have no idea,” I murmur softly, voice low and deliberate, “what you’re about to do to me tonight, Little Heaven.”
And I smile, because she hasn’t run.