Wendy
Idon’t believe in happy endings. I believe in exits. And I always keep one in sight.
The club smells like whiskey, perfume, and men who don’t know when to quit. Velvet booths. Red lights. Smoke curling like promises no one intends to keep.
The atmosphere is a humid chokehold, thick with the scent of unwashed sins and cheap gin that stings the back of my throat before I even take a sip. I don’t belong here—same way I don’t belong anywhere—but I show up anyway. Because sometimes it’s easier to drown than keep fighting for air.
I told my best friend I was going home early. I lied.
I came here instead, because it’s the one place he might show up. Her brother. The ghost I swore I’d never chase. The mistake I never stopped making.
He’s not supposed to be here tonight. He’s not supposed to be anywhere near me. That’s the deal—her family is off-limits, her rules are gospel, and I never break the rules that keep me safe. Except I do. Every time I walk through this door, I’m lighting a match in a room full of gasoline.
The ice runs up my spine before I even see him. That prickle, that burn—like someone’s hands are already on me even when they’re not. It’s a phantom touch, a cold blade tracing the valley of my collarbone.
I glance at the mirrors behind the bar, the silver backing peeling like dead skin, but there’s no reflection of him. Not yet. Just the weight of being watched, a pressure so heavy it makes my ribs ache.
I know it’s him before I hear his voice.
“Still drinking candy, Darling?”
My name rolls out like sin on his tongue.
Low. Certain. Not a question—never a question.
My glass stills halfway to my lips, the neon light catching the condensation like blood on my knuckles.
I don’t turn. Not yet. I know what happens when I look.
The room gets smaller, the air heavier, and my body betrays me faster than my mouth can cover it.
“Fuck off,” I murmur.
But my pulse is already sprinting, a frantic, jagged beat that echoes in my ears.
He slides into the booth without asking.
All broad shoulders and bruised knuckles, wearing that grin like he knows exactly how much trouble I’ll let him be.
He smells like smoke and violence—a scent that tastes like cedar and the cold iron of a gun barrel—and I hate that I know it better than my own perfume.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.
“You say that every time,” he replies, lazy, dangerous. His eyes rake me slow, like he’s unwrapping something he already owns. He’s looking at me like I’m a prayer he’s about to desecrate. “And yet—here you are.”
I finally look. And just like that, I’m fucked.
Because he’s beautiful in the way bullets are beautiful—shiny, fast, fatal.
Dark hair falling into eyes that have no business being that blue, that sharp.
A jaw cut like it was meant to bruise my palm.
Tattoos crawling up his throat like warnings I’ll never obey, black ink bleeding into the hollow of his neck where I can see the steady, mocking thrum of his heart.
He’s my best friend’s brother. The one I swore I’d never touch. The one I can’t stop craving.
“Say it,” he murmurs, leaning closer, his breath hot against my ear, a humid heat that makes the moisture between my thighs pool.
“Say what?” I snap, hating the tremor in my voice.
“That you came here hoping I’d find you.”
My thighs clench under the table. I want to laugh. To lie. To spit in his face and walk out into the rain until the scent of him is scrubbed off my skin. Instead, I tip my drink back and let the pink burn scorch my throat. Because he’s right. And we both fucking know it.
His hand doesn’t touch me, but it might as well. The static between us is thick enough to choke on. He sprawls in the booth like he owns it, like he owns the whole damn club, like he owns me just because my pulse won’t behave when he looks at me.
“You always sit here?” he asks, voice rough, careless, like he’s not actually curious. Like he already knows the answer.
I roll my eyes. “Do you always stalk your sister’s friends?”
He smirks. “Only the interesting ones.”
That grin—fuck, it’s not practiced like other men’s. It’s sharp, lopsided, dangerous. The kind that makes you want to bite it off his mouth just to wipe it away, to taste the arrogance on his tongue and swallow it whole.
“You shouldn’t even know I’m here,” I hiss.
He leans in, elbows braced on the table, tattoos shifting across his knuckles as he drums them once, twice—a metronome for my impending ruin. “Darling, I’ve known where you’ve been since you were fifteen. You really think you could sneak anywhere without me noticing?”
My throat goes dry. He says it like a confession and a threat all at once. Like he’s been the shadow behind me for half a decade.
“I’m not yours,” I snap.
His laugh is low, cruel, but not humourless. It’s a sound that should be a warning, but it feels like an invitation. “You keep saying that, but you’re still sitting next to me.”
I hate the way my legs tense under the table. I hate the way he tilts his head, studying me like I’m a puzzle he’s already solved and discarded. I hate that my drink is empty, and I can’t decide if I want another—or if I want him instead.
“You’re drunk,” I mutter.
“Not enough,” he says, sliding the glass out of my hand, setting it aside like I don’t get choices tonight. He does it with a terrifying casualness, a man who has never been told no and wouldn’t understand the word if he were.
My palms go hot. My chest goes tight. I should get up, storm out, text my best friend and tell her that her brother’s a fucking lunatic.
But I don’t move. Because his eyes—blue, darker than hers ever were, the colour of the sky just before it goes black—pin me in place. And he’s not even touching me.
“Why me?” I ask, softer than I mean to.
He shrugs, lazy, wicked. “Because you were stupid enough to keep looking back.”
The booth feels smaller with him in it, even though he hasn’t moved closer. He doesn’t need to. His presence eats the space, a black hole of charisma and malice.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I snap, crossing my arms.
“Like what?” His tone is smooth, lazy, but his gaze never flinches.
“Like you’ve already won.”
That grin sharpens. “Darling, you don’t sit across from me if I’ve already lost.”
My stomach knots. I force my eyes to the sticky table, to the smear of glitter someone left behind, to the scars on the wood that look like they were made by someone trying to claw their way out. “Cocky,” I mutter.
“Confident.” He corrects me like it’s fact, like the words are carved into his very DNA. “There’s a difference.”
I laugh under my breath, bitter. “You always were full of yourself.”
“And you always liked it.”
That makes me look at him. Stupid mistake. He’s smiling like he just ripped the secret out of my chest and found it beautiful.
“I don’t like you.”
“Sure,” he drawls, leaning back, stretching his arm along the back of the booth like he’s setting a trap, his fingers mere inches from my hair. “That’s why you can’t stop staring at my mouth.”
Heat flashes in my cheeks before I can stop it. I shift in my seat, pretending I didn’t just get caught wondering if his lips taste as cold as his eyes look.
He watches me fumble, head tilted, all slow amusement and sharp edges. “You’re so easy to read, Darling. Always have been.”
My nails dig into my palm under the table. “Call me that again and I’ll throw my glass in your face.”
His smirk widens. “Good. I like it when you fight.”
There’s silence after that. Not empty—charged. The air feels heavy, pressurised, like the moment the hammer of a gun pulls back. His fingers tap once against the wood. My pulse answers, traitorous, pounding hard enough I’m afraid he can hear it through the music.
I swallow, my voice unsteady but sharp. “Why are you here?”
He shrugs, casual, but his eyes stay on me like they’re shackles. “Because you are.”
His answer sits between us like smoke, and for the first time tonight he doesn’t smile. He just looks. The noise of the bar fades, drowned out by the sound of my own breathing. His fingers stop tapping. Stillness fills the booth like a trap snapping shut.
“You think this is a game,” I whisper, but the words don’t sound like mine anymore.
He leans forward, elbows on the table, voice low enough that only I can hear, cutting through the bass like a scalpel. “No. Games end. This doesn’t.”
My throat tightens. I force myself not to back away, even though every part of me wants distance. His gaze flicks down, catches the tremor in my hand on the table. He doesn’t call it out. Doesn’t need to. The silence says enough.
“You don’t get to walk in here every week and pretend you’re untouchable,” he says, softer now, almost gentle—the kind of gentle that makes you realise you’re already bleeding. “Not with me. Not anymore.”
The booth feels airless. I can’t tell if I want to shove him away or lean closer just to hear what else he’s going to say, to feel the heat radiating off him like a dying star.
“You don’t even know me,” I snap, but my voice cracks, and I hate myself for it.
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing like I just handed him the weapon he’s going to use to finish me. “Don’t I?”
The space between us is a breath, a heartbeat. Too small. Too dangerous. And then, without moving his hands, without touching me at all, he leans just close enough that I can feel his breath when he speaks—
“Tell yourself whatever you need to, Darling. But you came here for me.”
His breath ghosts over my cheek; it smells like smoke and rain, like every back alley I swore I’d never run down again. He doesn’t move any closer, but somehow the space feels smaller, like he’s already under my skin, nesting in my marrow.
“I didn’t come for you,” I manage, but it’s a whisper, not a snarl. My fingers tighten on the edge of the table until my nails squeak against the wood.