Caught In His Net
The house feels different the next morning. Not quieter—quieter I could handle.
This is something else, something crawling, like the walls have grown ears overnight and every creak of the floorboards is a warning.
Dean left early. Said he had “business.” No explanation, no hint of where. Just that sharp look that pinned me in place and a clipped order not to leave the house.
I lasted three hours.
The air outside is cool and wet, the kind of damp that sticks to your skin and makes you feel watched even when you’re not.
I told myself I just needed a walk, a breath of space, a slice of normal that doesn’t reek of secrets and lies.
But the second I cut through the alley toward the coffee shop, the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.
He was there.
Leaning against the brick wall like he’d been waiting all night.
Rafe.
Dark jacket. Cigarettes burned low between his fingers. Eyes like a storm that knew exactly where to land.
“Well, well,” he drawls, the smoke curling lazily around his mouth. “The pretty little assistant Dean keeps locked up.” His gaze drags down my body slowly, like he’s unwrapping me without moving a muscle. “Didn’t think he’d let you off the leash.”
My pulse stutters hard.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper, even though I know how useless it sounds.
His smile is sharp, cruel. Hot.
“Sweetheart, I’m everywhere he isn’t. And right now…” He steps closer, the smoke and leather and danger bleeding into the air between us. “…that makes you mine.”
I try to back up, but the wall’s at my spine before I even realise it. My hands curl into fists, but my voice betrays me, cracking like glass.
“What do you want from me?”
He leans down, his mouth close enough that I can taste the smoke on his breath. His words are a rasped promise.
“Only to warn you. Dean Walker’s enemies aren’t patient. And you, little doll, are standing right in the middle of the crossfire.”
A tremor rolls through me. His hand lifts like he’s going to touch me—my face, my hair, I don’t know. But at the last second he drags his knuckles down the wall beside my head instead, leaving the skin of my cheek untouched but burning, anyway.
“You’re on borrowed time,” he murmurs. “And if you were smart, you’d run before the clock runs out.”
And then—just like that—he’s gone.
I sag against the bricks, trembling, my heart a wild, frantic drum. And all I can think is—Dean’s going to kill him.
And maybe me, too.
I don’t remember walking home.
One minute I’m pressed to the bricks, shivering in the shadow of Rafe’s warning, and the next I’m stumbling through Dean’s door with my palms scraped and my throat raw from trying not to scream.
My heart hasn’t slowed. It’s still hammering like I ran all the way, though I can’t remember my feet moving.
The house feels colder than it should. Empty, even with the hum of the refrigerator and the distant tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. I press my back against the door, sliding down until my knees hit the rug, hands shaking too hard to hold still.
Borrowed time.
The words circle and circle like vultures.
By the time I hear the heavy tread of boots, I almost choke on relief—until it sinks in that it’s him. Dean. Not safety. No comfort. Just another storm waiting to break.
The door swings wider under his hand, and he freezes when he sees me on the floor.
“Brooklyn.” His voice is too sharp, too clipped, like a blade. “What the fuck happened?”
I shake my head, chest heaving. “N–nothing. I—”
“Don’t you dare lie to me.” He’s already crouching in front of me, tilting my chin up so I have to look at him. His fingers are hot against my clammy skin, his jaw tight enough to crack. “Your face says otherwise. Who touched you?”
Panic floods my throat. Because if I say his name, if I tell him Rafe was here, it’ll ignite something I can’t control. Dean won’t just be angry. He’ll burn the world down.
My lips part, then close again. My silence is enough. I see it in the way his expression hardens, the way his grip tightens just slightly on my chin like he’s holding himself back from breaking me with the question again.
“He was here,” Dean growls, more to himself than to me. “Wasn’t he?”
I swallow, tears welling. My voice barely slips through. “He said I’m on borrowed time.”
Dean’s entire body goes still. For one terrifying second, I think he’ll explode. Instead, he pulls back, standing in a fluid motion that reeks of control stretched to the breaking point.
“You listen to me.” His voice is low, lethal. “You don’t leave this house again. Not for coffee. Not for air. Not for a fucking second. Do you understand me?”
I nod, but it’s too fast, too shaky, and I can feel his fury trembling under his skin like a live wire.
“Say it.”
My voice breaks. “I understand.”
Dean leans down, his mouth brushing my ear, his tone dark enough to split me in two.
“If Rafe wants to play games with me, fine. But he doesn’t get to breathe the same air as you. You’re mine, Brooklyn. And if he so much as looks at you again, I’ll put him in the ground.”
The threat doesn’t ease me. It only twists my stomach harder because I know that Rafe isn’t finished.
And neither is Dean.
Dean doesn’t storm or shout. That almost makes it worse.
He paces the kitchen like a predator circling a cage, shoulders tight, every movement precise, deliberate. The silence between his boots on the tile is a drumbeat, and I can feel it echoing in my chest, bruising me from the inside.
I stay on the rug, too shaky to stand, nails pressed into my palms just to keep myself tethered. I shouldn’t have let Rafe corner me. I shouldn’t have gone near him. Dean’s right—it was reckless, stupid, and now the look on his face says I’ve painted a target brighter than blood across my back.
He opens the drawer by the sink, pulls something out. The metallic clink when he sets it on the counter makes bile rise in my throat. A gun. Sleek, black, heavy in his hand. He checks the magazine like he’s done it a thousand times blind, each click of metal sliding into place louder than thunder.
My whole body jolts at the sound.
Dean doesn’t look at me. His jaw works, his temple ticking as he runs a cloth down the barrel. He’s calm. Too calm. And that terrifies me more than if he’d been screaming.
The air smells of gun oil and coffee gone cold. My tears have already dried, but the salt sting lingers in my throat.
Finally, he sets the weapon aside, wiping his hands slowly, methodically, like he’s wiping away the last trace of hesitation.
“I can feel him,” Dean mutters, not to me but to the room, to the walls, to the air that still feels poisoned by Rafe’s presence. “Like smoke under the door.”
The words root deep in my spine.
I want to speak, to tell him I can’t live like this, that I can’t carry the weight of his wars, but when I try, nothing comes out. All I can do is watch him—the way his eyes sharpen, the way something unravels in the quiet edges of his control.
And then he turns. Looks at me.
The weight in his gaze pins me harder than any rope, any cage. There’s no room left for me to breathe.
I realise then—I’m not just terrified of Rafe.
I’m terrified of what Dean will become now that Rafe has touched me without laying a hand on me at all.
Dean crosses the space in three steps, and the stool I’m perched on suddenly feels like the edge of a cliff.
His hand comes down on the counter beside me, palm flat, the veins in his wrist standing out like cords. He leans in, close enough that I can smell the leather on his jacket and the faint trace of smoke clinging to him from Club Z.
“You don’t go near him again.” His voice isn’t raised, but it’s thunder wrapped in steel. “Do you understand me, Brooklyn? I don’t care if he corners you in a fucking church—you run, you call me, you never let him breathe the same air as you again.”
Tears prick, hot, unwanted. My throat works around the words that finally tumble out, jagged and too soft.
“I didn’t… I didn’t choose it, Dean. He was just there, waiting, like he knew I’d be alone.”
His jaw tightens, and for a second, I think he’ll explode, but instead he exhales through his nose, steady but furious, like a man choking back the urge to destroy something.
“I told you he plays games.” His finger presses under my chin, forcing my eyes up. “But you’re not his game piece. You’re mine.”
The word mine lands like a brand, hot and unyielding.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper, the confession slipping out before I can cage it. “I can’t live in a world where men like him exist—and you—” My breath shatters. “And you terrify me almost as much as he does.”
Dean doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t soften. He lowers himself until his mouth is a breath from mine, voice a razor-slice in the silence.
“Good. Fear keeps you alive. Fear keeps you sharp. And as long as you’re afraid, you’ll never forget whose arms you belong in at the end of it.”
Something in me cracks then—half fury, half need. My fists pound weakly against his chest, but his hand closes around my wrists, pinning them to the counter.
“Stop running from it,” he snarls, forehead pressing to mine. “Stop pretending you don’t know exactly what this is.”
My vision blurs with tears. “And what is it, Dean? Tell me, because I can’t keep guessing while Rafe is out there waiting to finish me off.”
His grip tightens, and the silence between us burns hotter than any scream. Then finally his voice drops, rough and low, a vow more than an answer:
“It’s the only thing keeping you alive. Me.”