Chapter 27
The vibrations of the music hits before we even reach the door.
It spills out of the club in waves, thick and hot like something alive.
The closer we get, the more I feel it sinking into my skin.
It’s not just music. It’s pressure. It's a pulse. It’s the kind of beat that wraps around your spine and makes you forget how to think, how to breathe, how to feel anything but heat and movement and the possibility of something reckless waiting in the dark. It’s perfect.
I’m wearing the black La Perla set, every strap and thread of it wrapped around me like a secret only I know.
My skin hums beneath it like it remembers his hands, and I hate that.
Hate how easily my body betrays me. I tried telling myself I chose it for me, for the power, the confidence, the control.
But as I catch my reflection in the club’s glossy windows, I wonder if that’s the truth or just the story I needed to survive.
My hand-sewn midnight-blue bodycon clings to me like a dare, like a secret I’m dying to tell and terrified to speak. I hold my head high anyway. If I’m going to be haunted, I might as well wear it like armour.
Inside, the club is already alive with energy. Gold light flickers through the haze of smoke, sweat, and perfume. Bodies sway in rhythm, close enough to be one living, breathing thing. The scent of liquor hangs thick in the air, sharp and sweet, and everything feels just slightly out of focus.
Cora throws her head back in laughter, tipsy and beautiful and free thanks to the Finlay brothers’ watchful eye.
She’s texting Owen with a dreamy grin that makes my chest ache with something I can’t name.
Abbie’s halfway to the VIP section, already tangled in conversation with a group of girls who look like they should be on the runway, with Smithy and Duncan close on her heels.
And me? I dance like my life depends on it.
I move like I’m trying to burn him out of me. Every sway of my hips, every snap of my shoulders, it’s a plea and a punishment all at once. The bass shakes through my bones, loud enough to rattle teeth, but not loud enough to drown him out. Nothing ever is.
I dance harder. Faster. Like maybe I can lose him in the pulse of the crowd, in the slick heat of bodies moving against each other and the sweat trickling down my back. Like maybe I can scrub his memory of my skin if I lean far enough into the music and the here and now.
But memory is a stubborn mistress, and nothing I’ve done—not the distance between us, not the lies, not the nights I forced myself to forget—has ever loosened his hold on me.
I feel him before I see him.
The air changes, sharp and electric, coiling tight around my ribs until breathing becomes an act of will. My pulse stumbles, then sprints. The crowd fades into the background, their voices thinning into static. Every nerve in my body rises in recognition and warning.
He’s here.
I don’t have to turn. I don’t have to look. My body remembers him—the gravity of him, the quiet violence of his presence.
And then the sea of strangers parts, and there he is.
Time freezes as I take him in. Standing just beyond the edge of the dance floor, cut out of shadow and strobe, the kind of presence that makes space bend around him.
A dark suit clings to his frame like sin was tailored into it.
His white shirt is open at the collar, his tattoos visible where he’s rolled the sleeves of his shirt and jacket—casual, deliberate, and lethal.
A year should have dulled him. Distance should have worn his edges down. But no, he’s sharper than ever.
And his eyes, God, his eyes. They slice through the crowd and find me like they never forgot how, pinning me in place with that same merciless intensity that used to have me weak at the knees. But it’s what’s in them that makes my blood burn.
Betrayal. Accusation. As if I’m the one who broke us.
The look on his face is a knife to the heart, twisting deeper with every breath. I would have done anything for him. And now he looks at me like I’m something poisonous. Like he doesn’t know me at all.
The floor tilts beneath me. My chest tightens, breath stuttering as heat floods my veins—treacherous, and familiar. My body remembers him too well—the weight of his gaze, the way it claimed without words, the way it undid me until I didn’t know where he ended and I began.
He looks like sin. He looks like salvation. He looks like mine.
Those emerald eyes hold me, unblinking, and the room ceases to exist. The crowd, the music, the pulse of the night, they all dissolve beneath the weight of his stare.
I don’t know how long we hold each other like that.
Seconds. Years. My throat goes dry and my knees forget how to support me.
The music slows in my ears, like I’m being dragged underwater.
The floor feels unsteady, like the music is shaking it apart, but I can’t stop staring.
A year without him and it’s like my body has been starving, now it’s feasting, too much, too fast.
He doesn’t move at first. Just watches me, anchored in shadow, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll come to him. Like the cocky bastard already knows I will.
I drag in a breath, but it shudders out too fast. I should turn away.
Pretend he’s just another man in a suit, another stranger who doesn’t know the shape of me.
But my feet betray me, longing driving me forward, one hesitant step after another, until the crowd swallows and releases me right in front of him.
“Lily.” His voice is rougher than I remember, deep enough to skim down my spine. My name doesn’t sound like mine in his mouth, it sounds like a secret, like a promise he never kept.
I hate the way my knees weaken. I hate the way my chest aches just to hear it again.
“Matthew.” I manage it without breaking, though my throat feels raw. I want it to land like a blade; instead, it comes out like a confession.
His eyes rake over me, slow and deliberate, and my skin burns everywhere they touch. “You dyed your hair.”
It’s ridiculous—the smallest observation, after everything. But the way he says it feels like he’s cataloguing every inch I’ve changed in his absence, every piece of me he still claims to know.
“And you…” My voice catches. God, why does it catch? “You look the same.”
His mouth curves, not quite a smile, not kind. “No. I’ve been starving.”
The words gut me, sharp and brutal, because I know exactly what he means. Because part of me has been starving too.
The crowd surges and crashes around us, blue and green lights flashing across his face as the bass drops, and for a heartbeat, it feels like the entire room tilts toward him. Toward us. Like the lights, the sound, even the air itself is pushing us together.
He doesn’t rush. He never does. Every step he takes is deliberate, measured, and somehow it makes the space between us shrink, makes the air thicken with anticipation.
His presence spills into my space like smoke, thick and irresistible.
Then comes the scent—clean, dark, threaded with something dangerously familiar—and I realise I’ve been craving it without knowing it.
Being this close is unbearable. My chest hammers. If I close my eyes, he could still be mine. We could be wrapped around each other, stolen moments, untouchable, unbroken.
I should step back. I know I should. But my body has other plans. It sways forward, drawn to him, pulled by a gravity I can’t resist, desperate and reckless despite every warning in my mind.
“Don’t,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.
But he hears me anyway. His mouth curves, dangerous and knowing. “You say that like you mean it.”
Heat spikes low in my stomach, humiliation and hunger tangled so tight I can’t tell them apart. I want to strike him, I want to kiss him, I want to disappear into the floor before he sees how badly I still bend toward him.
His hand rises—slow, deliberate, a tormenting heartbeat away from brushing my skin—and I don’t flinch. He doesn’t need to touch me; the air between us burns hotter than any contact. My nerves ignite, every inch of me aching as if his fingertips are already trailing along my arm.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I rasp, my voice barely a whisper.
“Maybe not,” he says, eyes locking on mine, hot and merciless. “But I heard you would be.”
The words sink like jagged teeth, ripping through the careful walls I’ve built.
For the first time in over a year, I’m drowning in him—the faint brush of his breath, the ghost of his warmth, the memory of breaking and blooming beneath his hands.
My pulse drums in my throat, in my wrists, in the hollow of my stomach, everywhere he isn’t touching but could.
Every nerve is awake, trembling, desperate, aching for the moment he crosses the line I’ve been guarding and maybe, I want him to.
And I know, with a sick rush of certainty, that if he reaches for me now, I’ll let him.
The bass drops again, low and punishing, rattling up through the floorboards. The lights cut out for a beat, plunging us into darkness before the strobes ignite again, harsher, faster. The crowd surges with it, bodies crashing into one another, momentum folding me forward before I can stop it.
I stumble into him.
His chest catches mine, solid, and immovable. His hand comes up, instinctive, sliding against my hip to steady me. Just one point of contact and it’s enough to split me open.
The breath shatters in my throat. Heat rolls through me, dizzying, and humiliating. I should tear myself free, but my body betrays me, holding still like I was built for this exact moment.
He leans down, mouth close to my ear, his voice rough enough to cut. “Careful.”
The word isn’t a warning. It’s a promise.
The lights strobe again, the crowd moving around us as the song changes, but all I feel is that hand, burning through silk, tethering me to him as though it never left. A year apart, and one touch has undone me entirely.