Chapter 14
Skylar
The shower does nothing to calm me. If anything, it only makes everything worse.
The hot water hits my skin, runs down my neck, over my breasts, across the places where Zane’s mouth was, and every nerve in my body answers as if he were still touching me.
My thighs are weak, my skin is too sensitive, and my heart is beating too fast for someone who is supposed to be putting herself back together.
I press both hands against the tile and lower my head.
“Fuck,” I whisper, as every inch of me remembers him. His mouth. His hands. His cock. The way he said my name when he came, as if it had been ripped from some locked part of him.
I close my eyes and tilt my face into the water, letting it beat down on my skin as if it could wash him off me. It can’t. Of course it fucking can’t.
I don’t know how I convinced myself this would be simple.
One night.
One stupid, reckless, desperate night to fuck Zane out of my system. That was the plan. Let him touch me. Let him ruin me one last time. Let me have the thing I had spent years pretending I didn’t still want. Then I would walk out of here with the memory of him under my skin and somehow be fine.
A rough laugh catches in my throat, but it sounds too close to a sob.
You’re a fucking idiot, Skylar.
I turn off the shower before I start crying beneath it.
The bathroom falls quiet around me, except for the slow drip of water on the cracked tiles and the old pipes groaning.
Steam clings to the mirror. My chest feels too tight.
My body is still too awake, too sensitive, too aware of every place his hands touched, every place his mouth dragged, every place he made me forget why having him one last time was supposed to be the smart thing.
I reach for the towel and wrap it around myself, pulling it tight across my chest as if it could hold me together.
I wipe a patch of the mirror clear with my palm.
My reflection stares back at me. Flushed cheeks. Tired eyes. A mouth still swollen from his kisses.
And soon my gaze catches on the side of my neck.
I go still when I see the mark left there by Zane. It sits there, dark and obvious against my skin. A bruise blooming right where his mouth had latched onto me as I was coming apart in his arms.
My fingers lift before I can stop them. I touch it lightly and heat rolls through me so quickly that my stomach twists.
I should be pissed. Furious that the man has been back in my life for roughly five minutes and has already left evidence on my body as if he has any right to me. Possessive asshole with excellent mouth placement.
But beneath the irritation, something softer yet more dangerous opens within me. Part of me likes knowing he lost control enough to leave it there, that for one night, Zane wanted me desperately enough to leave something behind.
I stare at the mark until my eyes burn.
God. I am so fucked up.
I dress quickly, tugging my clothes on with hands that are not yet steady. Every movement pulls a memory out of me. Zane’s hands, mouth, and his voice, rough against my skin, as if he were trying to ruin me slowly and make sure I thanked him for it.
I drag in a breath and reach for my hair, pulling it forward, tucking it close, pretending for one stupid second that wet hair can hide a bruise left by a man who has never done anything quietly in his life, even when he barely says a word.
Finally, I give up. There is no hiding it or pretending I didn’t let Zane Rivera put his mouth on me and drag every last shred of common sense out of my body.
I step out of the bathroom and head toward the stairs.
Each step down seems louder than it should. Every sound rings through the workshop as if the whole place wants to announce my arrival. Hey, it’s Skylar James, emotionally unstable. Recently fucked by the man she swore she would be over after that one night with him.
Zane looks up first and our eyes catch.
It’s ridiculous and absolutely humiliating. I had him inside me less than twenty minutes ago, and still, one glance from him makes my pulse trip over itself. As if my body has not learnt a single lesson and one look can turn me into the weakest version of myself.
Then Rainer looks up.
His eyes fall on me.
For a moment, nothing happens.
The shock crosses his face before he tucks it away, but I see it. His gaze flicks to Zane for the briefest moment, before it comes back my way.
I sense both of their eyes on me the whole way down.
“Morning,” I say to Rainer as I come to stand in front of him. My arms wrap around him.
“Hey, kid,” he says quietly.
Kid. My chest caves.
I’m twenty-six years old. I have a job, a car, and a life I have built with his help.
I also have a fresh hickey from the man who broke my heart, which is its own separate conversation.
But when Rainer says kid, something in me folds straight back to eighteen, standing in the wreckage of everything, looking at the one man who helped me more than I have ever known how to repay.
I pull back before I cry, which takes more effort than it should and costs me something I’ll deal with later, in private.
Rainer’s eyes move over my face with his quiet, unhurried attention, before moving to the mark on my neck. My hand twitches with the instinct to cover it, but I stop myself before I do.
“You alright?” he asks.
The question carries the weight of a specific conversation, the one we had the day he helped me carry boxes into my new apartment, standing in an empty kitchen that smelled of fresh paint and possibility, when he told me quietly that I had to do what was best for me.
That nothing else mattered until I figured that out.
That the rest would come when it was ready.
I had not known at that time how long it would take to be ready.
I force a small smile. “I’m fine.”
I smooth my hands down my skirt for something to do, anything to keep from standing here feeling everything at once. “I should go.”
Rainer nods. “Don’t be a stranger, kid. This door is always open. You know that.”
I do know that. I’ve always known that. The knowing of it sits in my chest, warm and one of the very few things in my life that has never once required proof.
I turn toward the door.
Zane moves immediately, falling into step beside me.
We walk through the workshop together. I keep my distance because right now I don’t trust myself not to reach for him.
Outside, the light sits warm across the hood of my car.
I stop beside the driver’s door, before turning to face Zane.
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
His eyes drop to the mark on my neck and linger there for exactly one second too long.
My cheeks heat. “Don’t look so proud of yourself.”
His mouth smirks. “I’m trying very hard not to.”
“Well you’re failing.”
“I know.”
I stare at him standing there in the morning light.
All of him, the jaw and the eyes and every line of him, and I feel it all settle in my chest—that specific, exhausting war between the part of me that would walk back through that roller door right now without a second thought and the part of me that knows I cannot survive another round of Zane Rivera.
I can’t say it out loud because if I do, it becomes something he can respond to, and I can’t afford his response right now. I need to work this out in my own time, when he cannot reach me, when his eyes, his voice, and his hands are not variables I have to account for.
His throat moves as I watch him.
“Sky.” His voice is low.
I lift a hand. “No, I am still mad at you.”
“I know.”
“And I need to protect myself.” I hold his gaze because he deserves the full weight of this and I deserve to say it. “I can’t survive another time of you deciding what's best for me. I cannot do that twice.”
Something shifts across his face. The honesty of it landing exactly where I meant it to and I watch it move through him. Watch his jaw tighten, his eyes darken, and the particular way a man absorbs a truth he already knew but had not yet had to face in the full light of morning.
“I will regret that for the rest of my life,” he says.
I open the car door, but I don’t get in just yet. I stand with my hand on the frame, the morning air around us, and everything still unresolved.
He steps back.
That might be the most dangerous thing about this new Zane. He knows when to stop. The boy I loved never knew when to stop, pushing every boundary until it either held or broke.
I get into the car before I do something stupid, like kiss him goodbye and undo every boundary I spent the last two minutes trying to build with my bare hands and whatever dignity I had left.
He closes the door for me before stepping back.
I start the engine and the car grumbles to life. I pull out of the parking lot.
As I drive, I check the side mirror. Zane stands where I left him on the strip of concrete outside the workshop. Next, Rainer appears, moving out of the building to stand beside him. Those two men, side by side in the morning light, watching me go.
The two people who made the word home feel both possible and impossible in the same breath. Now they are watching me drive away from something I am not sure I have the strength to keep driving away from.
My eyes burn. I turn the corner before the tears can fall, before the mirror can show me anything else I am not ready to see.
But I still feel them there, sitting at the edges of everything that was my life before.
I drive and let the city close in around me, the way it will be long after I have figured out what to do with a heart that has apparently never, not for a single day in seven years, stopped belonging to Zane Rivera.
By the time I reach Cassie’s building, I have wiped my face twice and convinced myself I look completely normal. Composed. Fine. A woman who spent the night making excellent decisions and has no regrets whatsoever.
Cassie is on me the moment I open the front door.