Watcher
She thinks I walked away.
She thinks she won.
But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. I told myself to keep walking, to get the fuck out of that hallway before I did something I couldn’t take back, but my feet betrayed me, doubling back, dragging me into the shadows where the pulsing club lights don’t reach.
And there she is.
Brooklyn.
She slips back inside, shoulders tense like she’s holding herself together with nothing but stubbornness and spit. Her lips are swollen from where I kissed her, and rage tears through me at the thought of anyone else noticing. Of anyone else wanting.
I should go. I should put distance between us before I make another mistake.
But I can’t.
She’s laughing now—too bright, too brittle—and I realise she’s found someone.
“Brook?” A girl with dark curls flings her arms around her like they’re old friends. I don’t recognise her. Doesn’t matter. She’s irrelevant. What matters is that Brooklyn’s face softens, her eyes lighting up in a way they don’t when she’s with me.
It kills me.
“I didn’t know you’d be here!” the girl beams, tugging her toward the bar.
“Neither did I,” Brooklyn says, voice carefully casual, but I hear it — the faint tremor under her words. She’s not as unaffected as she’s pretending. She’s raw. Just like me.
I lean against the dark panelled wall, arms crossed, watching them order drinks, their heads close together. She doesn’t notice me. She never does when she’s distracted, and that’s when I see her truest.
The friend asks, “So how’s your summer been? You look…different.”
Brooklyn laughs, shaking her head. “Different bad or different good?”
“Good,” the friend insists. “Like you’ve got this glow. Like—” she leans in, smirking, “—there’s a man involved.”
The ice in my veins shatters.
Brooklyn chokes on her drink, coughing, waving her hand. “There’s no man.”
Liar.
My jaw clenches so tight it aches.
“Mmm,” the friend teases, sipping her cocktail. “So why the glow?”
Brooklyn’s smile falters. She looks away, toward the crush of bodies on the dance floor, and for one raw second her mask slips. The guilt, the ache, the storm—it’s all there in her eyes before she blinks it away.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “Maybe it’s just this place.”
Not this place. Me.
I grip the edge of the wall so hard the wood bites into my palm. I shouldn’t care what she says. I shouldn’t care who she talks to, who makes her laugh, who makes her glow. But I do. God help me, I do.
And if that girl keeps pressing, keeps poking at secrets that don’t belong to her—I’ll end it.
Right here, right now.
Brooklyn might not be mine.
But she sure as hell isn’t anyone else’s.
“Walker.”
The name cuts through the music, sharp and familiar, and I grit my teeth before I even turn.
Marcus.
Of course. The bastard materialises out of nowhere, all slick smile and expensive suit, holding a glass of scotch like it’s an accessory. He claps me on the shoulder like we’re old friends. We’re not.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here tonight.” His grin is all teeth. “Slumming it in your own club?”
I don’t answer right away. My eyes flick past him, back to where she’s sitting at the bar with her friend, straw between her lips, head tilted back in laughter. My entire chest pulls tight.
“Something like that,” I mutter.
Marcus follows my gaze, and I feel the prickle of his curiosity like a knife against my skin.
“Well, well. Who’s the girl?”
My jaw ticks. “Not your concern.”
He laughs, low and knowing. “That’s an interesting way to say mine.” He sips his drink. “You don’t look at women, Dean. Never have. I’ve known you for years, and I’ve never seen you watch anyone like that.”
I force my expression blank. “You’re imagining things.”
But he isn’t. And we both know it.
Because even as he keeps talking—rambling about some business deal, some upcoming expansion I should care about—I don’t hear a fucking word. All I hear is her laugh; all I see is her leaning in closer to her friend, her hand brushing the other girl’s arm.
The obsession doesn’t falter. It sharpens.
And Marcus notices.
“You want her,” he says finally, voice dropping.
I turn my head, meeting his gaze dead-on. Cold. Deadly. “I don’t want. I take.”
For the first time all night, he shuts up.
But the damage is done. He knows.
And worse—he saw the crack in my armour.
I downed the rest of his scotch in one gulp, slamming the glass back into his hand, and cut my gaze back to Brooklyn.
She’s mine.
Even if it kills me.